And can I just say thank you for drawing me back in today, as I couldn’t seem to unblock the blockage around here. In the meantime, have you thought of a song to share, as if I’m not mistaken this is supposed to be a music blog?ĪLYSON: You are right of course, Mr (now not so) Blank Page. Also, the things I love most, like cinema, theatre, cosy country pubs, are still kind of out of bounds for the older, not-yet-fully-vaccinated individual. I’d love to meet up with friends and do fun things, but after not seeing them for so long, it’s tough reconnecting. It’s just that I’m finding the idea of getting back to some semblance of normality tough after a year of being holed up at home. Excuse me for not being a bit more corporeal.ĪLYSON: You know I love you, WIAA. If I’d been real, like Ben, you could have compared notes about the weather in his neck of the woods. WIAA: Gosh, I wouldn’t have known, me just being a ‘blank page on a blogging platform’. Only a month and a half until the Summer Solstice, so we live in hope Spring might briefly put in an appearance before then. There’s also the issue of the snow.ĪLYSON: Yep, this is what we woke up to this morning. They had a lovely time and I got a glowing review, but with no tourists from abroad yet, and the idea of ‘staycations’ (hate that word) in towns and cities not quite taking off yet, it could be another quiet season. As well as submitting my assignments last week, I also had to get the holiday house ready for my first set of guests. We’ve been through a lot these last five and half years and if I can get my ass in gear there will be more stories to tell, and more songs to write about. Not showing much loyalty there, Alyson, after all we’ve been through.ĪLYSON: Sorry, WIAA, you’re right. WIAA: Blank page…, on a blogging platform. But no, you’ve popped up around here before to drag me out of a blogging fug and of course you’re not real, like Ben, you’re just a blank page on my blogging platform. Sorry, couldn’t resist.ĪLYSON: Just realised Rol will think I’m stealing his Conversations With Ben feature. ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave’. It would be something like "this samba is so cool that you won't want me to stop".WIAA: Thank goodness for the niche world of music blogging then, where anything goes. It would be analagous to the "common" misspelling in English of "Your something" and "You're something" - pronounced the same way but with different implications.įinally, I agree with you, the literal translation was not conveying what the authors originally meant. In Brazilian Portuguese, many speakers pronounce "Mais que nada" (or "more than anything") and "Mas que nada" (or "whatever", or the British "come off it!") the same way. The phrase "Mais que nada" of the title means "more than anything", however the authors misspelled it. In any case this verse is very interesting since it conveys the idea that Brazilian samba is a derivation of African pure rhythms mixed with other influences, contrasting with the previous verse "Samba de preto velho" or "original samba". There might be two interpreations for adding this tu in the end: 1) Tu means you in Portuguese/Spanish: "samba de preto tu" might mean "samba of blacks, you" implying you are also black, so this samba also belongs to you (due to varying degrees of racial mixing, even blonde blue-eyed fair-skinned white Brazilians might have some sub-saharan genetic heritage) 2) the ending sounds like "tutu" which is a Brazilian mushy dish consisting mainly of a black bean paste where the dark bean colour dominates the aspect of the dish despite the other major ingredient which is whitish toasted cassava flour: again it is a connotation of racial mixing, where the deriving samba, like many things in Brazil, looks intrinsically African but in reality it has already mixed with other influences (either Portuguese or Native Brazilian). Brazilians pronounce this verse as "Sum-ba jee pre-too-too". Hence, "samba de preto velho" stands for "forefathers' samba"/"traditional samba"/"original samba". "Preto Velho" (literally, "old black man") is one of the old wise men amongst the slaves who were conveying all the culture and customs brought from Africa to younger generations in Brazil, ranging from music, traditional medicine, African religions/beliefs/values etc. There is "Porto Velho" (or "Old Port") which is the capital of Rondonia, a Brazilian state in the Amazon region, or "Pedro Velho" (or "Old Peter"), in Rio Grande do Norte, a state in Northeastern Brazil. According to IBGE ( the Brazilian National Statistics Office, there is no municipality/county in the country under such a name.
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