Visit the CSU Summer Arts Page

• Learn and perform a range of music styles from Salvador da Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: including sacred rhythms of Candomblé, samba duro, afoxé, samba afro, samba reggae, samba funk and more!
• Study with master sambistas direct from Brazil: Mario Pam of Ilê Aiyê and Ivo Meirelles of Mangueira.
• Perform arrangements from Ilê Aiyê and Mangueira, two of Brazil’s most famous samba groups that represent the roots and creative genius of Afro-Brazilian music and culture.
• Experience a variety of Afro-Brazilian percussion instruments, learn performance techniques, and understand the role of each instrument within the music as a whole.
• Create a new rhythm based on a fusion of various styles.
• This course will culminate in a public performance of student work.

COURSE NUMBER/CREDITS

Undergraduate: MUSIC 420, 3 units

Graduate: MUSIC 620, 3 units

THERE IS NO MATERIALS FEE FOR THIS CLASS

WHO SHOULD APPLY

The focus of the instruction in this course is on percussion. However, the course is open to musicians of all kinds: percussionists, string players, flautists, vocalists, etc. Students interested in composition are encouraged to enroll as well. All students will learn percussion and key concepts of Brazilian music. The range of genres covered in the course will offer opportunities for harmonic musicians to incorporate their main instrument into the full ensemble, and instructors are prepared to work many different instrumentalists. Ideally, students should have at least an intermediate level of proficiency on their instrument (whether percussion or harmonic). Performance experience in Brazilian or other Latin or African music styles is a plus as well. The most important requirement, though, is enthusiasm.

HOW TO APPLY
There will be a selection process because space for this one-of-a-kind workshop is limited.

1. Applicants should submit:

a) A short essay (500 words max) about their musical experience and the specific reasons for their interest in this course.

b) A work sample that demonstrates proficiency in music (all instruments welcome). Audio CDs or DVDs are acceptable. Please be sure to include a brief description of the sample to orient reviewers, and be sure to distinguish the applicant from other musicians that may be performing as well.

c) A resume (be sure to note all languages spoken by the applicant).

2.  Send the materials listed in step one with your completed Registration Form to the Summer Arts office by May 18, 2012.

COURSE COORDINATOR
Professor Umi Vaughan
uvaughan@csumb.edu
831-582-3116

GUEST ARTISTS
Mario Pam of Ilê Aiyê

Mario Pam is from Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and began his musical career in 1991 as a founding member of Ilê Aiyê’s youth percussion ensemble. In 2000, he became one of the Percussion Directors of the adult group. Since then he has been creating innovative repertory and directing 150 percussionists for the annual Carnival celebration in Salvador. Mario founded and currently directs an international samba group called Tambores do Mundo (Drums of the World). He has participated as a featured performer and instructor at events in Brazil, Europe, Africa, and the United States.

Visit www.ileaiye.org.br/.

Ilê Aiyê was founded in 1974, and was the first “bloco afro” or black samba organization in Salvador, Brazil to revolutionize the genres called samba afro and samba reggae. This distinctive style fuses samba with sacred Afro-Brazilian rhythms like ijexá, as well as music styles from throughout the Americas and Africa such as merengue, hip-hop, and soukous.

Ivo Meirelles is a true representative of Brazilian music. His roots come from the famous samba school Mangueira in Rio de Janeiro. His samba compositions have been made famous during Mangueira’s carnival processions. Ivo founded an innovative group called Funk ‘n’ Lata that fuses elements from R&B, hip-hop, and funk with Afro-Brazilian rhythms. He is the current President of Mangueira.

Visit www.mangueira.com.br/ and www.bloglog.globo.com/ivomeirelles.

Mangueira is Brazil’s flagship escola de samba from Rio de Janeiro. It was among the first samba schools founded in the 1930s and has won Brazil’s annual samba competition many times. Mangueira is known for its unique interpretation of the classic Rio de Janeiro samba groove.

Check out these videos of guest artists in action:

Ilê Aiyê – Mario Pam on the bass drum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbqCcm2GMMA

An interview with Mario Pam

Ivo Meirelles with Funk ‘n’ Lata

and

Remember, California residents can take 2 courses (up to 6 units) for the same tuition dollars!

“A solid ethnography, grounded in a rich and dramatic biography, reveals the creative power of the Yoruba drum to communicate sounds and words that are invested with rich secular and religious meanings about people and culture, identity and history, life and after-life. Only a scholar-performer with an uncommon imaginative talent could have written this extraordinary book.”
– Toyin Falola, Distinguished Teaching Professor, The University of Texas at Austin

“Everything you need to know about batá and batá-playing is in this text, expertly taught and philosophically interpreted by Carlos Aldama and his star yamboki (apprentice), Umi Vaughan….I am proud to have read this Afro-Cuban classic.”
– Robert Farris Thompson, author of Tango: The Art History of Love and Aesthetic of the Cool: Afro-Atlantic Art and Music

Batá identifies both the two-headed, hourglass-shaped drum of the Yoruba people and the culture and style of drumming, singing, and dancing associated with it. This book recounts the life story of Carlos Aldama, one of the masters of the batá drum, and through that story traces the history of batá culture as it traveled from Africa to Cuba and then to the United States. For the enslaved Yoruba, batá rhythms helped sustain the religious and cultural practices of a people that had been torn from its roots. Aldama, as guardian of Afro-Cuban music and as a Santería priest, maintains the link with this tradition forged through his mentor Jesús Pérez (Oba Ilu), who was himself the connection to the preserved oral heritage of the older generation. By sharing his stories, Aldama and his student Umi Vaughan bring to light the techniques and principles of batá in all its aspects and document the tensions of maintaining a tradition between generations and worlds, old and new. The book includes rare photographs and access to downloadable audio tracks.

As an African American man living in Cuba I am surprised and overwhelmed by the kaleidoscope of names Cuban people use to describe race in their country, and I wonder what is to happen if and when American cultural influence fully invades Cuba again.” I wrote this line in my field notes during a long stay on the island in 2002 and 2003 conducting anthropological research about popular music and Cuban society. Both Cuba and the U.S. are melting pots, where various racial and national sources feed the continual process of nation building and cultural production. In both places, because of the decimation of indigenous populations and the importance of African slave labor for European masters, the binary of European/African or black/white became key. In the struggle between these groups there was much pain, exchange, and creation. The contributions of other immigrant groups, while of great importance, only impact and destabilize but never displace the black/ white paradigm of race in America or Cuba. In Cuba’s politics as well as its race matters I see a kinder, gentler take on the ways of an imperfect world, similar to our U.S. system, yet different. In these times of increased U.S. conservatism and international intervention, all with racial implications—some even predicting a U.S. invasion of Cuba—it is well to consider how people think and talk about race in Cuba with an eye to what it reveals about that nation. This also invites reflection about our own America.

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