Tuesday 5 May 2015

LAST MINUTE INVITATION!


My duo, Polka Nova will be performing tonight during the Visual Arts Award at the Brazilian Embassy!– the event starts at 6.30pm! 

http://culturalbrazil.org/…/1st-embassy-of-brazil-visual-a…/

To be able to take part, you need to send an email with your name to culturalbrazil.rsvp@gmail.com as they do not allow walk-in guests.

Sorry for the very last minute invitation but I only found out how to take part! Hope to see you there! 



Saturday 3 January 2015

Contagem regressiva!

I suppose I should summarise 2014 which passed rather quickly. Maybe because I did a lot of what I love – music!! According to my maths I did 30 gigs last year!! 23 with my Polka Nova duo (or occasionally trio), 4 with London School of Samba (Unidos de Londres), 2 with the few vocal group, one with a vocal choir for the EFG Jazz Festival and one with Guilherme Tavares, a Brazilian musician living in London. Let's see if I can beat this in 2015!

Now, the news I’ve been waiting to share with you – I’m going to Brazil next week!!! It’s been almost three years since my last 4-month trip so it was long due. This time I can’t stay that much because of work commitments, but it’s still going to be three weeks! I’m excited, even though I’m not planning anything outrageous – just a quiet time with friends and my BF’s family in São Paulo. We bought the tickets back in September and now I can count the days left to my departure. The lucky BF is already there, enjoying the apparently sizzling hot weather. For me, it’s 8 more days. Let the countdown* begin!!!


Oh, and may you all have a Happy New Year, filled with smiles that are real, friends that care, prizes that you deserve, good deeds that you do and music that you enjoy! 

*Contagem regressiva is countdown in Portuguese - mystery solved!

Friday 26 September 2014

POLKA NOVA at Ophelia Dalston (28th September)

Hello, you lovely people!
This Sunday 28th September we’ve got another gig! This time, we’ll be playing at a theatre on a proper stage. And if this wasn’t enough, we’ve invited a drummer to join us so he’s bound to give it some swing it!

What can you expect music-wise? A night of lively Brazilian samba, mellow bossa nova and some jazz to top it up! We will have support from Retro Velvet.

The doors open at 8pm and it’s £5 to get in. Can you spare that much to come see us play? I surely hope so.

Venue details: 
Ophelia, 574 Kingsland Rd, Dalston E8 4AP, London, UK
Map: http://buff.ly/1v9vLXo 

Here's the link to the event on facebook if you want to join: https://www.facebook.com/events/1448329425448448/

Image source: http://lounge.obviousmag.org/sala_de_cultura/2014/05/isto-e-bossa-nova-isto-e-muito-natural.html

Thursday 28 August 2014

POLKA NOVA at Number1 Bar and Restaurant

Bom dia!
This is just a quick post to let you know that I will be singing tomorrow with my other half in a cosy restaurant in London Bridge. This will be our fourth time at the venue; they clearly like us! ;)

As usual, you can expect an evening filled with the swingy tropical sounds of Brazilian samba and bossa nova, but also some jazz and other musical surprises. The idea is that you can enjoy the mellow melodies in the equally melodic Portuguese, but we’ve made an extra effort so that Brazilians and non-Brazilians alike can appreciate the music.

1 Duke Street Hill, SE1 2SW London, UK.
Nearest tube station: London Bridge
7 pm start

It’s free entry so if you’re around, do come down


Wednesday 4 June 2014

Love and music

The last post was about food, so now it’s time for music. These are definitely my two passions ;)

And talking about passion, I never told you how me and my BF met. It was over three years ago, at another musician’s rehearsal at a London studio. He was there, tucked into the corner of a dilapidated sofa, quietly strumming his 7-string guitar. When we first started talking, he thought I was Portuguese. I wished he’d thought I was Brazilian but there was no way this paulistano* was going to take my attempted carioquês** for truly native… Oh well. It didn’t stop us from deciding to rehearse together with the view to maybe performing at some point. And believe it or not, it took us three months to take it to another level, although I still sometimes wonder whether this whole guitar trick wasn’t meant to seduce me in the first place. Bottom of the line is: it did, both romantically and musically; the latter is what I want to talk about.

A few guests appearances here and there, a number of intimate shows during our stay in Brazil, a performance in Prague… Little by little we were gaining ground. Winning London over is another kettle of fish, so we’ve been working really hard for the past year or so and finally it seems that all this effort is beginning to pay off. We’ve played at a few private events, wine tasting sessions, somewhere in Soho (but the place does not deserve attention so I won’t mention the name), and we are now getting regular gigs. Phew.

