I could not have dreamed before coming to Kuala Lumpur last week that I would have had such a musically and personally rich experience in just six days in Malaysia. Retrospectively, the signs were perhaps there: I had lined up in advance a gig and a half-hour slot at an open mic, starting on the first day of arrival. The rest was a matter of serendipity, synchronicity, and pushing the limits.
It turned out that the day I chose to play Laila’s Cafe open mic was also the first day in a year that a friend of one of its organizers decided to drop by to check it out. This was Edmund Anthony, the man who runs the music program at the famous Backyard Pub & Grill in KL. So we met, he liked my singing, and he invited me to check out the Backyard on Friday. That in turn led to an invitation to me to play a solo act there last night, as he has solo performers early in the week, building up to full-fledged bands later on.
So it was that I ended up playing not only Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday (the latter thanks to the Melbourne open mic organizer, Emily Brown’s research on where else I could play in KL, but I also got to play this nice little gig at the KL landmark Backyard Pub & Grill. This was also thanks to the kindness of Mark Renesh, who is the regular Monday night musician at the Backyard. He not only let me play from 9:30 onwards for about 45 minutes, but he later invited me up to play a couple of songs with him – “Stand By Me” and “Unchained Melody.”
Mark Renesh is a very cool dude with a voice that you think you are hallucinating with when you hear it and see him singing and you wonder where the hell it’s coming from. It’s his, all right. But Mark, who has always worked solo, has developed the one-man solo gig into an art of technological proportions I have yet to see beaten. That is, I’ve recently started using a vocal harmonizing device occasionally at my brunch, and Stephen “Danger” Prescott uses one at the Galway open mic in Paris. Other musicians, like Thomas Brun at the Highlander’s open mic, have a lot of looping and fuzz type of gadgets too. But Mark has a lot of stuff he pre-records, including rhythm devices, vocal harmonies, and I think other guitars. The whole is like a one man band, and very impressive.
Moreover, Mark has a fabulous voice that very frequently does an exact rendition of the cover songs he sings. Very unusual.
Another thing that made the even fabulous was that I actually had three of my best friends among Formula One journalists come along to dine with me and listen to my concert. Well, I say “dine,” but it took a couple of them quite a while to find the Backyard, as they ended up driving around KL about three times before finding it. And I was extremely honored to have come around to listen to me as well, one of my favorite former Formula One racing drivers, the local Malaysian boy, Alex Yoong, who is currently head of driver development at Team Lotus. Having the Malaysian come and hear me play on his home turf was sensational. Alex is also doing television racing commentary here, and still doing a little bit of racing – like GT3 last year. Just realized I first wrote about Alex Yoong way, way back in 1999.
In any case, the evening was fabulous, it was a privilege to play at this KL landmark music joint, and I enjoyed my set thoroughly – playing my usual mix of my own songs and cover songs.
I reported a few days ago that my Seagull guitar broke. That IS a true story. But I have been able to press the broken pieces of the wood back together and the guitar is playing on and continuing its adventures, and I have decided that I will keep it going until it warps, collapses or otherwise ceases to produce the sound I love to hear from it. And thank goodness I’m still carrying the battle scarred girl around with me. I would not have wanted to miss last night’s adventure for anything in the world.
I had already considered this trip to Kuala Lumpur a musical success after I played at Laila’s bar on Wednesday, at the Frontera restaurant on Saturday – read about that below – and also received an invitation to play tonight at the Backyard Pub and Grill. But my friend Emily Brown, the woman who runs the All-Nations U-Bar open mic in Australia, when she saw I was in Kuala Lumpur decided to ask a Malaysian musician she knows in Melbourne if he knew of places for me to play.
He suggested Doppelganger open mic, which I know about but which has nothing while I’m here. And he also suggested a thing called SENYAP. I sent an email to the SENYAP address asking if there were any events for me to play at and I received a response yesterday, saying I could come around and play that night – or Tuesday, but that Sunday would be best.
