Old Town School – On The Road
Dispatches from the road from our wayfaring travelers.
Boa Tarde from Belo Horizonte
Laura Doherty, Andrea Bunch, Steve Rosen and Bau Graves reporting in from Brazil.
It’s great here. The “winter” weather is 75-80 degrees daily. The people just as warm. The food really pretty unbelievable.
We are teaching at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, which is a huge campus, the 3rd largest in Brazil with about 40,000 students. The Musica building is spacious and very well equipped. Like almost all the public buildings here (schools, restaurants, banks, you name it) it is open and airy, with whole sections of wall open to the outdoors. A very large garden is planted in a big central counrtyard INSIDE the building.
Our host, Prof. Walenia Silva, teaches in the music program. and is an encyclopedia of information about Brazilian traditional music. We’ve been offering workshops for her students and others in the music school. The students are all well trained musicians, very quick on the uptake, and full of interest in American music. Many of them have a lot of knowledge about our music already — which is a little humbling since we have so little insight into theirs. Even though we’re singing in a language foreign to them, all of the students know the words to “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
Last night we visited a small private music school called Pro-Musica, which has about 800 students and focuses on popular music. Students there sign up for a year of classes and they all take three classes per week — their specialty instrument, ear training/theory, and ensembles. They seem to run their operation on a shoestring and the amazing energy of their director. He invited us to offer a workshop on Friday so we’ll be able to experience the students then.
More to come soon. Boa tarde. Bau
Filed under: Brazil 2009, Notes from Bau, Uncategorized by Bau | June 3, 2009 | Comments (2)
2 Comments so far
Classes
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Hey everyone,
Wow. I didn’t know there was a Brazil trip. ¡Que chido!
Send a picture when you get a chance.
Buen viaje,
Jason
Hey, I’m responding to this earlier post because we found a very similar structure in some of the School in Mexico, with a focus on folkoric music, signed up for a year and and several classes per week. Operation on a shoestring. Where does the money come from?
Gail