Harlem to Copacabana: Living in the Americas, Dec.30 to Jan. 2

When it comes to the theater of daily life, Brazilians may be to other Americans as James Brown was to other singers. They put on a show that would be damned hard to beat.

I'd seen James Brown play for the first time about four years ago at a Washington rock station's Christmas concert, which featured performers young enough to be his sons or grandsons. Brown blew them away. Other singers stood with their guitars and sang songs filled with complaints. James Brown danced and entertained. My then boyfriend, now husband David and I caught two more of his shows after that.

We happened to be in New York shortly after James Brown died, and so we went to see people waiting to pay respects at Apollo Theater on Harlem's 125th Street, which held a wake for him. The line stretched for blocks to the east and west of the Apollo.

Brazilian Innovation

Some days later, we left to start our big trip and saw religious scenes played on Copacabana beach on New Year's Eve were a little like a James Brown show-- an intense celebration of the things that are important, love, passion and good wishes. Brazil has a religion called candomble, which mixes European and African traditions with homegrown Brazilian innovations.

Different groups set up little squares on the beach, roped off sections abut a third the size of basketball courts. The leaders of the ceremonies dressed in white. Drummers played. People waited in line for their meetings with the religious leaders, who blew cigar smoke on them, waved their hands over them and then hugged them before sending the visitors on their way.
People set up circles of candles in the sand.

There was live music from a stage including swing numbers and "New York. New York." We walked over to the more glamorous Ipanema neighborhood and then back to Copacabana. There were people who had set up tents or the beach for groups. Parents walked with children. Groups of teenagers, well behaved and laughing, traveled across the beach.

Copacabana is lined with high-rise hotels and apartment buildings. Most of the rooms in them were lit for   parties. A hotel had a stories-long clock counting down the final hours and minutes of 2006. People gathered at the water as midnight approached. The crowd stayed even though bits of drizzle. The fireworks went on for more than 10 minutes, exploding above a beach filled with people carrying umbrellas. Brazilians jump in the ocean on New Year's Eve and throw flowers. It's an honor to the goddess of the sea, Yemanja (Yeah-man-jah), another figure from African religion who has thrived in Brazil David and I joined in. We jumped in the waves, going in a bit above our knees.

`Launch' Counters

People in Rio smile much bigger than they do in the U.S. as a rule. They can be talking at a lunch downtown and they have broad relaxed smiles like people in the U.S. have after a day at the beach. David and I quickly learned that our best bets for eating during the day were "launch" counters, little restaurants where you sit at the counter or at tables outside. More formal restaurants charge $10 to $15 for pasta and chicken dishes. For about $8 or less, we'd sit at the counter and get two sandwiches and icy juices. The meat served ranged from tasty to tough. The bread was always good, rolls similar to French bread.

Our favorite juice was acai, a rich purplish berry with ice like a thick sorbet. The people working at the counter give out spoons for people to use for the acai. We had two good dinners in Rio, both at a place near our hotel called Nova Capela, which is where we are eating in these pictures. On our first night in Rio, we ordered there what seemed to us two pricey dinners. We learned that each plate had more than enough food for two. The restaurant reminded us of Ralph's in Philadelphia, a place with acceptable decor that puts most of its efforts into the food. On our last visit, we split a veal stew with potatoes I still remember. They were full of a rich flavor, unlike the ones I usually find at home.

Nightlife in Lapa

Our hotel was near the center of Rio, a short ride on the city´s subway from the beach. We worried that the area might be a little dicey at night.
We tried on our first afternoon in Rio to plot a well-lit route through the area, called Lapa, so we could visit one of the local music clubs. That turned out not to be necessary at all. The streets filled at night. David and I would have a predinner drink at this little place, Carlito's, and look out on an aqueduct and the street scene.

After dinner, we wound up a club charging a cover of about $7 for a good band playing Brazilian music. The club had good paintings in a folk style on the walls. Teenagers, in couples and groups, shared the dance floor with people old enough to be their parents and even grandparents. This was another time I was reminded of James Brown. It's unusual to see people of all ages mixing at shows in the U.S.

St. Joseph Revived, Armed Archangels and Christ as Triplets: Cuzco School of Painting. Nov.-Dec. 2008.

Saint Joseph gets a far better deal in paintings of colonial Peru than he does in much of European art.

Look to the left to see how Italian Renaissance artist Botticelli depicted Joseph in a 1476 painting.
Stooped and aged, Joseph stands off to the side. Joseph fares even worse in the 1528 painting below by another Italian artist, Andrea del Sarto.

Botticelli's Joseph looks at least as if he could lead the donkey for Mary, even if he couldn't handle much else. In del Sarto's hands, Joseph is a nervous wreck, his hand clutching his throat, arms folded across his body. This Joseph will be one more burden for the weary Mary in the painting.




Instead of pushing Joseph to the side, Peruvian colonial painters put Joseph front and center, as seen in this little painting to the left. And, he's a vigorous dark-haired handsome Joseph who's often seen caring for Jesus alone.