I had a huge day at the office – read, race track – and I was late in getting away, late in returning to my hotel, and then late in arriving at the so-called “Hub” where SENYAP put on its musical and other artistic events. It was located in Shah Alam, out in a suburb, in a place called “Extreme Park,” which in fact was a skateboard and other extreme sports meeting place. The Hub was like a mix between a cafe, bar, pub and musical theater, with a fabulous stage, spotlights, good quality sound system, and a lot of people sitting at chairs drinking non-alcoholic local beer-like drink – flavored peach, pomegranate, raspberry, etc. – at oil barrels for tables. The walls were black and covered with sayings and signatures and autographs written in chalk. Cool? All part of the cool concept of SENYAP (which means “silence” in Malay).
“We’re an underground movement,” I was told by Atraz Ismail, the genial and charismatic organizer of SENYAP and owner of the locale, when I asked him what kind of place I had come to.
Indeed, it took me a while, but I eventually caught on. SENYAP is a DIY group that exists to promote grassroots arts in Malaysia, mostly music, but also other arts. This particular “Hub” has only been open for a week, but the concept has existed for a couple of years, and in various forms.
The group takes in musicians and gives them a venue and helps them develop and advertise and gig and grow. Very cool indeed. And what was, on top of that, so much cooler for me personally was not only that I was allowed to play in this venue and did a nice half hour gig of my own and cover songs that were pretty much all warmly received. It was also the quality of the other musicians present, and the young bands who dropped by to take in the sounds and speak to Atraz. Among them were a band called The Tick, which has grown up through SENYAP and has a CD, and a Singaporean musician named Tengku Adil.
Unfortunately I only just barely heard Adil, as he was playing just as I arrived and I had to run out immediately to grab a Burger King next door since I had not yet eaten, and it was nearly 10 PM. But Adil gave me his CD and I listened to it later on a car CD player and it sounded nice.
The truly cool thing, though, was the presence of the singer who I did hear when I came back to pig out on my Burger King. This was Andy, of the band Flop Poppy. As I listened to his set – just him on the guitar and vocals – I could hear instantly that this man had his own style and presence. I could also hear and incredible audience participation in his songs, with applause coming as certain songs were introduced, and the audience knowing all the lyrics.
As I ate the burger and videoed the man I thought, this man must be known here. They know all his songs, and he has this assured presence and sound. I would learn that indeed, Andy, the main man behind Flop Poppy, is a local rock star. The band was a trailblazing band in the Malaysian indie music scene in the ’90s and early 2000s, and has, in fact, sold millions of records.
Andy is a friend and supporter of Atraz and his SENYAP movement, and he said that after his years of performing at the top, he has recently returned a lot to his roots, playing in smaller venues – as well as continuing in the big ones – and trying to be as close to the people as possible.
So here we get to the really nice part. In addition to interviewing all these people for my open mic film, I again found myself in a situation as I have so often where the musicians are intrigued by my guitar. Andy just had to try it out. So I gave it to him as we sat at one of those oil drums and he played and sang a song. As I went off to interview Atraz, Andy got back on the stage again and played for another 10 or 15 minutes with my guitar.
Then Adil took the guitar and played it too.
Yes, a few days ago I reported that I had broken the Seagull, and that is true. It is broken. But the splinters are holding together, and the guitar seems to sound about the same as before. So I will get it looked at by a doctor (luthier) and hope to give it a new lease on life. This is the guitar that has been played around the world by so many different musicians, including many famous ones, that I cannot bear the thought of retiring it. I mentioned this to Andy and he said, “You should make a video about ‘all the people who have played my guitar’.” Hey, that’s what SENYAP is all about, a creative melting pot.
The night before I played at the Frontera Tex Mex restaurant. Did a half hour gig there, as it was not exactly an open mic. There too I met some very interesting people – and the Bollands were also there – and spoke in front of the camera to the Malaysia group, Sue & Her Boys – Chapter 2. Sue is a teacher and her boys are her students. They’re studying media, but they do the music for fun. A little over a year ago, they started an open mic themselves mainly for the students, but it has grown into an international affair as well, with bands from all over.
Clearly the Malaysian music scene is vibrant and growing. Gotta get ready now for my gig at the Backyard tonight.
