Rio de janeiro and Salvador de Bahia

I flew to Salvador from Rio after midnight of Monday and found that this is the spot! Music is everywhere here day and night from the street from the houses. The housed are colourful and a lots of art work are around. Samba, drums and capoera everywhere. Being here only two days and I love this place so much already.

Here is something I missed to write in the last post. In Rio every weekend there is street party at the place called Lapa. I went with people from my hostel both turistas and staffs. There was a group playing samba on the corner of the street and at some point they were letting turistas to hava a bush with them. I was close to them so a guy handed me a tamborim. I started playing with them and soon they realised I can play samba. After they let the other tourists go, they put me again to play with them. A lot of songs they were playing were the ones I used to play at Melsamba. So even though the arrangement was different, I could feel where the break comes and turn the tamborim. Everytime I got right with breaks, turning tamborim and changing rhythm, the other Brazilians gave me a lot of cheers. when I finish playing I got a lot of shaking hands and hugs with the other players. The staffs in my hostel kept telling me that they were very proud of me. After that I was dancing and singing along the songs I knew with other Brazilians. A guy was shouting out to his friend that I can't speak Portguese but I can play, dance and sing samba with a big excitement. I felt it is so great to be able to sing along with locals. You feel so together. Like at the Carnaval rehearsal, when the Beija Flor started playing Mangueira's old song, I was singing along with the whole crowd. that was great feel and the old ladies who were fans of mangueira and standing around me were so happy to see me singing their song with them.

Here in Salvador the Tuesdays are the day for the street party so I went out last night. At the moment I am hanging around with this Israeli girl who does capoera. Samba here is a bit different from Rio. No more familier songs for me, but very interesting to see different style. I am thinking to take a class or something. Only band I know from Salvador is Timbalada. They are very good and I have their CD at home. so I bought a ticket to walk in the block for Timbalada for the carnaval.

Chao for now.