It feels musical here

To go and shoot in the Flavella, otherwise described as the sprawling slum areas of Rio, requires all kinds of permissions and deals with the local underground to be invited and protected there. The place we had chosen was picked out because they say it was there that Samba was born, and they have a kicking drummer group to prove it. They also represent a Christian and African hybrid religion called Candomble which mixes saints and African archetypes. So first stop was to pay a visit and our respects to Aunt Ida, the enormous Mother of the whole place who has to give the OK for anything that goes on. I was warned before we got there to just wait to be introduced and not talk too much as there were very subtle signals for things they like and don’t like and one quick, barely perceptible glance to the left on her part could mean curtains for the whole day.

The good news was that it was blue and sunny. We were worried that as we were shooting outdoors today that if it poured like yesterday we’d be screwed. We hadn’t managed to get together any plan-B either so it was a genuine relief to pull back my curtains this morning and be almost blinded by the glare. It was the first time I’d been able to take in the staggering beauty of this city, too. There are these picture-book hills and mountains of extraordinary shapes and sizes dotted all around. There are picturesque waves crashing along miles of sandy beach, and there are strange looking old men who walk the street wearing nothing but diminutive swimming trunks and sunglasses. It feels musical here. Even the traffic horns seem to be bubbling up, waiting for a crescendo to burst into a street party. The women display their physical assets without a shred of self-consciousness or arrogance, just liberated and natural somehow unlike England or America where it would feel like they were looking for attention.

We had a brief drama with Junno, our local producer, on the way there. It turned out that our local camera-woman, Anna, who’s a gorgeous person, very much on the 1GL vibe and totally cool in every way, is a director not a camera person, and has had very little experience actually operating. This is a big problem because running with the tiny crew we are, no one has time to baby anyone else through what they need to be doing technically. We need to just say, “shoot this like that, set this up, expose to about this level”, not “here’s how to set up the tripod”. The trouble is that her tickets and accommodation has been booked through not just Rio, but Sao Paolo, Salvador and Santarem too, so wrapping her means losing hundreds of dollars of internal flights and finding someone else to cover us this week in Rio. Joshua’s meeting us in Sao Paolo so we’ll be fine from there but telling Junno to express it in a way which wasn’t personal looked like it could get dramatic.

We got to the flavella at about lunchtime and we were immediately installed in Aunt Ida’s concrete courtyard. The walls were unfinished and each had spikes of rusted wire protruding from the tops with old soft-drink bottles slotted over them. There were kids everywhere and young men bringing green and white drums. An older guy introduced himself to us as the leader of the Samba group and Junno translated him explaining how it was on this very spot that Samba came into being. Then it was time to meet Aunt Ida herself, the Godmother. Having been so strenuously warned, I wasn’t expecting such a cuddly grandma. She sat back with kids all around her, she always kept the kitchen and front doors open, day and night, for any of the local kids who needed anything. Behind her was a small room with an huge shrine covered in hundreds of little statues of saints and African icons, glasses of water, some with stones in, and flowers and biscuits and all manner of offerings. The central figure was an old guru-like saint called Xango who, among other things, such as having a harem of goddesses at his beck and call, controlled thunder and lightening. We hoped he’d be merciful today as it was clouding over fast and I wondered if we’d already done something to offend him.

It was time to bring it on. Leading up from the house was a steep concrete staircase with no end in sight. Perched on various levels were even more kids and teenagers checking us out as we humped our cameras, stands and boxes of stuff up to the top. The steps turned and doubled back, and still we weren’t there. All along the endless route were tiny dwellings which I would call quaint if it weren’t so ‘let them eat cake-ish’. The walls had been painted roughly with many names is white, some large letters, some small, some painted over each other. These turned out to be the dealer’s territorial claims, the patch markings for the heavy dudes that ran those corners and straights.

Eventually we got to the top and madness ensued. The sky was getting greyer and greyer, the wind was picking up, the Samba guys were setting up, testing drums and skins in a cacophony of clattering. We rushed around, desperate to set up and get something in the can before the rain came. It was really stressful, added to by the deafening noise of the drummers arranging themselves. Leads were yanked out of cases, mikes positioned and re-positions, all of us glancing up every few moments to check the sky, flinching under the string gusts expecting the first drop of cold rain to hit our skin. I foolishly tried to get Duncan to hurry up getting the sound and we started bickering – “do you want me to get something we can actually use or not?” – he was right. But it was so frustrating as the thunderclouds gathered, the minutes ticking away before the inevitable downpour with no sheltered plan B to retreat to.

A gunshot rang out behind us but no one blinked an eye. There were so many kids around I guess we just assumed it was a fire-cracker.

They grouped themselves into drummers, singers and the old guys conducting and smacking their tiny drums in their hands. And we were off. “Rolling!” Blimey those guys are loud! They were singing, grinning, conducting each other, arguing, starting again, and finally their ten minute version of the Flavella Samba was complete. The sky was still dark grey, but still not a drop had fallen so we thought we push it and put some headphones on them to hear one of our grooves. Slowly, slowly the rhythm began to creep into their heads. First one, then another began to softly tap the groove. They joined each other a bit more confidently and then bit by bit, with Duncan egging them on in his human-metronome way, they were in, and the track was kicking.

How the rain never fell out of the sky will always remain a mystery to me. It was still dark and brooding when we schlepped the gear back down again and into the van, and still, even when they performed the M’Bandu dance for us in Aunt Ida’s courtyard we were filming away, dry as a bunch of bones. Very odd indeed, maybe their Saint was feeling merciful that day after all.

Aunt Ida herself reluctantly agreed to let me chat to her on camera and she spun her unpretentious wisdom effortlessly for about an hour. Every few questions she’d say in Portuguese “You’ve heard enough from me now, go write a book!” and then would be off again, setting the world to rights. When I told her about elderly people in the UK she was shocked, “we shake our asses over here” she exclaimed “don’t they party? I’m gonna bring some of your old people to Brazil!”