Not much to report on after a 26-hour trip back from Melbourne to Paris. The only musical story was the watching of the film Burlesque, and the fact that I had to stow my guitar in the luggage compartment, rather than carry it onboard. This was Singapore Airlines. But the flight did seem to have a fine effect on my Zoom Q3HD that I mentioned had fallen in the toilet last Thursday and died: Upon my return home today, the Zoom came back to life!!!! After four days of repeated efforts to turn it on, it finally worked. It seems it was just protesting against that bad treatment. Now, of course, this means I have two Zoom Q3HDs!! But that will be perfect for taking two different angles at the same time and editing them together. Oh, Sunday there was a little musical story as I saw Motorhead sitting in the paddock of the Australian Grand Prix. End of story….
Last night in Melbourne was the true beginning to my third worldwide musical adventure to the open mics and jam sessions of the planet over the next nine months. My first was in 2009, when I played my guitar and sang in 17 countries, nearly 30 cities and on every continent except Africa (where I did once live and play) and Antarctica (where I do not want to live or play). I did roughly the same adventure last year, and I will probably do even more this year – I think I have 18 countries planned….
The first year I worked on a book about the adventure – which I am still editing down from its initial 1,000 single-spaced pages!!!-; last year I put posts up on this blog about the adventure; and this year I will do the blog again, and I also have another project in mind that may involve linking it all together in a sound and/or image narrative.
But last night showed me that although this is the third year of the adventure – which, by the way, follows the trajectory of the Formula One world championship, that I report on for the International Herald Tribune and New York Times – and for an F1 blog at the NYT and as the About.com F1 guide – it is not just a repetition of the past.
Life changes, things change and move in ways we cannot predict, and last night I realized that this parallel life of playing in musical venues around the world for the third year has new possibilities I had not imagined: Call it a snowball effect, or a building up of experience. Last night I ended up playing again at the All Nations U-Bar open mic at 2 Spencer Street in Melbourne, which I had discovered last year. But I did that in the company of my friend Lara, whom I had met at the Softbelly Bar open mic in the first year of the adventure – and whom I had not seen since (although we maintained a correspondence).
I was a little disappointed with the U-Bar open mic this year because the sound system was horrible, and I performed very early and so probably the atmosphere had not developed into the fabulous, rollicking evening I had discovered the year before. But our impressions change from one year to the next, and I had also noticed that Emily Brown, the very cool woman who had organized and MC’d the show last year was not there. I thought maybe that was the problem.
I suggested to Lara that we leave and go somewhere quiet and have a drink and talk. And as we left and crossed a nearby street, I heard a shout in the distance from a woman.
“Brad!!!!”
I turned back and crossed the street to find that it was Emily, and she had recognized me out in the dark road as she returned to the U-Bar where she still IS the MC, although someone else was briefly filling in for her last night. She asked me if I had played yet, and I said I had. She said that she was bringing along a Latin music band to do the second part of the evening, and I thought, there we go – the open mic evening probably would turn out to be as good as it was last year. I had simply not given it enough time.
But most of all, I was delighted at how Emily had recognized me, a year later in the dark and slightly rainy street in Melbourne. (Yes, the weather is crap.) It gave me the sense of having musical friends around the world thanks to this adventure. And there I was, of course, with Lara from two years before. Melbourne was feeling like one of my many homes!
I decided to continue on to another bar with Lara, so we went to the Softbelly bar on Little Bourke Street, where we had met at the open mic on the Wednesday before the F1 race in 2009. I did some advance work this year and wrote to the organizer of the Softbelly open mic and found that it no longer exists…. Until we got there and Lara noticed a little poster that said there IS an open mic at the Softbelly on Wednesdays, starting at 7 PM – but it obviously has a different organizer.
I think part of the reason I did not feel quite so good at the U-Bar was also, in fact, because of Lara’s presence. Having her there made me very nervous when I sang my songs, as she had arrived only around 10 minutes before I had to sing, and I was terribly self-conscious all of a sudden about singing in front of the beautiful Lara and letting her down. (As it turned out, I need not have been too worried, as I received some compliments from a couple of people – as well as from Lara – on my four-song set afterward, as Lara and I left the bar.)
