First week in Salvador

December 16, 2023

Since we’ve arrived in Salvador it’s just been a constant assault on the senses – mainly sound and sight, with amazing art and colours everywhere, and drumming, music, samba drumming, costumes, more samba, more drums from 9 a.m. sometimes, capoeira in the street from first thing in the morning....

We’re in Pelourinho, right on top of the historic centre, from our window there’s a constantly changing art gallery attached to the railings of the medical school building across the road, drumming, processions.... It’s Christmas in Salvador, sponsored by cocacola (!) so there are loads of lights, stalls, reindeer, unicorns on little roller skates that you can pay to put your baby on, Father Christmasses (!), sleighs to have your photo taken with .....

And another sense is taste – which I can’t give you an indication of here, but the main thing I can say is that everything in Brazil comes as a surprise – you expect sweet and it’s savoury, you see ‘cheese’ but it tastes AMAZING – you see icecream but it’s ‘gorgonzola icecream’ (!) and again, amazing... so beautifully presented, a small side of grilled chicken in a tiny cheap restaurant is absolutely the best slice of chicken I’ve ever tasted in my life... breakfasts at the airbnb come with a different fruit that I’ve never heard of each morning.... but also, a different other thing, like tapioca cooked with banana, roast plantain, sweet potato.....

I’ve been trying to buy a ‘dead cat’ which my music friends will know is a bit of furry stuff that you put round your mic to make it possible to do outdoor recordings. The constant soundscape here is amazing and though I didn’t bring my Zoom recorder in the end (I decided to bring two musical instruments and the zoom thing was one thing too many, in fact probably the concertina was one thing too many but that remains to be seen) I’ve been trying to record an outdoor soundscape on my phone but as I said I need a ‘dead cat’..... So I went round the no less than NINE sound engineering specialists shops that there are literally within ten minutes of where I’m staying (!!!!) which all sold a range of mics, amps, mixers, etc etc etc (so jealous, there is ONE shop in Lancaster for this sort of thing) but none of them had a dead cat. So I’ve pulled one together with some scrap foam that was lying around.... and we’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime, here is my photo album and a little five minute video collage from the first five days in Salvador. Enjoy.... (my first attempt at captions)

And you'll see from the pix that there's a big emphasis on African culture here. It's hard to get the true numbers but maybe 18 per cent white and the rest are black or mixed, descendants of former slaves who were brought to the port here from Africa , and local indigenous people. Apparently a third of all enslaved people from the Atlantic Slave Trade - four million enslaved Africans - were taken to Brazil, more than a million coming to this area. As Wikipedia says, "the city's elected offices have been and continue to be dominated by a mostly European-descended upper class in a majority Black city" - and we heard a lot about this. Our amazing Black landlady, Creusa, told us about the overt racism she encountered in Paris (being treated as her children's nanny and told to use the 'back stairs' of her apartment building, etc etc) but also that there's more insidious racism here in Brazil. Her multilingual Black tour guide friend told us about having been offered a tour guiding job by the authorities on the phone, but being refused the job when they saw him... and we heard the very same story from another Black would-be guide, who'd applied for a role but didn't hear any more once they asked him to send in his photo. There's loads of African consciousness, running through the drumming, the art, the food, the clothes. the festivals, the history - we're keeping finding out about this - there's a 'reparations foundation' that hasn't been open yet when we've passed by, but we keep looking.... and my niece Jen's a great person to be travelling with as she's so open to and aware of these issues. Sometimes, travelling with another person means that you miss out on opportunities to meet people - but with Jen we're meeting people all the time!

Musical art at the first restaurant we ate in

a female samba group posing for the telly cameras (and for me)

~~'drain art'~~ Actually a GUARDIAN outside the Jorge Amado foundation ****

(*** Update. Oh dear. A big example of things you don't know you don't know. This is the Orixa Exu: "Exu was chosen as the guardian of the House of Jorge Amado at [his] request. Even before the house was inaugurated, Jorge insisted that a statue of the orisha be placed at the entrance. In his memoir, he recalls the decision:

(...) I placed the Foundation under the protection and care of Exu, entrusted to his care. Under the large plaque of the three races that mixed together, the Indians, the blacks and the whites, art by Carybé, erected in front of the House, Exu presides over the Foundation's destiny, and the foundation was planted there on the night of the inauguration." from this fascinating article from the Foundation's website, translated by Deepl/me. [i'll add a pic of the stone images above him before I leave and put it in my next post].