nonconformiststraightguy
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Museu do Homem do Nordeste
The Museu do Homem do Nordeste (Tues, Wed & Fri 11am–5pm, Thurs 8am–5pm, Sat & Sun 1–5pm) was assembled by anthropologists and is one of Brazil’s great museums and the best introduction there is to the history and culture of the Northeast. It’s quite a way out of central Recife. Take the “Dois IrmĂŁos” bus from outside the post office or from Parque 13 de Maio, at the bottom of Rua do HospĂcio; there are two “Dois IrmĂŁos” services, but the one marked “via Barbosa” is the one to get, a pleasant half-hour drive through leafy northern suburbs. The museum is not very easy to spot, on the left-hand side, so ask the driver or conductor where to get off.
The museum is split into several galleries, each devoted to one of the great themes of Northeastern economy and society: sugar, cattle, fishing, popular religion, festivals, ceramics and so on. The historical material is well displayed and interesting, but the museum’s strongest point is its unrivalled collection of popular art – there are displays not just of handicrafts, but also of cigarette packets, tobacco pouches and, best of all, a superb collection of postwar bottles of cachaça (rum). A look at the designs on the labels, very Brazilian adaptations of Western 1950s and 1960s kitsch, leaves you with nothing but admiration for the imagination – and drinking capacity – of the people who put the display together.
The first floor of the museum is largely devoted to the rich regional tradition of clay sculpture and pottery that still flourishes in the agreste and sertão, especially around Caruaru. The work of Mestre Vitalino, a peasant farmer in the village of Alto do Moura, is a highlight. In the 1920s, he began to make small statues depicting scenes of rural life, of an astonishing vitality and power; the feeling and expression in the faces is quite remarkable, for example in the leering devil appearing to a terrified drunk clutching a bottle of rum. As Vitalino grew older, he began to incorporate the changes happening in the countryside around him into his work. There are statues of migrants, and urban themes appear with a series of portraits of professionals: the lawyer, doctors and dentists (very gruesome), the journalist and the secretary. These themes take over in the work of the next generation of artists, the sons of Vitalino and other pioneers, like the almost equally well-known Zé Caboclo, whose work fills the next few cases. In the third generation the style changed, and it’s interesting that the best contemporary sculptors are women, notably the granddaughters of Zé Caboclo. The statues remain true to the established themes, but they are miniaturized, and the effect comes from the extreme delicacy of detail and painting, which contrasts with the cruder vigour of their male precursors. You’ll see reproductions of many of the statues here on market stalls across Brazil, but Pernambuco is the place to get the real thing: examples of the work of many of the artists displayed in the museum can still be bought fairly cheaply, especially in Alto do Moura itself.
Olaria de Brennand
If you have time, try and round off your sightseeing with the bizarre Olaria de Brennand, an industrial estate in the northern suburbs – there can’t be anywhere more impressively offbeat in the whole of Brazil. One of three brothers who inherited a huge tile, ceramic and brickwork factory, Brennand became a very strange kind of tycoon. Although already rich beyond the dreams of avarice, he was driven to become an internationally famous ceramic artist. His factory estate, far from being an industrial wasteland, nestles in the middle of the only part of the old coastal forest still surviving in the metropolitan area. It’s a very beautiful piece of land – and it’s sobering to think that without it, nothing at all would remain to show what the coast around Recife looked like before the arrival of the Europeans.
Past the rows of workers’ cottages and a brickworks, you come to the oficina, an enormous personal gallery (Tues–Fri 9am–noon & 2–4pm) containing thousands of Brennand’s sculptures, decorated tiles, paintings and drawings. A lot of the work is good, and has strong erotic overtones – to say that genitals are a recurring theme is putting it mildly.
The gallery is a long way from the centre, but is definitely worth the effort. A taxi from Santo Antônio will set you back around $12 and if you don’t want to walk back you’ll have to arrange for it to pick you up again, because no taxis pass anywhere near. Alternatively, take the bus marked “CDU–Várzea” from outside the post office to its terminus: once there you can either take a taxi or walk – it’s not far but you’ll need to ask the way. Make sure you say “a oficina de Brennand” with the stress on the second syllable of “Brennand”, or nobody will know what you’re talking
Nightlife
As elsewhere in Brazil, nightlife in Recife starts late, after 10pm. The variety of music and dances is enormous, and Recife has its own frenetic carnival music, the frevo, as well as forró, which you hear all over the Northeast. The dancing to forró can be really something, couples swivelling around the dance floors with ball bearings for ankles. In the past couple of years, Recife island has become the most happening place in the city centre, but there’s also plenty of action in Boa Viagem as well as in Olinda. There are other interesting nightspots in suburbs like Graças and Casa Forte, but they’re not well served by public transport, so you’ll have to take a taxi.
