Samba in Copacabana, Roda de Samba do Bip Bip, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Live Brazilian Music

#samba #brazilianmusic #riodejaneiro
"Samba and love at Bip Bip: the Argentine who rescued the last bohemian bar in Copacabana from sadness
Matías Bidart, an Argentine from Adrogué, is the one who maintains the legacy left by Alfredo Melo, or “Alfredinho de Bip Bip”, the creator of a bar in Rio de Janeiro. Mythic and tiny, the best musicians in Brazil have been passing through the place for 40 years, unseen.
Alfredo Jacinto Melo was 25 years old in December 1968, the year of social upheaval, revolutions, flowers and rifles, Vietnam, the Beatles, the nouvelle vague and Derrida. Alfredo still lived in Cosmos, a railway district in the western part of Rio de Janeiro, although he spent much of his life, especially on weekends, in an apartment he shared with friends in Copacabana, the heart of postmodernism in Rio de Janeiro.
...
It was a very small bar. It was called Bip Bip - dozens of hypotheses have been put forward over the years but no one will ever know the origin of that onomatopoeic name - and its owner, a Portuguese immigrant, only sold milkshakes and snacks. All half a block from the beach. All so Rio de Janeiro.
As would be the case throughout his life, beer appealed to him more than medicine (although beer WAS a medicine), so Alfredinho left the pharmacy plan, mingled with the regulars and toasted with them all night long.
Bip Bip was presented at that time as just another “boteco” of the thousands that are on almost every block in Rio de Janeiro. However, a destiny of minimal grandeur awaited it. Alfredo did not yet know that he would be the one to take it from everyday insignificance to the mythical reference point for the samba dancers of the new and old guards: a place of eternal youth.
That is, something much more than a bar: a meeting point and friendship, a social aid project, a space for poetry, political proclamation, homeless people and, of course, and above all, a refuge for the best musicians of popular music in Brazil to feel at home.
Alfredinho did not know this because that was still 15 years away. