Sexta-feira, or ‘Sex’ as an abbreviation, means the 6th day of the week, Friday it is in Portuguese. I remember the confusion this word caused to my visitors when I was living in Portugal and they saw the ‘S’ word popping all of a sudden in the newspapers or TV weather programmes… This original name means that it is the sixth (sexta) day of a trade (feira), after the Jewish Sabbath (sabado). Actually from Monday till Friday the names of the week are referred in numbers, starting from Segunda-feira. To shorten this long description, on a daily basis you can rather hear/see in a spoken/written Portuguese: 2a – Monday, 3a – Tuesday, 4a – Wednesday, 5a – Thursday and 6a – Friday).
Anyway, hoje é sexta-feira de manhã, and I am preparing my short getaway to Ibiza to meet my lovely friends there. Looking forward not only to some entertainment, but also to reconnecting with nature and spending time at glorious beaches in the less-touristic parts of the island. This is why I keep listening this Jobim’s my all-time jazzy/bossanova/psychedelic fave about the beauty of Brazilian sertão, endangered nature and indigenous people.
However, as it is Friday in August 2014, I just cannot post this year’s revelation to Brazilian dancefloors, a funny track describing extremely nice type of a person at the party, aka simpaticona da boate. Basically, whatever you ask, simpaticona will give you!
Find below the original version (might be ‘too much’ imo) and intriguing DJ Marky’s remix.
Happy weekend (fds – fim de semana) is about to commence!
Wiki:
Sexta – feira (abbreviation ‘Sex’) – Friday
Hoje é sexta-feira de manhã – today is the Friday morning (lyrics taken from Jobim’s ‘Borzeguim’)
‘I already knew you were a big fan of Portugal and Brazil but I never thought it was mostly language- and sound-related. It’s really nice to hear that Portuguese as this kind of power. I guess that fado it’s not your type of music but it seems unusual to talk about saudade without mentioning it’.
Well, hearing this kind of feedback I just cannot remain unresponsive! The author of the feedback is Joana with whom I had a pleasure to collaborate at my previous workplace last year in Barcelona. Even though it was always quite stressful and very fast-pace back there, we managed to create a very inspirational (and still, productive!) ambience on our ‘Fox Island team’ (don’t ask for a meaning) within the open space ocean. So, speaking a weird mixture of Spanish – English – French – Catalan – Polish – Lithuanian (!) and Russian we could not obviously miss Portuguese. And despite the fact that we are all in very different places now, I guess (?) we all feel this special kind of saudade when we remind those crazy times.
So, it is true, I have not started off with fado, as it is not really my cup of tea. However, it is something a Portugal-loving person cannot just leave behind. Promise there will appear some classic content (for which my Portuguese-aficionado Maezinha is longing, too!), sometime soonish.
For now I would love to present my fave out of Joana’s selection: Ana Moura’s Desfado which represents a powerful trend in fado music nowadays: remaking, experimenting with the form, musical styles and language. Desfado reminds me also of our multilingual team we used to be, desfalando all the afore-mentioned languages and simply, having fun!
Wiki:
Fado – a form of music characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life in the neighbourhood, and infused with a characteristic sentiment of resignation, fatefulness and melancholia (loosely captured by the keyword saudade – longing). Desfado is a neologism meaning the opposite of it.
Falar – to speak (desfalando is the opposite gerund of it)
After giving this idea some time, some shape – there it is, a project of describing my personal journey through the soundscapes : sounds and landscapes from the Portuguese-speaking countries. A project derived from years of collecting memories and experiences of living and travelling in Portugal and Brazil, mixed with saudade – impossible to translate state of longing to distant places and faces. Inspired by the people met on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean who helped me to realise that Portuguese is not only another language I speak, but also a state of mind closest to my heart/soul, balancing somewhere between euphoria and melancholia.
When did it all start? I cannot trace back my first memories, but probably back in the day, it was Walter Salles movies, followed by Wim Wender’s ‘Lisbon Story’ when I became only curious about Portuguese language – both its version from Portugal, as from Brazil. First one having very Eastern European-like pronounciation, and the second one sounding like its lazy and soft family member.
Then, when I was 15, I tried free capoeira workshops in a modern dance summer school and fell in love with these sounds for good. I gave up the physical aspect of it after some months not being able to defend myself properly in roda against more flexible members but the curiosity to understand the Afrobrasilian culture was stronger than my muscles. I learned by heart our fighting chants and tried to find translations and learn my DIY Portuguese.
At the same time my musical gurus: Jazzanova, Gilles Peterson, Rainer Truby and 4 Hero, to name a few, presented various compilations with Brazilian 60s and 70s music and their creative remixes. At that time travelling, even to Portugal, was still quite a snobbish idea in Poland with no cheap airlines and no-Schengen. My curiosity even lead me to a crazy idea to pass the Baccalaureate from Portuguese as a foreign language, but no high school offered such classes at that time (!).
I had to wait until 2007 when I was admitted for the Erasmus exchange programme and when I passed my first summer in Portugal in the rural part of Beira Alta as a volunteer in the archaeological Roman village. Since then I decided to learn Portuguese for real and thanks to my first teacher, Dr Sylwia, who gratefully agreed to my participation in the classes for Spanish Philology students during the following 2 years. I have to acknowledge that it gave me a possibility to learn all the grammatical bases and meet, still in Poznan, equally interesting, future linguists and travelers! (Yes, I do hope you will read it).
Since 2009 I have been travelling and living abroad, in Portugal and Brazil included. Although nowadays I am based in Barcelona, I have to admit that my pursuit for the Portuguese sound has broadened my horizons towards the Westbound world and marked visibly my Southern personality. I truly believe in the future of the South-West direction not only in terms of the economic potential, but also cultural and social heritage, still unknown in the EU and the US.
The idea of this blog is very personal and subjective, as is for the most of the blogs (not?). I am not a linguistic specialist, nor a musical guru, even if there are a few who claim so, but I am passionate about those two topics and I would like to invite you for a journey through sounds and stories from the Lusofonia. I would like to say thanks to my inspirational and supportive friends, always eager to ask about my Lusoexperience, to listen to Lusomusic at and eventually, strongly encouraging me to create Lusofonetica where I could create my notebook to share.
I will try to translate the Portuguese meanings at the bottom of the posts, but if some meanings will remain unclear, I strongly invite you to ask. As well as to participate, comment, and criticize in this Lusospace!
To illustrate my concept, I attach you the recording from Elis Regina’s ‘Meio de campo’, where she describes humbly the creative process, without pretending to be the master of masters:
Prezado amigo Afonsinho
Eu continuo aqui mesmo
Aperfeiçoando o imperfeito
Dando tempo, dando um jeito
Desprezando a perfeição
Que a perfeição é uma meta
Defendida pelo goleiro
Que joga na seleção
E eu não sou Pelé, nem nada
Se muito for eu sou um Tostão
Fazer um gol nesta partida não é fácil, meu irmão
Entrou de bola, e tudo!
Lusofonetica, a soundscape from the joyful to the melancholic, or as we would rather say in Portuguese, entre alegria e saudade.
Wiki:
Lusofonia – a Portuguese noun to describe the Portuguese-speaking countries and territories
fonetica – phonetics
jeito – manner, way
saudade – longing, yearning
meio de campo – in the middle of the field
roda – ring, circle of people
capoeira – is a Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance, acrobatics and music, and is sometimes referred to as a game
LUSOFONETICA 