But I also had the terrible task of deciding if I should sing the song, called “Lara, Lara” – that I had written for her two years ago. Could I really do it in public here in front of all these people – for there was a fairly decent number of clients at the All Nations U-Bar. I decided I would not sing her song for fear of embarrassing her. But later on I realized I had made a mistake.
Here is the recording I did of “Lara, Lara” in 2009:
So it was that when we sat in the U-Bar and talked, I mentioned that I had considered singing the song and I could see she would have liked that. So I decided that we had to find a secluded alley somewhere and I would sing her the song, as she had pointed out she had never heard me sing it for her live.
We crossed the street from the Softbelly and found a perfect secluded alley where there were no private residences. Together we sang there for probably close to an hour. We went through a large part of my cover song repertoire and a few of my own songs, including Lara, Lara – which was the first I sang. Together we also sang “Cat’s In the Cradle,” which of course was the subject of yesterday’s post…. Lara’s voice was magic; her musical talents and skills are well developed as she has many years’ worth of training on the violin.
So this was an amazing first musical evening in Melbourne, the first true day of my new adventure, and it was made new and unusual by the fact that it was Year III of the adventure and there is a building up of connections and friends and situations.
The only problem was that I managed to do only two videos of the U-Bar open mic, and only one of these is in any way worth putting on the site. I do a panoramic turn around the bar with the camera, and I particularly like the painted mural on the wall that you see near the end of the short video.
At the Tennessee bar and the Galway last night I spotted some new things to write about: First was the great use of one of the worst guitars that exists in the world. When I started travelling around the world two years ago playing music I decided to check out all the travel guitars, and I quickly concluded and discovered that it didn’t matter what size the guitar was, the airplane would let you on board or not. So I stuck with my regular guitar, my Seagull S6. But one of the guitars I had tried was a piece of shit, and I could never understand how anyone could buy one for the crap sound it gives off…until last night I saw someone at the Tennessee doing a fabulous thing with it: Slide guitar. Check out the video. And the most mystifying thing about this piece of crap is that it is a Martin!
After that, over to the Galway where for the second time that night Ollie Fury played his wonderful new song, and both he and Stephen Danger Prescott for a change played Dylan, and did it in their own ways, as you can also see from the video. All in all, a satisfactory “new” night.
First I have to talk about Saturday night, since Robert Kubica’s accident in rally racing yesterday meant I had no time for this blog before I sped off to the brunch at the Mecano bar. (I had to do a blog item and update on my F1 blog on the NYT site.)
But what a Saturday and Sunday! Saturday I attended a jam/open mic that I had discovered existed one day as my eye was attracted to a bar on Rue St. Maur – the street where I got my head kicked in on New Year’s Eve – with the name in French of L’Echiquier. That means chessboard in French. So that, as deep readers of this blog will know, would be of interest to me since I love chess. But then I saw a sign on the window about an open mic. And that, well…
It turns out that the bar has a theme of chess, with matches played there occasionally, with chessboard tiling in the toilets, and drinks named after chess themes, etc. And this is because Djamel Grine, who owns the place, likes chess too. But he told me his original idea was that he wanted the bar to be public place open to everyone: the King, the Queen, the bishop (which in French is called a “fou” and also means “crazy person.”)
It was a very warm open mic, and I was pleased that although it started like a typical bluesy sort of jam session with full band, it was also possible and welcome for an individual musician to go up and sing and play guitar, cover songs or originals. I played with the band, since I like that challenge and it is more fun and “big.” We played “Crazy Love,” because it was easy, “Father and Son,” because it was more difficult but well known, and my song “Borderline,” just because. I finished off with “I Shall Be Released,” since it is three chords and really well known.
Having had that magnificent Saturday evening, I worried that my own brunch would never match it. I was wrong. It must have been the Sunday of all my brunches where I had the largest number of other performers who wanted to play – and who did play. There were seven of us in all. I played a lot less in order to allow for the others, and that was great, because it meant I could talk to the others and listen to them.
