Ainda Não Havia Para Mim, Rita Lee

May 9, 2023 by 4 Comments

It’s been long enough that I don’t remember their names. I don’t remember who I was with. I don’t remember which area it was (I think it was my second, in São José dos Campos, but I’m not sure anymore).

But I remember what happened. We were at a young family’s home. She was an inactive member of the church. He wasn’t a member. Both were friendly and welcoming. And on this visit, he pulled out his guitar. He started to play and sing. And I was introduced to “Sampa,” Caetano Veloso’s plaintive ode to São Paulo, his adopted city and my Mormon mission.

It wasn’t common, but occasionally on P-day, the district or zone I was in would get permission to go to the center of São Paulo; it was outside of our mission boundaries, but it was also, to a kid who grew up in the suburbs of San Diego, my first experience in a truly urban area, with all that brings with it. And a necessary stop on those trips to the city center were the informal markets that popped up on bridges and side streets. There were always a couple tables filled with (undoubtedly pirated) CDs.

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Filed Under: Media, Modern Era, Mormon, Music, Navel-Gazing & Poetic Observation, Pop Culture Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Me and Donovan Mitchell

July 21, 2020 by

The other day, Twitter recommended a bunch of topics for me to follow. And its recommendations confirmed for me the folly of paying attention to social media algorithms. Why?

Well, the first recommendation was Donovan Mitchell. And honestly, I had absolutely no idea who he was. (I’ve since learned that he plays for the Utah Jazz. Who knew?) Why did Twitter think I cared about a Utah Jazz basketball player? Probably because I tweet a lot about jazz. Like, the music.[fn1] And given the disaster that has been Utah’s response to Covid, I do more Utah-adjacent tweeting recently than I have done traditionally.

See, I don’t particularly care about the Utah Jazz.[fn2] I grew up in the suburbs of San Diego and shortly after my family moved there, the Clippers moved to LA. So growing up, to the extent I cared about professional basketball, I was a Lakers fan. In fact, the Lakers, the Clippers, the Knicks,[fn3] and the Bulls all have far more claim on my fandom that the Jazz (though growing up in a city without a basketball team, I didn’t really care much about the NBA.

But for a very short time, the Jazz managed to work their way into my religious life. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon, Society & Culture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Fearful Tales of Interlagos, Brazil

May 10, 2018 by

XDxRvANaHeather Collins is a convert and in-progress author of a book on patriarchal blessings she never shuts up about, but will probably never finish.  Follow her on Twitter.

The only time I ever trained a new missionary was in the most dangerous area I was ever assigned to in Brazil. She was Argentinian, and we dealt with a triple language barrier. I’d come without suitcases to take her back to our area, deep in the interior of São Paulo state. Tatuí was rural, relatively safe, and hours away from the city by public transit. We had a small branch to work with and had just baptized a child with no support at home.

I wasn’t happy about that baptism. I was tired of baptizing young kids whose parents wanted nothing to do with the Church. That was how I was baptized, and I knew the years of heartache that would be ahead of every child we did this to. The price of staying without parental support is higher than most people know.

I was frustrated with my area. I wanted to go anywhere else where I felt like baptism would be more likely. In my mind, that meant going back to the city. 

Then our phone rang. It was my mission president. There had been a change of plans. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Church Programs, Missionary, Mormon, Women Tagged With: , , , ,

#MutualNight: The Reunion Project’s “Varanda”

March 9, 2017 by

I’m pretty sure the first straight-ahead jazz album I ever owned was Stan Getz’s “Anniversary!” It’s been a long time (I was probably in 8th or 9th grade at the time), so I don’t remember all of the details, but I know I had it on tape, I’m almost positive I bought it at Sam Goody, and I probably bought it because the store was playing it at the time.

Years later, I opened my mission call to Brazil. When I opened it, I basically knew three things about Brazil: that it was in South America, that they spoke Portuguese, not Spanish, there, and that Brazil was the home of bossa nova. See, Stan Getz was one of the earliest American jazz musicians to popularize Brazilian bossa nova in the U.S., and Tom Jobim’s “Girl From Ipanema” led that charge.[fn1] And although “Anniversary!” wasn’t bossa nova, it introduced me to Getz, who eventually led me to Americanized Brazilian music. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Kulturblog, Music Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sampa

April 15, 2016 by

ipiranga-saojoao-575x431Last week, as I waited in the car to pick my daughter up from school, I heard an All Things Considered review of the recently-released album from Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. And, as these things do, it got me thinking about my mission.

When I got my call to the Brazil São Paulo East mission, I knew three things about Brazil: first, it was in South America. Second, they spoke Portuguese there. And third, it was the home of Bossa Nova.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Missionary, Mormon, Music Tagged With: , , , , , ,