From Dust to Up-side-Down Dance: The story of my Cape Verdean Cavaquinho

I'm leaving for Cape Verde in two days, and one of the things I'm looking forward to doing is to go back to the little music store where I had my cavaquinho made from start to finish. (A cavaquinho is a lot like the known Hawaiian ukelele, but it is tuned differently, slightly larger, and from Portuguese origins. It is a common instrument in Brazilian/Portuguese/Cape Verdean music, and within these places, it is constructed differently.) My cavaquinho has undergone quite a slew of stories over the last few years since its construction in August 2008, and hopefully the story will continue when I return to Cape Verde this week. As I prepare for my trip, trying to pick ONE pair of jeans and ONE skirt to shove in a backpack from my embarrassing plethora of clothes, I am taking even more time to make sure that I arrive with very particular photographs. When I give them to Louis Baptista (maker of my cavaquinho) and attempt to explain the following story, I have no idea how he will react. He might not remember who I am, consider me to be quite a looney tune, and throw out the photos. Or maybe he'll smile and pin them up on the wall of the shop. I'm shooting for the latter, but either way, I hope he appreciates the story.


-------------------------------------
PART I: THE MAKING OF THE CAVAQUINHO


It all began when i saw these guys jamming on the beach in Mindelo on the island of Sao Vicente Cape Verde. It was a Sunday and EVERYONE was at the beach. I couldn't help but inch my way closer and closer to them as they jammed, and I finally started talking to them about their music. I asked them where to go to acquire a Cape Verdean cavaquinho. After insisting that I play their cavaquinho with them, (and after I insisted that i did not yet know how to play it), they told me, "go find Baptista." And so I searched for Baptista.

So I searched and searched the streets of Mindelo, asking people "Onde sta Baptista. Eu quero uma cavaquinho." (Where is Baptista? I want to buy a cavaquinho." They laughed at my Brazilian-learned Portuguese (which isn't all that wonderful), and pointed me in what may or may not have been the right direction.

But I finally found the shop.


When I entered, the guys in the shop appeared surprised. Maybe lone traveler girls don't pop their head into their shop often. Or maybe it is also because Northern Cape Verdeans are intrigued to find an American speaking Brazilian Portuguese in Cape Verde, especially one with a Slovak name and random knowledge of Southern Cape Verdean slang phrases. I asked where I could find Baptista, and one of the guys explained to me that he was the son of the late Baptista. I was talking to Louis Baptista. He now owned the store after taking over when his father died. He came from three generations of musicians and instrument makers. We sat around and chatted about the types of music we liked (while Louis is quite the skilled coladeira guitarist, he loves acoustic and heavy rock music). As I watched him work on constructing or repairing instruments, we listened to the Cape Verdean radio. Louis's friend, who was a hilarious poet, came in and kept reciting love poems to me. This has nothing to do with the story, but I want to emphasize the interdisciplinary artistic atmosphere in this little shop. The magic was brewing.

After settling upon an approximate price... (I have no idea if it was too much or too little, and I probably miscalculated the escudo-to-dollar amount) he got started on making my instrument. Of course, the process was much delayed because we had some jam sessions. whups.




I went away to another island, and returned to find the cavaquinho unfinished. What? Tranquilo Sara, tranquilo. (stay calm, sara. Stay calm.) I was nervous that it might not be ready in time for my upcoming 18-hour boat ride to the capital island that was the next day. However, I took advantage of this opportunity to observe the final stages of sanding, painting, and refining the cavaquinho, and even had a part in the process! For example, the slightly darker color on the edges of my instrument was from when Louis ran out of darker paint and had to use a lighter paint afterwards; this was because I said something funny and Louis laughed, accidentally spilling the darker paint on his floor. Oops. After it was all finished, and I performed a victory dance, Louis took the time to draw me some beginner chords so that i could begin to play.

SHAMEFULLY, I still only know those three chords.




All done. Hurray! What experience would not be complete without a cheesy photo. Done.

