News and opinions on current events from “The Land of the Southern Cross”.
Often in this space we feature performances of Brazilian music by well-known musicians. Today’s offering is a little closer to home. Back in 2018 we held a week of musical training, with a group of musicians from the US teaming up with some musicians from here and giving instruction in voice and instruments. One young…
While there is no evidence that everybody has a water buffalo, there is a squadron of Brazilian police, who do indeed have water buffalo – and ride them on patrol. The island of Marajó – not far from the city of Belém – apparently has one of the largest water buffalo populations in the world,…
The Brazilian song Tico Tico no Fuba has been arranged and played in many ways, and for good reason. It’s a really great tune! We’ve featured it on this site a couple times (see here and here). But perhaps one of the most unique of all arrangements to be found is that of Cecilia Siqueira…
Some may question my inclusion of this in a “Best of Brazil” post. After all, it’s an outlaw fleeing police and committing numerous traffic violations in the process. But every time I watch it, all I see are two artists at work. The guy in front leads the police on a wild five-minute chase through…
We featured this clip back in 2019 in a post where I talked about our new recorder orchestra. Since we have recently restarted our recorder project at Ebenézer (more on that in a future post) I thought it would be appropriate to give the video its own Best of Brazil post. Orlan Charles (Instagram, YouTube)…
The following video, taken recently here in São Luís, raises so many questions…and even more when you realize it is a drivers education car! View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sensacionalista Slz (@sensacionalistaslz) Never ones to let a situation like this go to waste, Brazilians took to the comments section, and their…
This ad, featuring an all-star cast of Brazilian players (Ronaldo, Cafu, etc) was broadcast in the lead-up to the 1998 World Cup. Not only is it possibly the best soccer-related advertisement to every be filmed, it is also an apt metaphor for the performance of the Brazilian team that particular World Cup, and most since…
We’ve featured the Brazilian classic “Tico Tico no Fubá” before on this website…but never like this. Here it gets a full orchestra treatment, and not just from one orchestra, but two! In reality, I found both and couldn’t decide which arrangement I liked better, so I included them both. First up, an orchestra that I…
After our annual conference it has become a habit for us to spend some time with a few of our missionary colleagues for fellowship and relaxation. We usually try to chose an area that will give us a chance to see some new aspect of Brazilian culture and/or history. Last year, for example, we stayed…
The Gruta da Lapinha is a spectacular series of caves located near the city of Belo Horizonte, in the state of Minas Gerais. I had the opportunity to tour the caverns a couple weeks ago during some down-time from the annual Baptist Mid Missions, Brazil conference. Here are some of the amazing things we saw:…