rhythms of the city blog

st joseph’s is not just any primary school. it is a primary school with its own carnival. and whilst they had encountered us at various southwark council organised events, such as the infamous bermondsey carnival, this was their own stand-alone 100 fantastic years of our primary school celebration. there were few of the participants there who were alive 10 years ago, never mind 100… and similarly in the band, few who could remember the last bermondsey carnival – it being a chance to take out new members of the band from city university, in their first gig. pictured below is senior lecturer chris wiley (front, 4th from right) of city music department. his first (and maybe last) gig.

rotc @ st josephs bermondsey 1 may 2012

let’s face it, this is as close as rotc will get to playing buckingham palace. we are grateful to hm the q for not calling the noise police as wave after wave of fundraising runners trotted from admiralty arch up to her gaff and back accompanied by burning samba. with regular rotc players there were new students from westminster and city universities, all in all >50 players. yeah.

rotc @ sport relief 25 mar 2012

samba has spread to the zingzillas island. the story behind the story being that the oldest members of rotc (barak, bosco, hammadi, wesley) trekked to pinewood studios to record 2 tracks for the show, our own mini-batucada of traditional samba, and a latin-mashup entitled ‘shake it’ by house (island?) composers banks and wag. months later the youngest members of rotc headed for salford bbc studios for the video shoot. nice and photogenic, no less than 8 ethnicities represented, and something cool to show to small relatives, who now think that some of us are famous. and in that little corner of the world that is ceebeebies, we are. you can watch it here.

rotc on zingzillas

that’s douglas in the check shirt. it is his birthday. that’s rotc behind him with elisangela singing, we nipped down here to play a set for our friend, gabrielle and brian sang also. we don’t play at bar salsa often (twice in 10 years), the clue is in the name, but today is special – cake, candles, balloons. and more cake. more photos of the happy occasion?

the sex pistols, iron maiden, the clash, motorhead (sorry can’t find the umlaut)….. yes, and now rhythms of the city have rocked (samba-ed) brixton academy. thanks to our friendly friends friendly fires, who sold out 3 nights and invited us to open for them (ok, more like play as the crowd wandered in). still, the twitt-o-sphere was literally awash with observations on ed mcfarlane’s dancing, and hidden somewhere were 2 comments about us. on the friday, whilst drummers (patrick, wesley, hammadi, fabio, barak) provided background swing, rhythms of the city’s dancers (patrícia, samara, pilar, yazzmin) showed ed how it should be done – during yester-hit ‘jump in the pool’, then returning as hawaiians (with krysten and shiu) for tomorrow’s-hit hawaiian air. altogether an appropriately sized venue for the first performances of our enormous 30-minute symphonic-batucada-thon… the godzilla of batucadas (samba-percussion-displays). drums employed: 31, drumsticks broken: 1, drumskins broken 1, hearts broken 4.

rotc dancers with friendly fires @ brixton academy 25 nov 2011

o yes, an international tour again for us, we travel for the cairde festival at the instigation/invitation of our friends stephanie, tony, thorsten and peter from samboeire. they have been visiting our samba weekends in london, joining us in carnivals and onstage, arranging workshops for us in the west of ireland for a few years… so it was with little dispute that we accepted the band holiday opportunity. in a packed but relaxed weekend we made a little outdoor show, a hot sweaty night in the pictured saloon and the next morning a bandstand before we whizz back via knock airport. band sounded fine, and it was nice to play long sets. o yes, there was guinness too, i believe.

rotc @ cairde festival, sligo 9 jul 2011

godfather to the uk samba scene bosco de oliveira devised this evening show in 2003, an animated (and orchestrated) retelling of the history of samba from its roots until the present day. over the years the show has been to the south bank centre, kings place, cardiff, brighton… today, hatfield. exotic. the university here is having something of a summer festival. being a weekend, there are few students around but the welcome is warm, and the sound engineers up for the complex stage set up. bosco tells the story of the development of samba in between the (full track) musical examples played live. the exact songs may change slightly from show to show, but always follow the order: jongo, batuque, modinha, tango, maxixe, samba… taking in sambas of all decades and styles 1920-2000: samba de roda, samba cancao, samba de exaltacao, sambas of praça onze… bossa nova, gafieira, choro, partido alto and pagode and particularly the development of rio carnival samba, with the band changing and updating the instruments to reflect the changing sound through the century. for this show dancers fabio, leny and liliana animate. musicians (front row): jonathan, gaio, laurie, bosco, barak, fabio + (back row) pat, gab, david, mishka jeremy brian, and catherine is also there but not in the pic. see many videos of the show here, and read someone’s blog/review here.

os tempos do samba @ uni of herts 14 may 2011