Switzerland Samba

I went to Brazil last Saturday night. An hour driving from Geneva.

The place is called Montreux and there's a jazz festival over there every year since 1967. Well it's actually more than jazz. This year the organizers had the great idea to schedule "Carnaval do Brasil", a looong evening dedicated to brazilian music. I was going there a bit sceptical: a brazilian night organized in Auditorium Stravinsky (sic) somewhere in the Canton de Vaud. Hmmmm. Doesn't look like that exciting. It definitely was. While I was expecting a quiet auditorium filled with a very polite audience comfortably seated on red velvet chairs (see which ones?), it actually was a huge dancing place (no seats!) filled with hundreds of brazilians partying all over the place. You could have spotted from time to time an inhibated european-like spectator enjoying as much the music as the crazy atmosphere.

The music was indeed really good too. I really liked the songs of Alceu Valença which sometimes reminded me some french songs (in the music and the format). It was then followed by Beth Carvalho who was amazing. She sang many Samba classics (some of which I even knew from before!) which, as I later discovered, were "her" classics written in the 70's and the 80's. Of course, everybody (but the europeans, remember) was singing with her. The last (and least) band was playing some mixture of Reggae and Samba music. It was interesting although I liked it a bit less than the previous two concerts (I was also starting to get tired).

Perhaps some of you didn't know there's such a large (and active) Brazilian community around here. I can tell you there is, fortunately. And sometimes, they gather in Montreux, Switzerland.