In the face of recent violence in Rio de Janeiro, including kidnappings and various group robberies, a taxi driver spotted in Leblon makes a plea.
“Please don’t kill me, I’m a good guy!”
August 19, 2008 by tudobelezaBooks for Learning Portuguese
August 19, 2008 by tudobeleza
Here’s a short list of books that will help you learn Portuguese. This is from my personal collection.
The two of the three on the bottom (left and middle) are in Portuguese but help a lot, especially the book on the left. The one in the middle is quite complicated and the material inside is what most Brazilians are talking about when they say Portuguese is a complicated language. If you were to finish it (and its a thick book), you would be at university level Portuguese, as if you were a Brazilian entering college. I’ve only read a chapter or two but hopefully at some point, I’ll be able to get through the whole thing!
For beginners, etc, the Living Language series is exceptioinally good. I’m basing that opinion on the fact that I’ve tried out pretty much all methods and books on Portuguese in English that are sold in the US.
All of that being said, the real trick to learning is really in repeating the language learning process which you would have endured while growing up with your own language. How did you do it? Most of us don’t have a memory of this but my educated guess is that we all learned through bombardment, through reading, hearing, speaking and writing…day after day after day.
Rio moving on up
August 19, 2008 by tudobeleza“The weak U.S. dollar and a steadily strengthening Brazilian real have seen Rio climb from the 135th most expensive city in the world just a few years ago, to the 31st most expensive today - tied with Barcelona and Stockholm, according to the latest cost of living survey by the Mercer consulting firm.”
The full article is here
Dorival Caymmi - The Archetypal Bahian
August 18, 2008 by tudobeleza
Dorival Caymmi ( April 30, 1914 – August 16, 2008 ) was considered to be one of the most important songwriters in Brazilian popular music. The son of an Italian immigrant and a black Bahianwoman, he had a distinctive style of his own and was the writer of many classic songs. The sambas, such as O Samba Da Minha Terra, have become standards of Música Popular Brasileira. He also wrote ballads celebrating the fearless fishermen of Bahia, including Promessa de Pescador and O Vento.
Although his songs celebrate the people of Bahia and he himself is enshrined in the popular Brazilian imagination as the archetypal Bahian, he moved to Rio de Janeiro to find fame in the 1930s and never moved back to Bahia.
He became a contemporary and sometimes rival of composer Ary Barroso and enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Bahian author Jorge Amado. Dorival Caymmi first achieved success in the late 1930s with Carmen Miranda, for whom he composed O Que é Que a Baiana Tem? (video below) He recorded for five decades, both singing solo with his own guitar accompaniment, and backed by bands and orchestras. In the 1960s many of his songs were covered by bossa nova pioneer João Gilberto, and he collaborated with Antonio Carlos Jobim. Among the many musicians heavily influenced by Dorival Caymmi are Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil.
Plus the song ‘Vatapá’ which he wrote, which was featured in the film Dona Flor & Her Two Husbands
Dorival Caymmi - RIP (DEP)
August 16, 2008 by tudobelezaDorival Caymmi, considered to be one of the most important songwriters in Brazilian popular music, died today of cancer at his home in Rio de Janeiro.
Here’s the story. I’ll do a post on his music in the next few days.
Mallu Magalhães - Internet Sensation
August 16, 2008 by tudobelezaI was browsing the Brazilian Youtube for some clips of a talk show host Sergio Groisman, when I came across this young singer who is having great success, due largely to the internet. I was introduced to her music last year via a secondhand recording and didn’t think twice until I saw a better, more professional recording today (which I put below). Special thanks to Janaina for passing along her video at some point in the past, which is what made me remember her unusual name. My guess? It’s a name you should definitely remember.
Mallu Biography
Maria Luisa de Arruda Botelho Pereira de Magalhães, best known as Mallu Magalhães, (São Paulo, August 29, 1992) is a Brazilian singer-songwriter.
