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Samba Parade
| You hear it before you see it. It takes a while to get you but eventually the eyes see what the ears hear. These aren't people coming at you. It is an organism. Feathers in bright colors and clothing that might just be brighter still. In its many hands are are noise makers of every sort. Simple things designed just advanced enough to be able to make something that isn't yet music but isn't random noise either. Like a cowbell in the hands of someone who has had too many music lessons. Only six beats, three spaced and three back to back like an S.O.S. cut short. |
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| It is primal, it is loud. It matches hip movements of the many hips in this parade. It makes you want to move your hips. It is repeated over and over again. The dancers are inching in closer to your field of view. The colors become distinctive, the people in this traveling samba band start to come into focus and part from the organism they travel with. They are moving side to side and up and down while slowly inching forward. The six beats repeat over and over again. |
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| The head dresses move around so much you are sure they are violating some law of physics by not falling off the dancers heads. As it moves by the small beads in their costumes try to compete with the loudness of the beat and the rest of the costumes. Like the beads your ears now start to hear something competing with the beat. Well not really competing but helping to make the thing hole. Whistles are starting to come in. Lots of whistles. All matching the beat laid down by those who came before. |
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| The female part of the organism has passed by and now the male part with its whistles comes in full force one step at a time while. The costumes are now cut for me. Gone are the brightly covered skirts an in come pants. Pants that have the largest flowers you have ever seen placed over the fertility zone of each man. The men move forward one step at a time but have to take a step to the right and at step to the left first as though they don't want to be seen as chasing the women who are just in front of them. |
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| The once simple beat accompanied by silver whistles for harmony are now being followed and replaced by brass trumpets. The rhythm changes a little but it is the same song. A song older than any of the people playing it. A song that is meant to get the blood pumping. The song makes you want to follow. The golden trumpets move side to side and the feet move with them. The colors become bigger. The sound becomes bigger. The parade gets bigger. The people in the parade get bigger. The trumpets scale up in size to match bigger people and before your brain can refocus from the euphoria of the noise and color the trumpets have gotten so big they are now big trombones. |
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| They continue the side to side to forward movement as the whole parade moves buy one step at time. You focus on the sound. The parade will eventually pass you by an you need to remember the sound. You need to remember the feeling it gives your heart and your feet. The head dresses get bigger. The tails get longer. The chests of the men get bigger. The big chests are soon replaced with big drums. |
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| We have moved from base to pitch to brass to base to more base. The base sound forces those just before them forward on its waves. The people are taller. They walk on 10 foot legs and follow the sound. |
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| Before the sound leaves you try to figure out what you just saw. You search for something to describe what you have just heard. You didn't see an organism of color and sound and movement. You didn't see people. You had an experience. |
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Samba Parade