Side note on Samba

The samba de roda ("roda" means "wheel" or "circle") was unbelievably cool, a bunch of guys younger than me playing songs from the 50's and 60's--stuff you hear on David Byrne's O Samba compilation. There's a huge movement to keep this music alive here, kind of like the Swing revival in the US, but without the irony and self-consciousness. It's not a masquerade, like all the "rockabilly" fans in the States who tried to look exactly like the '59 Jerry Lee Lewis (as if he were a car) during the dot-com bubble. The bandleader did have a haircut like I imagine Jim Morrison would have had if he'd lived to experience disco, but it wasn't connected at all to the music. In other words, I suppose, there's plenty of postmodern trendiness in Brazil, but it wasn't dominating the bar that night.