As I endured the back-and-forth sways of an 18-hour boat ride to Santiago island, I cradled my little paper-covered cavaquinho in my lap. It made its way back successfully to Santiago, and then later to my home in Venice Beach.

--------------------------------
PART II: THE MAKING OF A SONG
A few weeks after my trip, I was invited to go sailing with some local Venice Beach friends. I didn't know the entire crew of people, but I jumped on board, bringing my cavaquinho along with me. My good friend Scotty P always brings his ukelele, and so i thought we could jam. (And we did! Well, I "twinkled around" which is what I call plucking around to try to find the correct notes and pretending to take a long "solo.")



As we started to sail, I didn't realize that for one friend, the boat ride was actually going to provide to be a sacred ritual. This friend had joined us to spread the ashes of his late uncle Dan, and wanted to do it among friends and family. During our sunset sail, things just magically fell into place. "Beowolf," an old, dismal, steel-looking boat that habitually never left the marina, was oddly humming and grunting at its dock, as if it had awaken from centuries of sleep. After sailing for a while, we were greeted with surprise appearances by a sea lion and a whale! The day concluded with a spectacular sunset performance as the sun sank just behind the Santa Monica mountains. I find pictures and songs about sunsets to be quite cheesy, but there and then, I was reminded by their profoundly touching impact. I never met Uncle Dan, but as his ashes were spread, I think he would have approved of this wonderful occasion.

I was deeply touched by this day and so I immediately wrote a song about it. I used the only 3 chords that Louis Baptista taught me, and poof! i had a song.

Sailing with Uncle Dan:
v1
The sail is up The motor stopped running
For the first time Beowolf is humming
The water awaits our arrowed trail
The hues of blues are crisp in the company of whales.

v2
A twinkling song to Accompany the air
Some rosé wine and new hellos to share
Some get to know you words For ucle Dan
A tear a smile, a laugh As he drifts to his next land.

chorus:
Its all a puzzle piece fitting perfectly into
A fantasy picture of a sunset ocean view
Only this time its real, its real, its real its real
With sneezing sea lions and a loss to celebrate and heal.

v3
The sky is heavy, the waves a sparkling lake The sun exits as a slice
of orange pancake Some sage showers
That smoke as they curl, As we said goodbye for now to the
puzzle piece world.



After writing the song, it became a song that I would always play when amidst these good Venice pals, Billy, Scotty, and Shane.

--------------------------------------------
PART III THE MAKING OF AN AERIAL MUSICIAN



So here I am in LA, trying to be an PhD scholar, musician, modern dancer and athlete, among other things. Time is limited. But I have been doing all that I can to try and at least combine my musical and dance identities. In the dance sphere, I have spent the last 5 years doing all that I can to be involved in aerial/climbing/vertical work, by taking workshops with Aerial Cats (LA), Frequent Flyers (Boulder), and my favorite, Project Bandaloop (SF). I also happen to have become friends with two core members of Project Bandaloop, and started taking their workshops in LA. Out of pure eagerness, I joked around one day asking these friends if they ever need an "aerial musician" in their company, thinking it would be a great idea to just put that idea out into the world. It just so happens, that right after this workshop (as i stood sideways dancing on a wall), dancers Derrick and Nehara from Catch Me Bird Dance Theater saw me dancing. When they found out i was also a musician, they later asked me if I would be interested in performing in their upcoming Ford Amphitheater anniversary performance and play some of my songs as an aerialist. YES!

And so began my newly morphed identity as an "aerial musician."

What about the cavaquinho?

When I got to work with Derrick and Nehara, we tried many things. I tried ascending the wall of the amphitheater with my violin and with my guitar, but none of them worked. The guitar was just too big to maneuver around in the harness
can you see how awkward i look?



But as I started thinking about what i could play up on this wall, knowing that my good friends Mark and Rachael would be dancing as I played, I wondered what would be appropriate to play. The entire show is about love, and couples, and the lighthearted moments that we take for granted, and the funny aspects of what we take so seriously. So the cavaquinho seemed like the perfect "lighthearted" instrument, and somehow my Uncle Dan song seemed perfect too. Even though the song was about the loss of a life, the song was also about celebrating life with friends and loved ones, and this idea of a full circle.

