ABSTRACT
On a hot summer evening in 2008, I arrived at Toronto’s Christie Pits Park to attend a tambor de crioula workshop, a unique opportunity as this traditional music/dance/play modality from northeastern Brazil is virtually unknown abroad.1 While the workshop apparently had been canceled, several in attendance-like myself-had failed to be notifi ed. Frustration gave way to opportunity, however, as conversation with other percussionists turned the occasion into fi eldwork. One exchange was particularly informative: Jonathan Rothman (also known as J.R.), a cultural producer and freelance journalist in his early 30s I knew superfi cially, told us of his fi rst encounter with Brazilian performance culture in Toronto about ten years earlier.2 He and his friend Itay (Ty) Keshet (an emergency MD currently living in Pennsylvania) were walking down a busy street when they heard the spellbinding sounds of what they would later learn was a berimbau.3 Shortly thereafter, they spotted a robust man executing elaborate acrobatics in a display of fi tness and dexterity. Sighting a capoeira practice (the martial art derived from descendants of African slaves) turned out to be J.R.’s serendipitous introduction to what would become an endearing passion and occupy large portions of his free time: the Afro-Brazilian performing arts.4 This typical story of love at fi rst sight in the age of ‘transnational soundscapes’ (Lopes 2008) would not be all that remarkable if it were not for the fact that J.R. refers to himself tongue in cheek as a ‘Born-AgainBrazilian’. For Jonathan, the drive to embody a Brazilian way of life is today signifi cantly mediated by the practice of musicking (Small 1998), and he is not alone in this pursuit.5