And Olivier Rodriguez, a friend and amazing photographer, showed up for the second week in a row to play his songs and this time he brought his camera and did some great shots of us and said I could put them up on this blog.
I returned to the Highlander last night after a week away, and there I heard a lot of interesting sounds as the night progressed, in particular a wonderful rendition of Jacques Brel’s song, “Au Suivant,” done by a guy named Adnan, who reminded me that we had met once on a musical picnic under the Eiffel Tower last year or the year before…. But this also is the third in a blog post series about young French people singing the traditional stuff of the past – oh, Adnan was from Morocco, I think – that I first mentioned in two posts from singers at the Ptit Bonheur la Chance open mic.
There was also some cool blues, one by a young Frenchman on the electric guitar who has a Tom Waits touch to his voice, and the other by David Broad, whom I have referred to extensively on this blog. At the end of the evening Thomas Brun got together to play the backing music for a rapper from Senegal who calls himself “Mr. No Name.” I had seen and heard him at the Tennessee a few months ago, and he remains fun and cool.
And my big news of the day is that I can now confirm that I will again be travelling around the world this year to cover all the Formula One races, and I will also continue to bring my guitar to play in open mics and jams when not at the track, in my spare time. (What little of that there is on that kind of voyage.) It will be most interesting to go to India for the first race in that country…. So stick around for more amazing stories of musicians in farflung – and closeflung – countries and continents.
The weekend was SOOO busy that I have had to do a roundup, instead of a day-to-day report as usual. It started with a chess tournament at my club on Friday night, which it would be far better not to talk about. End of that report.
Saturday I had three things planned: A concert with Neimo, an open mic at an art space known as 0XII and an after show thing at Le Tigre, for the Neimo show. Now listen to this!!:
The concert with Neimo was fabulous. I first heard of Neimo while performing at Earle’s open mic for the second time two years ago. One of the regular performers at the open mic was Bruno Dallesandro, the lead singer from Neimo. Over the next year at Earle’s open mic, there would barely be a week without Bruno showing up with his friends to sing and pay their dues back to Earle and his open mic, since they had developed their act in important ways at Earle’s first bar, Le Shebeen, which had spawned all sorts of French groups.
Saturday night Neimo was the lead act at the cool venue known as La Flèche d’Or, which is a concert hall made out of an old train station. This was the first time I had seen Neimo in action as a complete band, playing their songs, electronically. And man was it cool. Even the fact that they played a vast amount of new material did not put me off – I had listened mostly to their last album, Modern Incidental, released by theShangri-La label in the United States. But the new material was really good, and I don’t know if it was just the location of the concert or seeing them for the first time live, but I felt it came across as much more of a “progressive” kind of rock than the previous stuff. I may be wrong.
In any case, Bruno was wonderfully charismatic, a little Bowie-like, including the makeup and furs…. But just take a look at some of the videos I did to see what I mean.
Next up was the 0XIII art space. I mentioned this place before on this blog, maybe even twice. What made me really desperate not to miss it on Saturday night – despite the two Neimo events – was that I learned there would be an open mic on the second floor. So I HAD to get there. I knew of no other open mics on Saturday night, and this one would go on all night. Yes, in fact, it was also announced as the last night of the 0XIII. This, I did not realize before, was because the building was in fact a squat!
Anyway, I was with a fellow Formula One journalist friend, and I told him about the 0XIII and said that I really wanted to show him the place, adding, “I guarantee you will not be let down.” I felt I had to push a little, since he was keen on going to the Tigre after party and then he was going on to another place after that. But he was very amenable to the OXIII, and he had faith in my assurance that he would not be let down.
So we took a cab over to the Rue d’Enghien from the Fleche. The cab driver got a little frustrated when two streets before our destination he found the roads all blocked up. So we got off to walk the rest of the way. We rounded the corner and found the roads blocked because there were cop cars all over the place at the end of the street of the 0XIII.
“Hmm,” I said, “I wonder if they are there for the 0XIII.”