When i was up in the air with the cavaquinho, I had more mobility than i did with the other instruments! I was quite frightened that this very sentimental instrument might be dropped and plumet to its death.. but luckily a little piece of fabric (which has its own story behind it), served as the perfect safety wrap around my wrist.





Therefore, since its construction in Mindelo, my cavaquinho has island-hopped through the Cape Verdean archipelago, survived a plane ride with grabby children, "twinkled" on a sailboat memorial, sounded through LA jam sessions, and finally, hung up-side-down for an inverted dance performance at the Ford Amphitheater. As I whistled and smiled in that show, I was also thinking about what a great story this would be to tell Louis Baptista.






So here I am, about to go back to Mindelo, Cape Verde. I want to go back to tell Louis Baptista about where my cavaquinho has traveled. I might even play my Uncle Dan song for Louis (still, the ONLY song i have written on my cavaquinho). Louis gave me his email in the form of his business card sticker, which is still stuck perfectly inside the main opening of my cavaquinho, but his email address is no longer valid and all of the photos that I tried to email to him from 2008 bounced back to me. For two years I have been unsuccesful in contacting him. I am hoping to find his shop again to give him some hard copy photos and say hello. I have printed several photos, hoping I might make it up onto his wall of fame. Well, maybe not a wall of fame--i dont think he has one, but i remembered really liking this little note that was written on the wall. Perhaps one of these pictures will end up near it, if I tell him the whole story.


"Life is beautiful for those who know to listen to it."

-------------------------------------------
PART IV: RETURNING TO CAPE VERDE:
Hopefully I will be able to return with documentation of the photo/story exchange. And maybe I will finally have inspiration to write a second cavaquinho song.






After 8 days tromping around Mindelo, seeing music festivals and talking to artists, I finally went to see Luis Baptista. I felt pretty unprepared because I was exhausted from walking around all day, and felt musically unpracticed in the event of a possible jam session… But then again, since I blogged about this moment well in advance and carefully printed out all of the photos that I wanted to give to Luis, perhaps I was more than prepared. I have been toting the photos around with me all week, so as to showing people my new aerial dance experiments just because I had a hard time describing it in Portuguese. It just so happens that there isn’t a word for “aerial musician who kind of dances and kind of sings,” in Creole or Portuguese. Somehow the words circus, building, and “singing” came into the description, which I mentioned with a scrunched frustrated nose while cocking my head awkwardly to the side indicating that I was sort of sideways… attempting a description usually came out even more confusing. But finally I realized that with only a few days left in Mindelo, I really should go see Luis. I should have gone to see him the first day that I arrived, but I figured that he wasn’t there working due to the festival activities. (I should have realized he was actually probably there fixing lots of instruments!).

Nevertheless, I jumped in the shower to get rid of an entire day of sweaty, city-meandering, and attempted to dress slightly similarly to how I looked the day i first met Luis Baptista. I figured I’d help them as much as I could to remember me, so that when I sense that they dno’t remember me, I know that I did all that I could to help them out.

Now how do I get there? I couldn’t remember the way to the little workshop. I had even scanned one of the photos that I took of the sign and put it on a usb pin drive.. but somehow I thought it would be more fun to find my way again. Except this time, I was going from a complete opposite direction. I could have gone around the big market, up the big hill, and by the bus stop where lots of old men just sat and stared and played cards… but I wanted to test my knowledge even further by accessing it from the house where I was staying. I sensed that it was close by, if my memory and good sense of direction [all you guy friends please stop laughing] was correct.

