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Festivalgoers To Soak Up Brazilian Culture And Music

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By CURTIS ROSS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 22, 2008

TAMPA - David Manson embraces almost all aspects of Brazilian culture, but he takes a pass on the caipirinha.

It's probably just as well. Manson will be running the show as well as performing at today's Brasil Arts Festival, and too many of the popular Brazilian cocktail - made with sugar, lime and a rumlike liquor called cachaca - might send things into disarray.

The rest of the drinking-age attendees can indulge, though, while viewing the works of Brazilian artists, listening to different styles of the country's music courtesy of Manson's group, O Som do Jazz, and watching a demonstration of capoeira, which blends percussion, dance and martial arts, by Tampa's Volta ao Mundo.

An open batucada drum group allows participants to discover rhythms from the samba family.

The third annual Brasil Arts Festival is presented by the Emit series, of which Manson is the director.

The series regularly features challenging experimental and avant-garde music. Emit concerts regularly challenge preconceived notions about popular and classical music.

Today's festival could be a revelation for listeners whose knowledge of Brazilian music begins and ends with bossa nova.

But where Emit performances sometimes challenge perceptions with a serrated blade, the Brasil Arts Festival will do so with a caress and a whisper.

"It tames my experimental avant-garde nature a lot," Manson says. "The work I've done in the past has been about deconstructing and pushing the boundaries of sound.

"When I began to really listen and go deep into Brazilian music, I was drawn back to lyricism and the real emotional nature of music. It's very elegant music."

Manson's group features his wife, Andrea Moraes Manson, on vocals. The group performs several styles of Brazilian music, including bossa nova, samba and baiao.

Also featured will be a demonstration of capoeira by Volta ao Mundo.

Capoeira, Manson explains, originally was a form of martial arts disguised as a dance by African slaves brought to Brazil.

"It's a very sophisticated martial arts dance form," Manson says, but also "very athletic and gymnastic, lots of weaving and dodging and kicks."

Manson adds that he, too, has received an education on Brazilian culture, and especially music, in recent years, much of it thanks to his wife, a native of Rio de Janeiro.

"I thought I knew Brazilian music and I didn't," Manson says. "My wife quickly instructed me about what real Brazilian music was about."

Macho music it's not.

"People love it or hate it, and people who hate it almost always have very masculine attitudes about music," Manson says. Brazilian music "has a more elegant, almost feminine nature."

"Portuguese, like Italian, is very melodramatic," Manson says. "The words flow and have more syllables. The rhythms are more energetic. You can hear the melody and the flowing aspect of music."

ON STAGE

Brasil Arts Festival

WITH: O Som do Jazz, Volta ao Mundo and more

WHEN: 3 p.m. today

WHERE: Nova 535, 535 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N., St. Petersburg

COST: $15

Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568 or cross@tampatrib.com.

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