Berimbau

In 1983, my cousin Steve and I took a trip to southern California. I had been there once before. He had never been. I was interested in working out at World and Gold's Gym. He just wanted to have a fun trip. Both of us had grown up in Royal Oak, Michigan. A suburb of Detroit. The thing that attracted me to the Los Angeles area was diversity. Where we came from, there was a real lack of culture. We had never eaten at a real Mexican restaurant. Chi-Chi's was it as far as we were concerned. Hearing anyone speak Arabic was always cause for alarm and an openly gay guy usually got a chuckle from most people. Southern California was a very open and interesting place.

On our third day there, we had been out walking around in Santa Monica. As we walked back to our room, we passed a little guy with an Afro. He was carrying an attache case and something that looked like a bow. Something you would use to shoot an arrow with. Not a fancy bow. Like a kid would make. Steve and I didn't really discuss this guy, but we had both noticed him.

About an hour later, while we were in the room talking, Steve said, "did you see that guy with the bow?, I think it's some kind of weird instrument." I had thought the same thing. He had been holding a wood stick that looked like a chopstick. Steve went on, "yeah, it looks like he hits the string with that chopstick and that's how it works". We laughed. Honestly, we just thought he was some odd character.

The next day, I was out taking a few photos by myself and I saw this guy again.

He was waiting for a bus in front of the motel where we were staying. He had his bow. I now noticed that it also had a round bowl attached to one side of it. I really wanted to know more so I walked right up to him and asked him about this "instrument" he carried.

He told me it was called a berimbau and it was from Brazil. I asked him if he would demonstrate it for me. He held it upright with the metal string facing out. He started hitting the string with the chopstick which sounded really cool. He held a small round stone in his other hand and placed it at varying locations along the string. Basically, it was a movable fret. It changed the pitch of the note.

Then, he swished the chopstick on the outside of the bowl. That too was a great sound. The bowl's main function was to act like a resonator for the string's vibration. The opening of the bowl faced his stomach. He could keep it open and let it ring loud and clear or hold it close to his stomach and deaden it.

We talked for a while. He was from Brazil. I noticed amongst a bunch of stickers on his attache case, that one of them read "Royal Oak Music Theatre".

That was really interesting. I asked him if he had been there and he said that he had been a special guest on tour with someone. Who? Pat Metheny!

He said, "my name is Nana Vasconcelos". I asked him if he had played on Pat's song, Are You Going With Me? Of course, he had. I loved that song.

As I got more into Brazilian music, I realized that Nana was nothing short of a legend. He had worked with Milton Nascimento, Egberto Gismonti and Gato Barberi just to name a few. Our "odd character" had turned out to be quite special. See what I mean when I say lack of culture?