Samba

On Sunday night, Rita and I took Helena Iara to the park, but in January in Brazil, things aren't quite so simple: the Escola de Samba União da Ilha had taken over the little plaza in the center of the Lagoa neighborhood, and was in full scale preparation for carnaval.  Maybe fifty zabumbas (base drums), thirty tamborins (not like a US tambourine, this one has no bells, and it's hit with a stick), dozens of cuicas, cavaquinhos...  A furious and joyous sound.

Looking back over Sunday night, when Helena slept really badly, I think that we probably over-did the noise and stimulation, but Helena loved it.  She sang along with the music (she has about a two note range now, but a decent sense of rhythm), danced by swinging her head back and forth, and played games with anyone she could find.  It's very clear that she loves samba.

Samba is one of those art forms that a lot of people use for thinking life through, and for making manifestos about art.  This morning, as she and I sat in the hammock after breakfast, I sang Helena one of these songs, Desde que o Samba é Samba, by Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso.  The lyric she paid most attention to, and the central one to the philosophy of the song, is

O samba é pai do prazer                             Samba is the father of pleasure

o samba é filho da dor                                Samba is the child of pain

o grande poder transformador                    The great power of transformation

Brazil is famous for alegria or constant joy, but the truth of the matter is much more complicated: the history of the country, especially for those who make the extraordinary art and music that gives Brazil its reputation, is full of tragedy: slavery, war, hunger, social exclusion.  The people are happy not because of who they are or what they have lived, but because they use art to struggle to win joy out of pain.  That's why samba is the child of pain, but the father of pleasure.

Helena Iara has been living something similar over the last several weeks, as she learns to control her mouth and breath and begins to utter sounds that seem more and more like words.  The miracle of language is that, like samba, it can turn pain into pleasure: think of the enjoyment of a movie with a tragic ending, or the elegant feeling of grace at the end of a novel by Henry James.  Virgil may have put it best in the words of Aeneas:

Vos et Scyllaeam rabiem penitusque sonantis


accestis scopulos, vos et Cyclopea saxa


experti: revocate animos, maestumque timorem
mittite: 

forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.

"You have braved the fury of Scylla, the deep-ringing boom

of her craggy home, you have faced the rocks of the Cyclops.

Pluck up your courage, let fear and sadness alone --

Perhaps, one day, even this will be good to remember."

As Helena finds more words and word-like sounds, she has cried less, complained less, and enjoyed more things (sitting and reading a book with me, singing...).  Words that turn the challenge of a belly-ache or a baby's tedium into art.  Her babbling songs may not be as beautiful as the words of Virgil or the voice of Caetano Veloso, but that's what they're striving for.