We decided to call our duo Polka Nova, which is a play on me being Polish and our main music style – bossa nova, as you might have figured out, served as the main course. We mix it with generous amounts of samba, lightly seasoned with some zesty jazz. See, I can’t even talk about music without thinking of food! It’s mostly covers of timeless classics and traditional songs that resonate with many Brazilians and non-Brazilians alike. But let me stop this babbling and let you get a taste (!) of our music on your own:


If you like it, then the next stop is to visit our facebook page and let us know by clicking the ‘like’ button. I will love you for this eternally. www.facebook.com/PolkaNovaLondon
And if you get so excited as to want to follow us on Twitter as well, we are here:

Ok, done with this advertising!

* paulistano is someone who lives in the city of São Paulo, as opposed to the state of São Paulo; then it’s paulista

**accent from Rio de Janeiro 

Wednesday 12 March 2014

Not suitable for vegetarians

After such a bloody long break, it’s hard to decide what to write about as it should be something that would justify the prolonged silence. My last post was hardly even a proper one – promise I’ll try harder. It is just that since coming back from Brazil (2 years ago!), nothing has impressed me so much as to make me want to write about it. I’m not saying all Brazilian things are better back there, but many of them are and no matter how hard we try, what we get here in London is only a substitute. Take Brazilian food. No bar or restaurant run by Brazilians themselves on the ‘terra da rainha’ (= the land of Queen Elizabeth, as they often call the UK) can compare with churrascarias* across the Atlantic. Although there is one that tries very hard. 

Being Brazilian, my BF gets meat cravings from time to time (ok, let’s not be diplomatic – often!) and it’s not enough to fry up a mountain of steaks; he wants real meat. By real he means proper Brazilian beef, prepared in a traditional way. I’m a meat-lover myself and I remember that what I had back in Brazil did not resemble the stiff, dry shoe-sole British beef usually becomes when you try to fry or roast it.  No, no, no. Brazilian meat literally melted in my mouth, inundating my taste buds with a flood of luscious meat juices mixed with delectably sizzled fat.  I am so getting hungry just thinking about it.

Anyway, pra matar a saudade** of the ‘real meat’, we go to Rodizio Preto. There are a few in London, but we’ve been to the one in Shaftsbury Avenue, several times now. I’m not going to start praising them to the stars, but those guys know their business. The buffet offers an impressive choice of fresh salads, rice, beans, even feijoada*** itself. You could easily just eat the buffet food and be happy, but, frankly, that would be plain foolish. The meats that the waiters serve come in good quality and quantity – basically every few minutes someone turns up next to your table with another juicy cut. And the best thing is, you can actually ask them to bring you what you want. Picanha, maminha, lombo, costela de carneiro**** - they serve up to 15 different kinds of meat! 

I always finish off with corações de frango*****. I’ve loved them ever since I tried them at another Brazilian churrascaria in London years ago; soft, yet crispy, with plenty of flavour.



There are, of course, plenty other venues where you can have meats served in the traditional Brazilian way, but choose wisely. You choices will, in most cases, be limited to the following: the wrong kind of meat, meat left to roast forever until it becomes dry, meat served every half an hour at best (apparently Rodizio Rico have a policy of purposely not serving meat too often…), poor choice at the buffet, unfriendly waiters. Been there, done that. I stick to Rodizio Preto. £19.90 may seem like a lot, but when you compare it with just about any main course at a good London restaurant, you’ll understand that you’ll be better off paying a few quid more for the ability to sink your teeth into prime beef (and other meats) WITHOUT limit. And if anyone from the restaurant happens to be reading this, please sponsor me :D. Rsrsrsrsrrsrsss…******

Source: Groupon 


*restaurants serving freshly prepared meat without limit
** an idiom literally meaning ‘to kill the longing’; so when you miss something or someone, you will try to ‘matar a saudade’ by doing that thing or being with that person, if that makes sense…
****different kinds of meat, will explain in a separate post
*****chicken hearts
******a Brazilian equivalent of ‘hahahaha’ in written slang (consider the fact that initial ‘r’ is pronounced almost as the /h/ sound and you’ll understand)

Monday 17 February 2014

Só canto samba (e bossa nova)

I can’t believe I actually didn’t write anything for the whole of 2013! I had a few ideas but there was so much going on in my professional life that blog writing was the last thing on my mind. Originally, 'the Brazilian dream' was meant to tell the story of my time in Brazil, but my everyday life in London is still very much “Brazilian”. As my BF is from São Paulo, I speak more Portuguese than my mother tongue to the point where I’ve begun mixing them up. Not surprisingly, my mind thinks Portuguese is on the same priority level as Polish and if you woke me up in the middle of the night I am not really sure which one I would speak, given that I also teach English…

Linguistic confusion aside, musically I can’t get more Brazilian than through samba and bossa nova; the two genres that identify my singing style. So folks, here’s a glimpse of what I do, never mind that I’m revealing my identity once and for all. Anonymous blog writing is so 2013…


Feel free to post your comments here or under the video on youtube. 
P.S. The title of the post vaguely alludes to "Só danço samba", a bossa nova (!) classic by Antônio Carlos Jobim