Brass Conflict at the Beach – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Brass Conflict at the Beach
The Ghost of Charles Ives Visits Copacabana

When I saw the size of the sound truck, arrayed in a black armor of loudspeakers, I knew I was in for some serious sound. The truck was to accompany a march for urban peace down Copacabana’s beachfront Avenida Atl�ntica, barking out the cries of the march’s promoters and clobbering the crowd of thousands with a soundtrack like mortar fire. Little did I realize this was only a prelude.

After following the march for an around an hour, the noise from the sound truck finally became unbearable so I dropped out and strolled up the avenue to catch a breather. I happened upon a brass band entertaining a small crowd on the boardwalk just opposite the Pra�a do Lido, a favorite haunt of Copacabana’s retired community.

This was just their kind of fare – Sunday in the park, cotton candy, brass band music. With two differences. The first was that the band consisted of uniformed municipal police officers. The second was the Latin tinge. Arrayed behind the unsurprising rows of clarinetists, flautists, saxophonists, and brass players was the percussion section consisting of a drummer playing a standard drum kit, plus two other band members enthusiastically flicking, thwacking, and thumping at a battery of Brazilian hand percussion.

Presently one was pounding a bass drum in an insistent samba rhythm. The piece was Ary Barroso’s Aquarela do Brasil, known to most simply as Brasil. But a brass band whipping up a hip-grinding samba? Well in Rio, yes. For as the local dictum goes, everything ends in samba. Even seniors’ events. There were a number of plastic chairs that had been set up for the event, but most were by now unoccupied, as the mainly grandmotherly crowd that had originally claimed them was on its feet with a pivot and swivel.

Only when the sound truck began to approach from its position in the middle of the advancing throng did the band director begin to notice that there might be some competition from the peace march. As the atomic din of the sound truck increased, smiles squeaked out the sides of players’ embouchures and the director’s attention was distracted, but only momentarily. In one of the world’s most noise-polluted cities, you can only get so worked up over sonic disruptions.

Finally, though, the grey-topped, blue suited director capitulated under the inevitable fact that his twenty-one piece was about to be squashed under a wash of dancing, chanting, peace-loving megawattage. His resigned announcement that the show would not go on elicited moans of disappointment from the silvering crowd. And so, once the truck had passed, in hopeful delusion that the coast was now clear, he once again lifted his baton. No sooner had the band breathed life into the downbeat of the next samba did it become apparent that there was more competition to come.

The next thing heard coming from the street was the rising thunder of another bass drum beating out of time with the band. Then the entry of a woofing low brass section. At this point, heads turned to observe the plumed hats and blue velvet uniforms of a marching band making its way up the avenue. But this time, the director of the police band held his turf. Under the determined strokes of his baton, they puffed on resolutely as the marching band approached.

At last, in a great crescendo of ecstasy, they came to the inevitable meeting. Trombones trembled, trumpets trumped, glockenspiels spieled, and a battery of percussion concussed in a beautiful cacophony of pomp and happenstance.

There I realized I was witnessing first hand the very inspiration of American composer Charles Ives’ piece in which he simulated two marching bands meeting from opposite directions of the street. I don’t know what he would have thought of the Brazilian translation, but it left me grinning from one ear to the other.

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