We rounded the next corner and found that indeed, the street was blocked off by the cops and they were there for the OXIII. There were about 200 people of the squat standing out in the street drinking and talking and it sounded like a mob scene, with people bending out from the windows of the art space as well, and talking to people in the street, with loud music, and general mayhem. At least, that would be how the neighbors interpreted it. And how the cops would interpret it.
We continued to approach and I decided to stop and ask some cops what was going on.
“It’s got out of hand,” said one. “Don’t go there.”
“Thanks for telling us,” I said. “Because that is where we had intended to go.”
“Don’t,” he repeated. “In any case, it’s a squat.”
That’s when I learned that fact.
I thought I recognized some friends in the crowd in front so I did approach closer with my journalist friend. We saw it was a madhouse and impossible to get in the front door without a battle, and I said, “Anyway, there’s not going to be any open mic in that place….”
So we decided to leave and go to Le Tigre. As we walked back up the street to leave we found ourselves crossing through several armed and riot police known as CRS, and my friend noted the guns with rubber bullets. They had shields and other various anti-riot gear – including tear gas – and they were coming right at us like as if we were in a battlefield, slow, cautious pace, a march, a readiness for action.
We got through them no problem and went on our way. The next thing I heard was via a few friends on Facebook that the CRS stormed the place, threw teargas, and generally broke up the group in a rather violent manner. I checked the Internet and found that the Parisien newspaper had reported that the cops had been forced to use violence because the crowd had got violent and begun to throw things at them. The article also said that 10 people had been arrested. The raid had begun around 1:30 AM, and I think the place was cleared out by 3.
I doubted the violence by the crowd, but I later also heard that one cop started getting violent with a young woman and so some people in the crowd attacked him. There may also have been some beer cans thrown at the cops. Well, that, in any case, is the end of the OXIII on Rue d’Enghien. Too bad. I really wanted to play in that open mic, and it was a cool place. On the other hand, my promise to my friend that he would not be let down by going to the place was indeed honored….
So we went off to the Tigre and spend a couple of hours there, and it was all very cool and controlled….
On Sunday, it was time for my brunch, and at least one of my friends who had said she would see me and play some music on Sunday did not show up. As I knew that she had also intended to go to the OXIII the night before, I got worried. But it turned out to be only a sore throat. The afternoon was nice and relaxing at the Mecano for my brunch, and I had my friend James Cordoba Jr. from Colombia play a few songs. That made for a very nice change to the usual stuff – not that there really is a fixed theme on my brunch….except for fun and good music….
Oh, yeah, and finally, just to give a complete different turn to the musical weekend, I went on Sunday night after the brunch to attend a set by Sarah Savoy and the Francadians at the Corcoran pub on blvd de Clichy. This American woman from Louisiana and her at least half-American band play the coolest Cajun music you can imagine, and they live in France. I was presented to them by one of my regular listeners at the Mecano brunch. It was a real eye-opener of the kind of musical diversity Paris has to offer – thanks to Irish pubs and expats….
That is a very convoluted “headline” just to say that after a full week or more of silence I have returned back on track with my blog. I don’t think I have had too many such silences, but basically it comes down to the Formula One season having ended, and me having a short little illness without consequences to coincide with that end.
Readers of this blog will have noted that I spent the previous nine months traveling the world and playing in open mics and jams and busking all over the place in some 15 or so countries and most of the continents. It was my second year doing that, and with a little luck, I will continue again next year. For the moment, I have entered into what is known as the winter season, or the off-season, in Formula One, where journalists like me tend to tend to other projects and to take holidays and prepare for the coming season.
I will mostly be sticking around Paris, playing gigs (don’t miss the Texas in Paris organized Thanksgiving evening I’m playing at, at the Disquaires on Thursday), open mics and jams. And at the moment I plan a weekly brunch musical afternoon show at the Mecano Bar in Paris, every Sunday. For the past couple of months I’ve been hosting this every Sunday that I have been in town and not writing about the Formula One races. I play two or three sets of my music and cover songs, and I invite guests to play a set too. The guests are my friends and acquaintances in the musical world that I have met, mostly in Paris. The brunch starts at 3 PM and usually ends at 6 PM, although on one particularly lively Sunday with David Broad on guitar and vocals and Joe Cady on fiddle, we stayed until 7 PM.
