Assim Ta Bom!!!

At the elevated heights of Rua Oscar Freire, Rua Teodoro Sampaio is known for music  – up where Oscar Freire runs out of boutiques and restaurants, Teodoro crosses it with shops offering every kind of musical instrument and supporting electronics, instrument repair, scores and books, CDs, and the odd bar. Lower down though, Teodoro becomes a furniture market, with emporiums selling all types of mobiliário – beds, chairs  couches and armchairs, stools, tables, accessories – and it stretches for many blocks. It’s surprising to find live music down here, but that’s just what the barzinho on the corner of Teodoro Sampaio and Rua Joaquim Antunes serves up every Friday night.

On the corner of Sampaio and Antunes

Making its presence heard easily over the traffic grinding its way up Teodoro, a samba band is playing and singing lustily. Assim Ta Bom (Well Alright!) has been playing samba together for 20 years. The core of the band is two brothers on surdo (a large standard bass drum played with a rubber-headed beater) and four-string cavaquinho, and a father-and-son team on percussion and vocals. They also substitute for the cuíca, a kind of squeaking drum, by imitating its characteristic sound vocally. A tantao and a tamborim complete the ensemble.

Assim Ta Bom in action

All the players are mic-ed, and sing along vigorously. And as always in Brazil, not only the band but all of the audience too know the words, and they sing along freely. The band plays in the upstairs room, tiled and lit with neon. The beer is plentiful, and resupplied promptly; bar snacks are served too. The audience comes in large groups, and they run their tabs by putting the empties in their beer crate, and settling up at the end of the night. One table of eight or so consume a bottle of vodka – mostly the men – in an hour. It’s a raucous, good-natured event.

The audience gets on its feet in style

The lyrics are bawled out over poly-rhythmic drumming, through which the cavaquinho melody can just be discerned. This music, played in the same circular grouping or roda as capoeira, is about the rhythm and the words. It prompts some startlingly impressive dancing. As a gringo tourist, I am made to feel completely welcome.

Samba ao vivo

Assim Ta Bom are loud, warm, enjoyable – much like Brazil. The way the locals respond to them – not just friends and family, but casual passers-by and bar regulars too – suggest that like Brazil, they are here to stay.

Lanchonete Frevo

Sao Paulo is quiet this weekend. There are blocos out dancing in the streets – I can hear them coming up from Vila Madalena, as can the barking dogs, followed it seems inexorably by emergency sirens – but many folk have gone elsewhere to sample the delights of carnaval, while the city known in Brazil for hard work (and some say for not knowing how to play) pauses to draw breath. It rained heavily today, as it can in January and February. That dampens carnaval spirits. This year’s accessory is the clear plastic disposal anorak.

Today I strolled down Rua Augusta to the corner of Rua Oscar Friere. It’s an interesting mix – Oscar Freire is all designer boutiques and high-end restaurants, though the locals say that trade is a little precarious. Augusta on the other hand is known for drag queens and prostitutes. In previous generations it was known for chic coffee bars and the fashionable youth style of la dolce vita.

Center Oscar Freire Augusta

The building on the corner is an elegant example of Brutalism, the raw concrete cast in flat facades pierced by rounded windows. The concrete of the balconies is harder to keep clean, and the inhabitants have domesticated them with paint, but the faintly nautical effect can be glimpsed behind the abundant plant life and inserted air conditioners.

A graphic sign used to grace the shopfront on Oscar Freire, showing a man drawn in black and white dancing with a coloured umbrella. (Google Earth is keen on copyright.) Lanchonete (pronounced lanchonetchi) Frevo has been here since 1956.

Entrance to Rua Oscar Freire 603

On Sunday afternoon it’s quiet, though it does a brisk trade during the week. The diner is famous for beiruites – a cross between a hamburger and a steak sandwich, it’s a slice of beef with sliced tomato, melted cheese and oregano, in toasted pita bread. A small one is a decent snack. A chope of draught beer makes a refreshing accompaniment. Service is copious, fast and friendly.

The business is built on this simple fare. The decor, unchanged since it opened, has moved from being out of fashion to being a design classic, by virtue of standing still. Even the appliances – scales, beer pump, air conditioning – are vintage. They don’t make ’em like that any more.

Wire and wood figure 1956

Primrose yellow tiling, fixed red bar stools, and wooden decoration of the supporting beams, window sills, hanging lamps and the front of the kitchen – styled as a beach hut, complete with plastic palm trees – anchor it firmly in the 1950s. The same colour scheme of grey, red and primrose yellow is used in its upmarket sister site.

Frevo Shopping Iguatemi

The square tables start to fill up, some pushed together for groups of family and friends. I order dessert, discovering that they do not serve coffee, so I order another chope.

He dances over the beer pump

The bevelled mirrors bolted to the walls, even the taste of the dessert – strawberry ice-cream with tinned fruit salad – is 1950s. Frevo is an institution, one of those places which has been around long enough to boast about it, with black and white photographs, with regular and one might say ancient customers, and a venerable patron.

Dancing couple, cool breeze

And the name? Frevo is the music and dance of carnaval from Recife in the north-east of Brazil, the umbrellas integrated into an acrobatic dance routine. Perfect for a rainy Sao Paulo carnaval afternoon.