Mallu used to search for LPs in her grandmother’s house and had influence from her parents in her musical tastes. In 2001, she got her first guitar and two years later she began to going to classes. At twelve years old, Mallu began to compose her own songs, the majority in English. “It sounds better”, she says. “I always was ashamed to compose in Portuguese. Sometimes, you want to tell things that need to be darker”. But she says that she’s not too good at speaking English and always has a dictionary at hand.
For her fifteenth birthday, Mallu didn’t want gifts but rather money from her parents and grandparents. With this money, Mallu recorded four songs and a video and put them on the internet. “Tchubaruba” (video below) and “J1″ (second video below) were among these songs and “Vanguart”, the video. Very fast Mallu became a success on the Internet, recording videos and being interviewed by magazines, like Rolling Stone Brazil, and TV shows such as Altas Horas and Programa do Jô.
Her favourite bands and artists are the Beatles, Belle and Sebastian, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.
Roberto Marinho - O Globo & “Beyond”
August 15, 2008 by tudobelezaRoberto Pisani Marinho (December 3, 1904 – August 6, 2003). Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Marinho was the president and founder* of the biggest Brazilian TV channel, Globo. He came under criticism in the documentary Beyond Citizen Kane (wikipedia) for his role at Globo. Marinho was one of the richest and most powerful men in Brazil.
* - (Roberto’s father, Irineu Marinho, was the actual founder, however he died one month after starting the newspaper).
At a young age, Roberto inherited O Globo (then just a newspaper), founded by his father on July 29th, 1925. Soon, Roberto branched out into a chain of radio stations such as Rádio Globo and Rádio CBN which consisted of news broadcasts only. On April 26th, 1965, thanks to the Military Regime, he founded Rede Globo TV, which became the principal TV station in Brazil and the third largest in the world. Rede Globo has had large developments during and directly after the Military Dictatorship. With the production of novelas (soap-operas), TV Globo found a way to flex its true power and has since exported many to various countries. These days, Globo’s reach is incalculable and has imense social and political influence (on par with Italy’s RAI, now Fininvest, run by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi).
Beyond Citizen Kane
This documentary is a 1993 film directed by Simon Hartog for Channel 4. It details the dominance of the Rede Globo media group in Brazilian society, discussing the group’s influence, power, and political connections. Globo’s president and founder Roberto Marinho came in for particular criticism, being compared with fictional newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane. Globo, the documentary argues, engaged in the same wholesale manipulation of news to influence public opinion as did Kane.
Beyond Citizen Kane (Youtube user Openr0ad with all parts of the documentary, unfortunately only some of it is in English)
Footvolley - ‘Heading’ to a beach near you
August 15, 2008 by tudobelezaFutevôlei (Footvolley) is an international sport which combines field rules that are based on those of beach volleyball with ball-touch rules taken from Soccer. Points are awarded if the ball hits the ground in the opponents’ court, if the opponents commit a fault, or if they fail to return the ball. Scoring is done using the rally point system (NEW volleyball rules). Matches may be one set to 18 points or 2 sets to 12 points (tie break at 9 points). The court is 30 x 60 ft (old beach volleyball) with the net height set to 6′10 (slightly lower than the women’s beach volleyball net).
History
Footvolley was created in Brazil in the mid-1960s with informal rules and became popular in the 1980s — when volleyball was popularized in that country. Footvolley may have started in Rio de Janeiro; but cities like Recife, Salvador, Santos, and Florianopolis have players who have been playing footvolley since the 1970s.
Beer & Liquor Sponsership
Similar to the way beach volleyball championships in California became the rage in the 1980s, it was the presence of major beer and liquor companies backing footvolley that made this sport take off.
Skol (a major Brazilian beer company) looked to jump summertime sales across Rio de Janeiro and began sponsoring the Circuito Carioca de Futevolei in the early 1990s. The Carioca lifestyle - the beach, soccer, fitness, and party atmosphere (remember summertime in Brazil is Carnaval time) - were the perfect ingredients for the beer sponsor to associate itself with the sport. Since footvolley is non-contact: the vacationing Brazilian football stars, many coming from top European teams, would spend their days playing the sport as well.
