Image source: http://lounge.obviousmag.org/sala_de_cultura/2014/05/isto-e-bossa-nova-isto-e-muito-natural.html
Friday, 26 September 2014
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…
*** you will find an explanation here: http://thebraziliandream.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/reality-bites.html
****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
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