I caved. It was already about 5pm (I had waited till the late afternoon based on a suggestion from a musician. It was more fun to ask people how to get to the store. It opened up more room for adventure because it tested my language skills even further, and who knows, maybe I’d make another random friend out of it. I immediately asked a young guy with a backpack a block from my starting point. I whipped out the picture of myself with Luis and Eddy—myself in the middle holding up my cavaquinho. I think he was thinking “ok, TMI why are you telling me this?” in creole. But he was cool and said he’d walk with me to where he thought it was located. I hardly understood him because he didn’t really speak Portuguese, but it was enough because I really just kept describing things that remembered about the place’s location—rotunda, little sign, on top of the hill, little workshop, “where one makes guitars”, etc. He led me to a place called “academia de musica” which was a big music school nearby. Americo had recently told me about this school which teaches people about sound systems, audio engineering etc., but how it never got used because somehow the local government has a monopoly on the audio industry. Anyway, this was NOT the Casa de Musca of Luis Baptista that I remembered. I calmly told him thank you and said that this was not it, but that maybe the people inside might know. He looked puzzled and I explained that it was actually more like a house, where the bottom floor was a workshop, and the top was a little attick where they held classes. Oh I remember, my friend took me there once, he said in creole. So off we went, further up the hill. It was funny—I actually knew lots of people as I passed by—all friends or relatives of my main contact who lived in that block. Then this guy had some friends say hello to him as we walked by. I was secretly laughing, as if to compete for passerby-hello’s.

Finally the guy pointed to the little sign that I remembered so well. I thought about taking a photo, but it would have been the exact same photo as the one I took in 2008. Deep breath.
I entered as the guy drifted off sayin “nada, nada” when I thanked him profusesly.

There they were, Eddy and Luis sanding an instrument and painting a guitar blue. The sander was loud, so there was an awkward moment when all I did was smile and wave hello. Edy saw me first, and luis didn’t look up for a while until Edy told him to turn off the sander.

“um. Hi.” I said, holding a giant cvs photo envelope awkwardly under my armpit.
I remembered t
Nervously, I just began babbling quickly.
“I’m not sure if you remember me, but I was here in 2008 and you made me a cavaquinho.”… and I pulled out some of the photos… I hung out here when you made it, and since I was back for the music festival I wanted to pass by and show you where yoru work had travelled in the world.”…

They smiled. What smiles they had. Edy’s formally silent voice sounded with a little awknowledging sigh of surprise, and Luis, with his bright green eyes laughed and thanked me for stopping in to share. I dno’t think they remembered me at first, but then they did after seeing the photos. They loved the picturesof me dancing from the side of the Ford, and the posed picture of Luis holding a mandolin with “bling bling” sunglasses on inside. He motioned that he would put that one up on the wall. I don’t know if my picture will make it up there, but maybe I’ll find out during the next stop-by. I didn’t really tell him about the story behind the cavaquinho song, but rather awkwardly laughed at how I only really had one song, but I emphasized that it was a special and emotional song for a number of reasons. I asked him about their recent cd project ( I heard from people that he launched a new cd) and so I bought it from him. This time around we didn’t jam and hang out as much, mostly because I was strangely nervous, and because they seemed busy. They carefully looked through the pictures with bright powder blue paint all over their fingers. They also didn’t have any cavaquinhos in the workshop thatday, so neither of us could really share what we were up to musically.

I then insisted that we take a few more photographs. Instead of holding up an instrument this time, the cheesy snapshot now included me smiling with my new Baptistinhas cd, and Luis, holding the plethora of photos. The guy who we snagged to take the photograph kept snapping the photo too far to the left. I wonder if he had an equilibrium problem. I thought posting that one would be most relevant to the story.

I had about 5 little funny goodbye’s. I kept staying, “ok see you later” and then kept talking. A few times I think that Luis invited me to hang out… but I couldn’t tell if he meant, “you can stay and hang out here” or “lets hang out while you are here” or “next time we will hang out more,”so I just let it be and smiled and said “ok, I have your number.” I couldn’t remember if he was married, so that leaves even more possible interpretations of those phrases. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful moment, quite perfectly unexpected and also fulfilled what I had hoped would happen.

I should have brought my EP cd to give to them, so that they could listen to my cavaquinho song, but what is great is that I can now go back again with this second present when I swing by again to Mindelo in a few weeks.

Because I don’t want this story to end.