Sunday, September 9, 2012

Café com Vinil

Elise and I have been taking full advantage of Sheyla and Carol's generosity and fitting in as many date nights as possible before we leave Brazil. Even after almost two years in Brasilia we are still finding new places. In fact, we feel we are only beginning to scratch the surface of Brazil. We are just now venturing out to Asa Norte. In other words, there is a whole wing of Brasilia we have left to explore in our remaining months. 

Even in music, we are discovering that our knowledge heretofore is superficial, at best. Just like anywhere else, Brazil's musical culture is deep and runs in many different flavors, and yet I am still pleasantly surprised when I hear someone rapping or crooning country in Portuguese, for example (the later, called sertanejo, it almost always appears to be performed by two middle-aged men in winged collars accompanied by an accordion, i.e. Jorge e Mateus and Victor e Leo). That being said, I still don't understand why the soundtrack of Brazil (particularly, Rio) has to have Phil Collins on it. 

Sometimes, myself or Elise will have received a good recommendation or have a place in mind that we have been wanting to try. Sometimes we have to brainstorm for hours only to come up an old stand by. Regardless of where we end up going, date night affords Elise and I the opportunity to recharge our batteries (I won't say "reconnect", because, regardless of how little deep conversation our three kids and the hectic demands of the day allow, I never feel disconnected from her), talk about important things or talk about not important things. Our departure from Brazil in December is creeping up on us. We want to push it from our minds, but it is hard. We are now in a month that ends with a 'ember', which makes it not summer anymore and makes it seem not so far away. 

With designs on finding a 'scene' (or at least someplace that wasn't completely deserted at 7:00 p.m.; Brazilian dining hour doesn't start until at least 9, but both Elise and I would fall asleep on our plates if we waited to eat that late), we decided to head back to Fulô do Sertão for forro (yet another type of Brazilian music), caipirinhas and Northeastern fare such a acarajé, black-eyed pea fritters deep-fried in dendê (palm) oil. But unfortunately it looked closed,so we drove up to 413 Norte, almost to the tip of the north wing, to go to an Argentinian steak house we had heard good things about. As we feared, once we arrived, we found it deserted, but there were other interesting places on the same block that weren't, so we decided to park and just see what we could find. 

What we found was Café com Vinil. 

A place with two turntables and an entire wall of LPs. The menu was even divided into Side A (appetizers) and Side B (dinners) (Brief aside: since the demise of the LP and cassette tape, I have wondered how musicians decide what order to put songs on a CD. There is no side A or side B, per se. Hence, no need to close out side A or open side B. Moreover, does anyone even listen to the whole CD through from beginning to end. As soon as it was possible to go directly to the song number you wanted to hear simply by pressing a button, did anyone start a CD from the beginning to listen straight through without skipping ahead?  So is there even any reason to put any thought whatsoever in the order the songs should come in, except as a homage to antiquated technology and outdated mode of listening to music?)

Elise and I ordered beers (Colorado, inargueably the finest-crafted Brazilian beer), an indica (IPA) and a porter, and queijo coalho chips. Our waiter invited us to come inside and pick out something to listen to, but he already had pulled down R.E.M., the Police and Oasis, so clearly didn't need our help.


The place was rad and we should have stayed longer than we did. We were introduced to new Brazilian music, Capital Inicial and Os Paralamas do Sucesso, reminding us that there was more to Brazilian music than sertanejo and reminding us that we still had so much more to learn about Brazil. 


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