The SKOL events had famous footballers in exhibitions and the professional players battling it out for the glory. Besides Romário - none of the footballers could come close to matching the high level of play at these tournaments.
SKOL became Rio de Janeiro’s number #1 selling beer overtaking both Brahma and Antartica.
Footvolley also drew the cachaça companies in Brazil to compete for the obvious publicity the sport drew. Player agreements which conflicted with tournament sponsors became a huge problem in the liquour category.
Some notable Brazilian footballers who have played (or still play) footvolley are Romário, Edmundo, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho Gaúcho, Júnior, and Edinho (1982 & 1986 National Team).
Int’l Growth
Brazilian culture has always been revered outside the country. Footvolley was no exception. Amateur Brazilian athletes took footvolley to different parts of the world and forward looking promoters jumped on this new sport.
From the US, Europe, to Asia, promoters of footvolley all see a wonderfully inexpensive, addicting to play, exciting to watch, and super technical sport become the most played beach sport in the world. Volleyball is simply too easy and the rallies nearly non-existent. Of course footvolley appeals to those that play football but also the obvious difficulty in not using your hands is extremely appealing as well. Combining all its elements footvolley (with proper television exposure) has the potential to become the world’s most played beach sport by 2015.
Machado de Assis - Best of Brazilian Lit.
August 15, 2008 by tudobelezaJoaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro—September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short storywriter. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime.
Machado’s works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. José Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him “the supreme black literary artist to date.”
Biography
Machado is said to have learned to write by himself, and he used to take classes for free will. He learned to speak French first and English later, both fluently. He started to work for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, where he published his first works and met established writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo.
Machado de Assis married Carolina Xavier de Novais, a Portuguese descendant of a noble family. Soon the writer got a public job and this stability permitted him to write his best works. Machado de Assis began by writing popular novels which sold well, much in the late style of José de Alencar. His style changed in the 1880s, and it is for the sceptical, ironic, comedic but ultimately pessimistic works he wrote after this that he is remembered: the first novel in his “new style” was Epitaph of a Small Winner, known in the new Gregory Rabassa translation as The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (a literal translation of the original title, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas). In their brilliant comedy and ironic playfulness, these resemble in some ways the contemporary works of George Meredith in the United Kingdom, and Eça de Queirós in Portugal, but Machado de Assis’ work has a far bleaker emotional undertone. Machado’s work has also been compared with Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.
Machado de Assis could speak English fluently and translated many works of William Shakespeare and other English writers into Portuguese. His work contains numerous allusions to Shakespearean plays, John Milton and influences from Sterne and Meredith. He is also known as a master of the short story, having written classics of the genre in the Portuguese language, such as O Alienista, Missa do Galo, “A Cartomante” and “A Igreja do Diabo”.
Along with other writers and intellectuals, Machado de Assis founded the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1896 and was its president from 1897 to 1908, when he died.
Narrative Style
Machado’s style is unique, and several literary critics have tried to explain it since 1897. He is considered by many the greatest Brazilian writer of all times, and one of the greatest in the world as a romance and short story writer. His chronicles do not share the same status and his poems show a curious difference with the rest of his work: while his Machado’s prose is serene and elegant, his poems are often shocking for the use of crude terms, sometimes similar to those of Augusto dos Anjos, another Brazilian writer.
American literary critic Harold Bloom considers Machado de Assis one of the greatest 100 geniuses of literature, to the point of considering him the greatest black writer of western literature. He places Machado alongside writers such as Dante, Shakespeare and Cervantes.
Dom Casmurro
Machado de Assis was fascinated with the theme of jealousy, and many of his novels are built on this intrigue. One of his most popular ones, Dom Casmurro, is still widely read in Brazilian schools. The volume reflects Machado de Assis’ life as a translator of Shakespeare, and also his influence from French realism, especially Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert and Émile Zola. In the novel, he also refers to Much Ado About Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and most importantly, Othello. In fact, Helen Caldwell wrote a book comparing the Shakespearian play to Dom Casmurro “The Brazilian Othello of Machado de Assis - A study of Dom Casmurro”. It gives new meaning to this story.
