Membership in Batala NYC is restricted to women, which makes it different from every other Brazilian percussion ensemble here, and from most other Batala groups around the world. For years there was talk within the local New York samba community about starting a women's percussion ensemble, but for many reasons nothing ever got started until the genesis of Batala New York. Now, after only four months, they're playing shows, developing talent within their ranks, and establishing a small but growing following. Growing pains -- inevitable for any large music project -- include a shortage of some drums and difficulty finding soundproof rehearsal space. They've been kicked out of parks and some indoor rehearsal studios, but these are the same problems faced by many large, established samba bands that have been around for years.
Their director, Stacy Kovacs, was not especially well-known within the Brazilian music scene before taking on this project. She's neither a professional musician nor Brazilian but, like me and many others, found her passion once she heard Brazilian music, and she played for years at various times with three of the largest local baterias here: Manhattan Samba, Samba New York, and Maracatu New York. (She earns her living as a physician assistant at a Brooklyn hospital.) But Stacy's mission and dedication go way beyond specifically Brazilian music. She wants to empower women through music, percussion, and dance -- and her band's ranks are filling rapidly with women who want to be a part of that vision.
I met up with Batala NYC this past Sunday and watched them rehearse at the Actors' Fund theater in the Schermerhorn Building in Brooklyn, and spent a few minutes talking with Stacy and her vision for this new project.
Kovacs: Yes, born in Orchard Park, NY, a suburb of Buffalo.
BMB: How'd you get mixed up in Brazilian music?
Kovacs: I started playing drums -- percussion -- when I was 8. I had the fortune of having parents who were willing to have me play such a loud instrument. Most of my friends were playing flutes or clarinets...I continued (drumming) through high school, then went to college, and ended up playing trombone. I went to a Big Ten school -- Michigan State University -- and all those guys were on the drum line. I didn't think I was good enough to make the drum line, so I stuck with trombone, moved to New York after some grad school, and was playing trombone in some marching bands, but really wanted to get back into drumming...The American drum corps was always part of me...And I found Philip Galinsky and Samba New York via Craig's List. He had a beginner's class; I started playing in his bateria, and just got back into drumming, and got addicted to Brazilian rhythms.
BMB: Why a women's-only drumming group?
Kovacs: Just for the record, Batala is a co-ed organization. New York is women only.
For American people in public school, my experience is that most girls are tunneled into the flute/ trombone / clarinet category. The boys play the trumpets and drums, and the loud instruments. I feel it's almost a gender role...girls don't play drums. A lot of the women who've joined have said they always wanted to play drums but were never given the opportunity, and others have never had the opportunity to play any instrument, period. A second reason is that, traditionally in a lot of cultures, women were not allowed to touch drums. In West African cultures, and even in Brazil, drums were reserved for men, and the women were supposed to dance. Even up until the mid 1970s or 1980s, to my knowledge, women were not allowed to play drums...A third reason is because, frankly, New York City doesn't have an all-women's anything, except I think a chorus. So you take all these women, put them on powerful-sounding drums -- playing these powerful rhythms that are based on West African rhythms -- make them play really well, and dance at the same time, it's ... quite amazing to watch the whole thing. The dancing and the drumming and the fact that it's all women adds a feminine element to something that is so traditionally male. Most males don't dance...if you watch a bateria, they'll move a little, but they don't actually dance.
Another reason is that I've played in quite a few drumming groups in NYC. Most of them are dominated by men, and when I try to get my female friends to come play, most of them are like, "Well, I don't know... so many guys..." But when I asked them, "If it was all women, would you go?" most of them would say, "heck, yeah!" So as much as I love men, they do tend to change the dynamic.
BMB: One thing I noticed was that no one was playing when they weren't supposed to play.
Kovacs: As in noodling?
BMB: As in noodling.
Kovacs: That is definintely something that's different than when you play with dudes. They tend to noodle when the director is talking...There was some noodling (earlier). I put a stop to it. (laughing)
BMB: How does the organization work?