The makeover stems partly from a shift in how the Spanish in the 16th and 17th centuries depicted Joseph, and partly from how well the saint's story fit with beliefs long held by the Inca.

The painting below, done in Spain by El Greco around 1597, shows a Joseph who combines great strength and incredible tenderness. El Greco stretches out Joseph and elongates him, something that the painter often did with his subjects. Still, Joseph looks powerful and steady, more connected to the earth than many of El Greco's subjects. Joseph's hand on the Christ child has a touch that seems at once soft and sheltering.

       Ardent Promoter

Joseph had an ardent promoter in one of the most famous women in Spanish history, Theresa D'Avila (1515-1582).

She seems like quite a character. She could write with incredible grace --"Let nothing disturb thee; Let nothing dismay thee; All thing pass; God never changes" -- and at other times sound like a modern talk-radio host, insulting people who held opposing views to her. Art historian Christopher Wilson* wrote on how Theresa once worried that it was an "imperfection" to own an ornate painting until the Lord told her not to get rid of something that awakens love. "Theresa said that the Lord told her that Lutherans had gone astray because the devil took from them all means of awakening," Wilson wrote. An effective reformer of Spanish religious life, the influential Theresa called Joseph the "glorious patriarch," and claimed his personal support helped her many times.

The Inca had their own reasons for taking a liking to Joseph. Their religion said that they descended from Manco Cápac, a son of the sun god, who carried a golden staff. Joseph often carried a stalk of lilies in the paintings that reached Peru. Manco Capac's story involved wanderings in search of the right home for the Incas, and Joseph was often seen leading his family to safety in Egypt.

So, Theresa D'Avila and Manco Capac helped make Joseph one of the most popular subjects in the paintings of colonial Peru, such as the one seen to the right.
This is an example of what's known as Cuzco Style of painting, named for the Inca city where many Peruvian artists mixed European models of paintings with their own customs and came up with something pretty grand. The Brooklyn Museum owns this painting. Its Web page for this painting points out that the sandals that Jesus wears are made in an Incan style.

Flat and Flowery

A border of rose and lilies once framed the St. Joseph painting, the Brooklyn Museum's Web page points out. Early Cuzco School paintings in general don't make serious attempt to show their subjects in a landscape or realistic setting. A flat quality is typical for these paintings, which first were developed for use in converting the Inca to Catholicism. Many of the Cuzco School paintings devote elaborate detail to the clothes worn by the saints and virgins, perhaps a carryover from the Inca's own great love for textiles. Among the Inca, certain fine materials were reserved for the elite.

The painters in the Cuzco style often showed their subjects decked with flowers or framed by them, or decked and framed with flowers as in this Cuzco-style painting of the Virgin of Pomata, shown to the left. Her headdress looks like the feather ones worn by the Incas.



The Incas took on the new gods of the Spanish, just as they earlier had absorbed and modified gods of the fellow South American people that they had conquered. This mixing of gods and beliefs and art is the norm in human history. The word "Spanish," after all, summarizes the result of blending over centuries the traditions of Germanic tribes with those of Moors and Jews from North Africa and the Mediterranean, with some lingering hints of the Roman Empire.

And, the Spanish brought more than their own brand of "the European" to the Inca. Fanciful and unrealistic Flemish prints of soldiers made it the New World.

These had great appeal for the young artists painting in Cuzco, who turned these armed dandies into archangels. Wings and feathers are added to the portraits of men in clothes that no one would wear to a real battle. The archangels of the Cuzco school sport brocade, silk and lace. Some carry swords and others hold a long gun known as an arquebus, as shown in painting to the right from the collection of Bolivia's National Museum of Art in La Paz.

Three is a Magic Number

Archangels predate Christianity, having made appearances earlier in Judaism and a religion practiced in what's now Iran in the centuries before the birth of Christ, known today as Zoroastrianism. People seem to find comfort in the idea of winged messengers of God, maybe from looking up at the birds in the endless sky. This is one of the common themes that mankind likes and repeats over and over in different cultures, along with creation stories and things grouped into threes.

Although the church considered them heretical, many Cuzco School paintings featured Christ as triplets. These paintings reminded me of a pictures of the Hindu trinity, as seen to the right in an image copied from Wikipedia. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are about the same size and grouped together. I don't think there's any connection between the Cuzco School and the Indian trinities, other than people around the world liking things grouped in threes. The Inca had a trinity of sorts before the Spanish arrived with the sun god and his children, Manco Capac and mother of the Inca, Mama Coya, scholar Barbara von Barghahn* has written.
I've never heard a better explanation for why humans like trios that the lines Schoolhouse Rock's "Three is a Magic Number" about how that three -man, woman and child - "is a family." 

Along with armed archangels and Christ as triplets, the Cuzco School artists produced plenty of paintings of the Holy Family, such as the one below from the Jackson Auction site of the Holy Family. 

This is not the Madonna and Child with a Joseph off to the side, two plus a somewhat distant one, which is common in Europe. It's three, united.

