Every Wednesday night, the Rengstorff Community Center transforms into an official “escola de samba,” or Brazilian samba school. The loud, lively Afro-Brazilian rhythms resonate from the basement as Sambao Para o Povo’s drummers and dancers from around the Peninsula and South Bay escape their day jobs to pound out beats.
“People asked me, ‘How can you stand the noise?'” said longtime Mountain View resident Olga Outzs, who has been drumming for more than 20 years. “But it’s very uplifting. It’s like therapy.”
Sambao Para o Povo, which means “samba for the people,” is led by ex-engineer Brad Hamilton of San Jose. On July 5, Hamilton was exhausted and sunburned from the previous day’s Redwood City parade, where Sambao performed.
But that didn’t stop him from leading two straight hours of bateria, or drumming class, that night at Rengstorff. He has taught bateria for eight years, but said he first started drumming “in the womb. Ask my mom.”
On Wednesday night, he stood in front of a semicircle of nine drummers playing a range of instruments — from the large bass surdo (which means “deaf” in Portuguese) to the handheld tamborim. Though he’s a self-proclaimed “surdo player at heart,” Hamilton led the group with a small drum called a repenique.
With a stick in one hand, Hamilton called out instructions, either through words, hand signs, his own drum or the whistle around his neck.
Sambao became a nonprofit in 2001 after splitting off from a Palo Alto group. Supported by dues (about $12 per class), it is an official “escola de samba,” or samba school, because it provides drum and dance classes throughout the year.
Each year, Sambao prepares for its major performance at the San Francisco Carnaval parade in May. As in the yearly Carnaval in Brazil, preparation involves developing a new, original theme song, or “enredo,” which is complete with costumes, dance moves and a float that all relate to the theme.
Sambao’s theme this year, written by Hamilton with some help from Portuguese translators, was “Carnaval is a dream come true.”
For Hamilton, Carnaval embodies “the constant integration of music and dance into every element of Brazilian life,” he said.
In the weeks leading up to Carnaval, Sambao’s numbers explode to more than 100, due to people who want to perform in the parade. But throughout the year there are about 15 regular drummers in the group, and the same number of dancers, coming from Mountain View and surrounding cities.
The most enthusiastic member of the group is also the youngest. Kelii Bibar, 18, comes from San Jose to bang on the surdo, with an enormous smile on her face.
“I start playing the drum and I get happier. I forget about everything,” she said.
Bibar joined Sambao at 16 with her older brother, and quickly worked her way up from the tamborim to the surdo.
“Kelii was one of the few people who could hold it down,” Hamilton said.
Sambao’s drummers have a range of experience, from 20 years to a few months. They are men and women of various ages and ethnicities; none are Brazilian.
Outzs traded her Middle Eastern drum for a samba drum 20 years ago and hasn’t looked back.
“I got hooked,” she said. Outzs, who plays the tamborim and a shaker called a caixixi, has been involved in various samba groups throughout the years at the Community School of Music and Arts, and in San Francisco, but finally landed at Rengstorff Community Center with Sambao.
“I discovered it was right in my own backyard. This is wonderful,” she said.
Ted Syrett, Sambao’s treasurer and a retired software engineer from Menlo Park, sits during practice while playing the two-toned agogo, or bells. He’s been at it for 10 years, and says participating in Sambao is about more than the music: When the drummers aren’t playing, they’re chatting and laughing together as a group.
“What we have here is a little church, minus the theology,” Syrett said.