Kovacs: Batala was started in 1997 in Paris, France, by a Brazilian gentleman from Salvador named Giba Conçalves. He's from Liberdade, one of the poorer neighborhoods there; he was a dancer and played with Ilê Aiyê and other Afro-blocos. He ended up in Paris playing in a band there, and then stayed to attend college ...I believe he was studying bass guitar at the time. This is the story I'm told: He was basically bored on Sunday afternoons, which, where he comes from, is the time when everyone comes out and plays, hangs out and gets together. So he got some friends together and started this thing on Sunday afternoons, which grew to 60 people in less than a year. That was in 1997...(Since then) it's spread through Europe, it's now in five locations in France, 6 or 7 in the UK, there's one in the Netherlands, Austria ... Greece now has one, Spain has two.
Around that same time, Giba's good friend Alberto Pitta, a musician and artist connected to a (Salvador) neighborhood called Pirajá ... formed Cortejo Afro in response to the Salvador carnaval having mostly axé music, rather than traditional African drumming... Giba is the musical director of Cortejo Afro as well as Batala, and Pitta runs pretty much everything else to do with Cortejo Afro. Cortejo Afro is an arts education project, part of Instituto Oya, based in Pirajá...it's an after-school program for kids, it has job training for people who don't finish high school, babysitting, health care...it's also the drumming and musical bloco...
The link there is that, because Giba is musical director of both (organizations), any member of Batala is invited to play in Carnaval with Cortejo Afro, which is pretty much the only Afro-Brazilian group that allows non-Brazilian white people to play in Salvador Carnaval.
BMB: That's fabulous...especially for Bahia Carnaval, it's kind of unheard of.
Kovacs: There are a lot of women as well, because even though most Batala (groups) are co-ed, most are dominated by women.
BMB: So for women in New York, it's free to join, but there's a materials fee?
Kovacs: There's no ongoing fee. There's a $100 starter kit, which comes with two belts, two sticks, two CDs, and a t-shirt that's hand-screen printed in Salvador by the people in Pirajá. The rest of the money goes towards rehearsal space, fees, but...I don't get paid, no one in this organization gets paid.
BMB: So this probably benefits a lot of people in the Pirajá neighborhood?
Kovacs: Oh, yeah. Batala every year for Carnaval pumps the equivalent of 15,000 euros into the economy there. This past year, there were 47 of us in the Batala house, the year before there were 70...It's called Batala Hostel, and any member of Batala can stay there at any time. Giba bought the house in a neighborhood called Saúde, near Pelorinho. His family lives there, but there are about 15-16 rooms, and 8-9 are completely empty and reserved for travelers. When we travel there for Carnaval, we stay there. It's very cheap, and his sisters actually cook for us. It's pretty amazing.
BMB: What about other cities in the U.S.? How many American cities are we talking about?
Kovacs: Right now the only two that exist, as in playing shows and rehearsing, are New York and Washington. Washington just celebrated their fifth year anniversary. There is a group in Houston -- a woman from Washington moved to Houston and has been trying to start one there. There's also a gentleman in Berkeley, CA who is trying to start one. He'll be coming up here for Brazil weekend to meet Giba and all that.
BMB: That's a huge scene in San Francisco.
Kovacs: Yes, he actually has his own group already, and wanted to do workshops with Giba, and somehow Giba convinced him to turn his group into Batala.
You basically get permission from Giba to start one of these bands. I got the idea last year on Brazil weekend...I was (supposed to be) marching with another group, which happened to be late. I was the only one there, with my drum. So me and Laura Torell and a few others who were there with their instruments just latched onto Batala and played with them. I knew about the group in Washington, and knew it was part of a larger, global project, but I was thinking "Why does New York not have this? We're New York City, for Christ sake!" So after that weekend I emailed Washington first, and they put me in touch with a gentleman named Paolo who is musical director of Batala in Brasilia, and Giba's right-hand man. I was given a choice either to pay for Giba to come up to New York, have him bring the drums and everything we need, or go to Carnaval and meet Giba there, and experience life with Batala in the house, and march at carnaval. So it was a pretty obvious choice. I went down there.
BMB: So you started the band at the end of March?