For a taste of strongly regional music of all types it’s worth trying out an espaço cultural or two. The Espaço Nodaloshi, at Estrada dos Remédios 1891 in Madalena (tel 081/3228-3511), frequently brings together large numbers of musicians from all over Pernambuco, generally starting the shows around 10pm or later. The Espaço Cultural Alberto Cunha Melo, at Rua Leila Félix Karan 15 in Bongi (tel 081/3228-6846), runs similar live music shows. These and other similar places generally promote their programmes through the Agenda Cultural.
Bars
In Santo Antônio, virtually the only place with any zip to it is the Pátio de São Pedro, with its bars and restaurants. Occasionally something extra happens here, though: music and dance groups often appear at weekends, and it’s one of the centres of Recife’s Carnaval.
As night falls and the rest of the city centre shuts down, Recife island comes to life. There are all kinds of bars here, including quiet places where middle-aged professionals sit and discuss the events of the day. But the scene is mainly young and noisy: Rua do Apolo in particular has a string of bars with names like Armazém da Cerveja (“Beer Warehouse”) and Arsenal do Chopp (“Beer Arsenal”), which gives you some idea of the spirit of the place. In the same street, the Moritzstad club frequently holds live concerts of the Manue Beat bands, one of Pernambuco’s modern musical movements. You should certainly sample the atmosphere here at least once just to get an idea of how seriously young Recifenses take enjoying themselves.
Dancing
If you’re looking to lay down a few steps, you need to head for a casa de forró; the best time to go is around midnight on a Friday or Saturday. In all of them you can drink and eat fairly cheaply, too. They often have rules about only letting in couples, but these are very haphazardly enforced, especially for foreigners. There’s a small entry fee, and you may be given a coupon as you go in for the waiters to mark down what you have – don’t lose it or you’ll have to pay a fine when you leave. Taxis back are rarely a problem, even in the small hours. Two good casas de forró are the Belo Mar on Avenida Bernardo Vieira de Melo, in Candeias bairro, and the Casa de Festejo on Praça do Derby in the bairro of Torre. Otherwise, look in local papers or ask EMPETUR for details; there are dozens of others. One place that mixes forró with samba is the lively Cavalo Dourado (Fri & Sat only), at Rua Carlos Gomes 390, in the bairro of Prado. More westernized, but still good, is Over Point Dancing at Rua das Graças 261 in Graças.
Recife island has a good share of nightclubs, though the emphasis is on Western dance music rather than forró, at places like Planeta Maluco on Rua do Apolo. But the best nights in the docks district are Thursdays between October and March, when a large area along Avenida Marquês de Olinda is given over to hours of live music and open-air dancing, called – appropriately enough – Dançando na Rua (“Dancing in the Street”). The Depois Dancing Bar, at Av. Rio Branco 66 in Recife Antigo (8pm–late) is a nightclub with live Western and forró music from Wednesday to Saturday and a reasonable restaurant.
Boa Viagem: The beach
Regular buses make it easy to get down to Boa Viagem and the beach, an enormous skyscraper-lined arc of sand that constitutes the longest stretch of urbanized seafront in Brazil. As you’d expect of a city of islands, Recife was once studded with beaches, but they were swallowed up by industrial development, leaving only Boa Viagem within the city’s limits – though there are others a short distance away to the north and south. In the seventeenth century, Boa Viagem’s name was Ilha Cheiro Dinheiro, or “Smell Money Island” – as if whoever named it knew it would become the most expensive piece of real estate in the Northeast.
Much of Boa Viagem is only three or four blocks deep, so it’s easy to find your way around. Take your bearings from one of the three main roads: the seafront Avenida Boa Viagem, with the posh hotels and a typically Brazilian promenade of palm trees and mosaic pavements; the broad Avenida Conselheiro Aguiar two blocks up; and then Avenida Engenheiro Domingos Ferreira.
The beach itself is longer and (claim the locals) better even than Copacabana, with warm natural rock pools to wallow in just offshore when the tide is out. It’s also rather narrow, however, and more dominated by the concrete culture around it than most in the Northeast. It gets very crowded at the weekends, but weekdays are relatively relaxed. There’s a constant flow of people selling fresh coconut milk, iced beers, ready-mixed batidas (rum cocktails), pineapples, watermelon, shrimp, crabs, oysters, ice creams, straw hats and suntan lotion.
Also my favourite place , is
Olinda , a few miles out from Recife.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olinda |
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