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*Sometimes you're better off breaking a resolution. I'm trying to make a dent in my stack of unread books and so have tried not to buy more. Luckily for me, Books America put a copy of a 1991 exhibition catalog out on the cart in front of its 22nd Street store last year. For days, the lovely front cover of "Temples of Gold, Crowns of Silver : Reflections of Majesty in the Viceregal Americas" called to me as I walked by. I finally broke down and bought it, and it made my trip to Peru and Bolivia so much richer. In the blog above, I refer particularly to essays in the book contributed by two George Washington University scholars, Christopher Wilson's "Strong Men and Frontiers : Conquest of the Spanish Mystics" and Barbara von Barghahn's "A Crucible of Gold : The `Rising Sun' of Monarchy in the Blending of Cultures."

My first ''Russian'' word-- fax

My husband points to a blue symbol, a circle with a line through it, on a sturdy white plastic bag. He's decided to use the shopping bag, a souvenir saved from his 2002 Central Asia visit, to help me learn the Cyrillic alphabet.
"You've seen that symbol on fraternity sweatshirts, " he asks me, making this a game, to pass time during a Christmas Day layover at Chicago's O'Hare airport. ''What sound does that make?"

"Phi, phi," I say. "Ffff."
An A and a K follow the phi sign. These are the same in the Russian alphabet as in the letters used in English. Next and last comes a C. Many Americans could guess how to pronounce that letter. We grew up knowing that one of the C's in the CCCP logos seen on Russia's Olympic team jackets stood for Soviet.

"Fax, that's fax," I say.

We move on to other words printed on the bag, which I'm using to carry my two straw sun hats onto planes. We will start a round-the-world trip after our holiday visits with my husband's family in Nebraska and mine in New York. Three of our destinations are former Soviet republics, where Russian is spoken. The bag also has an abbreviation for telephone and the word, center, as in shopping center, written in Cyrillic letters as they are pronounced in English. E-mail appears e-mail, without Cyrillic letters.

It hadn't occurred to me that shopping centers in Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek, have e-mail and faxes. My husband's stories of Central Asia tell of a place so different from the U.S. He's told me of how people welcomed him in Kyrgyzstan, of how they took such time to make him dinners and show him the sights. It sounded like a place where people enjoyed talking with a visitor over hot tea and naan bread with sweet jam.

But, there's no reason that people can't do that and use e-mail too. People adopt new things and keep the familiar ones that work for them. Last year, a teenage waiter in a restaurant in Yangon served us our breakfast plates of noodles wearing a traditional ankle-length sarong and a T-shirt featuring Linkin Park, which Wikipedia describes as a U.S. "nu metal" group. I had to look Linkin Park up since it was a little too hip for me. The T-shirt was crisp, although not brand new. It looked like the kid valued it.

Like most of the men we saw in Myanmar, our waiter seemed less impressed with the jeans and trousers visitors wear. Men in that hot-weather country, once called Burma, have been seen Europeans in pants for centuries. The local men stick with light cool wraparound skirts, which also may be easier to launder and replace.

(East Coast pizza from Google Images.)

I've thought of these chances to see what cultures adopt as being ''focaccia-mit-tomate'' moments since seeing that dish on a menu at Frankfurt airport in 2005. That was Germans borrowing from Italians, who got the tomato courtesy of Spain's conquest of the New World and then improved it.

Pastas with a red sauce and focaccia with tomato seem so traditionally Italian. A few centuries ago, they were creative, even bold, new recipes like today's mixing of Asian flavors with fish from Chile in many restaurants. I'm sure I'll be spotting one of my favorite examples of fusion cuisine pizza, on this round-the-world trip. There also will be Starbucks stands, baseball caps with New York Yankees logos and ads for Hollywood movies.
What will be fun is seeing what remains truly Brazilian, Chilean, Australian, Moroccan, Armenian or Turkish. We'll wander to find it at neighborhood joints filled with local people for lunch and dinner, checking out what's playing on the television as well as what's offered on the menu.
We'll see whether people on local buses and subways crowd the doors or form neat lines. Do they smile at strangers in packed train cars or ignore them? What's on sale at the grocery store? Do people heading to offices on weekdays sit with the paper in cafes and use a proper cup and saucer for their coffee? Or, do they race through the streets carrying paper cups?
Please send any suggestions for what's helped you learn something surprising about a country in your travels. I'll be talking with local people as much as I can, given my limited or currently nonexistent knowledge of languages spoken in some countries we will visit.
I'm sure to run into many people who want to practice their English. This is one of the pieces of blind luck you get by being born in the U.S. We're all a bit like that cliche of the person born on third base who thinks he hit a triple.
We're raised speaking the bossiest language of our time. The French have adopted the weekend and Brazilians refer to their malls as shopping. A Vietnamese cab driver played the Eagles' "Hotel California" after picking me up from the airport in 2002.
It was a disconcerting first selection--what with the song's references to the guest who can never leave and stabbing with steely knives--for an otherwise bland stream of American pop music played on the drive to Saigon. Later on that trip, a hotel clerk advised me that the Vietnamese words for thank you, cam on, sounds like the expression, "Come on." He nailed perfectly the tone Americans use when saying," Oh, come on."