Kovacs: Yes. Carnaval was in early February, we came back with 35 drums. We had a meet-and-greet party on March 9, and our first rehearsal on the last Saturday of March. We had about 18 women that day, and probably about 15 of them are still around. Our list of people who've come to play and are interested is about 38 or 39.
BMB: I heard there is also a wait-list at this point.
Kovacs: There is and there isn't. There's a waiting list for certain drums. Most people want to play the dobra because it's the dancing drum, up front. Everyone sees them and, once you play one, you don't want to play anything else. But we have about eight surdos available right now, and what I'm starting to realize is that...just because people want to play the dobra doesn't mean they can. So, I want them to start on surdo, learn the arrangements, the hand signals, so that they can transition to dobra later, because we just don't have any more. We have nine, and we're getting more soon, but they do come from Salvador and have to be brought by someone -- they're not shipped.
I did buy two from Washington, because I needed two more, and I went to the Encontro in Paris at the beginning of July for the 15-year anniversary and brought ten more drums back. Basically Paris, Brasilia, and the house in Pirajá is where the drums are stored.
BMB: If this group is a smashing success over the next two years, what will it look like?
Kovacs: I want 150 women out there. Right now, Washington has 90, but they'll get 50 or 60 people at a show. They do do smaller shows. My vision is 150 -- this is New York City, the bigger the better. I think it can be done. Our issue right now is rehearsal space -- we've been kicked out of some parks, as I said. We've been kicked out of some dance studios that had neighboring buildings that are residential, where our sound went right through the walls. But I envision us being really big, playing a lot of events, not necessarily Brazilian. I know this is Brazilian music, but it's also a group of women doing something they love, and we can touch people of any culture. Music transcends every culture and language. As much as we do play Brazilian music, I don't want to limit us to that. We can really reach anybody who is open to music and dancing.
It was interesting: I did a workshop with a gentleman who spoke only Portuguese, and I was there with 30 other people, and didn't understand a word he was saying -- but I did, because it was music.
BMB: The universal language.
Kovacs: Pretty much, yeah. It was quite incredible -- I actually understood everything he was saying, even though I had no clue what he was saying.
BMB: Funny how that works! (laughter)
Kovacs: So, ultimately I want us to be as huge as we can be. I would love to do as many parades as possible, events, shows, parties, weddings. We're open to anything that can accomodate our volume, because we do get loud and turn heads. We actually did an event for the Atlantic Avenue Business Improvement District -- their first annual street fair -- and when we were finished, a woman came up to us and said "I was in my building 15 stories up and three blocks away, and I just had to come and see what was going on." So, we're pretty loud.
BMB: Where can we expect to find you playing in the next several months?
Kovacs: We have a show in Astoria Park on August 19, part of New York City Summer Walks, a bunch of street or park festivals where they shut down the area and have music, food, and vendors. Then we have Brazil weekend, which is Labor Day weekend here. Giba is actually coming for that, and will do some workshops with us, along with about 8 people from Paris Batala, 9 or 10 from Brasilia, and about 15 from Washington. They're all coming for the Lavagem da Rua parade on Saturday...Then we'll play a show at some point on Sunday. In September we're trying to get into the Atlantic Antic, and have a show in Brooklyn Heights -- another New York City Summer Walks event. We also got asked to play at the World Maker Fair, which is in Queens, in Flushing Meadow Park, the last weekend of September, on Saturday...We were rehearsing outside for a while under the Manhattan Bridge overpass, in DUMBO, and a gentleman emailed me two weeks ago and said he was driving by, and heard us and saw us, and he's the person who books groups for the World Maker Fair, and he really loved us and wants us to play!
BMB: So being loud has its advantages as well as its disadvantages!
Kovacs: It does. We've gotten some members that way too. One woman was riding her bike over the bridge, heard us, and thought we were the Brooklyn Steppers, then realized: "Wait -- that's all women. What's going on?" She came up, and I invited her to play. That's how it works, that's Giba's vision. You get out into the community, anyone can do it, as long as they show up.
Cool interview Jeff Thanks! - Billy
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