Yesterday I started up the brunch again and had Calvin McEnron and Rym playing a set each. It was a cold, rainy day in Paris, and I can’t think of any better place to be if you like brunch (it’s good food), music and relaxation. So check it out!!
As I was walking through Vila Madalena last night having still had no luck in finding a place to play my music after four nights in the city, I had a couple of thoughts dominating my mind. One was a phrase and an attitude that Vanessa gave me when she said, “Brazil is an open mic, all you have to do is just go into a bar and they’ll see your guitar and you start playing music.”
The other thought I had as I walked through this vibrant section of town so full of restaurants, bars, boutiques and venues of all kinds, was that it reminded me – musically – more of Istanbul than perhaps any other country on my world travels. There was must blaring from just about every public room, from the popular folk harmonies of several bars, to the sitar music in an oriental restaurant, to the rock of several other venues and the bossa nova in another bar, to the jazz in a place called piano bar, and the happy birthday song being played by a brass band across the street.
It was not quite the wall of sound of certain quarters of Istanbul, but it was a very refreshing approximation to it and like nothing else around the world in my experience. But there is a very key difference to it all, and that has been a theme of my four days here so far on this blog: the open jam, open mic, open arms mentality is not a part of this musical scene in Sao Paulo as it is in Istanbul. In Turkey, it sometimes felt that every bar I passed by the waiters or owners would stretch out their arms when they saw my guitar and they would invite me in to play. Here, each musician, group and bar owner to himself.
I did get stopped by the owner of one bar – the name of which I could not find – who had a couple of fine harmonizing musicians sing pop songs with one of them playing guitar. (I have put a recording of this below.) And he asked if I was a musician, if I was playing somewhere, etc. I decided to have a beer at this place, listen to the music, and hope that maybe I would be invited to play. I was thinking of Vanessa’s suggestion. But no, it never happened, the invitation. And I just did not ultimately feel the vibe was right to propose it.
So I moved on through the area and decided to check out every venue I could find and look for one quiet place I had discovered last year. I headed toward Wisard street, a lively part of Vila Madalena, and as I walked by the tables of the Baia de Guanabara bar spilling out into the street with all the chatter and carousing of the clients drinking and merrymaking, a man at one of the tables reached out to me and asked if he could play my guitar.
It was a table of about eight men, and they were all beseeching me to allow their friend to play. I needed little provocation. Here it was, the beginnings of what would possibly be my own chance to play a few songs, if not in an open mic, then at least…. but wait, Vanessa had said this would happen. Brazil is an open mic. “Just go to a bar and they will see your guitar and ask you to play. It will be your open mic.”
So I opened the guitar case and gave the man the guitar. He sang and played well, but the noise in the bar and the street was so loud it was difficult to hear. It turned out that the men were all in town in order to attend the Formula One race, and that they came from Uruguay, not Brazil.
So he played several songs and they asked me to sit with them, they bought me a beer and then they asked me to play some songs. I started with “Crazy Love” because I thought I could get some volume out of the vocals and guitar despite the street and bar noise. They clapped along on the chorus each time and we managed to get some people to stop by the table to listen. But mostly the event passed as a normal part of the evening at the bar, as if it was normal to play music at a bar table on the sidewalk in the Vila Madalena.
After “Crazy Love,” a bit of further surprising synchronicity occurred when the singer man asked me if I could sing any Cat Stevens, and he said, “Father and Son?” Readers of this blog will know that it is one of the songs I sing regularly, and to usually great response from my listeners. So how incredible was that?
I sang it, did one of my own, called, “Borderline,” and another one or two, and then the man played one or two more of his, and I filmed him below in the darkness and noise. And then they had to leave in order to get up early to go to the race. I finished my beer, and went on through the streets to seek out another venue, but found none – yet I did feel a huge sense of relief that I had indeed finally found a place to play in Brazil, which is, it seems, its own open mic….
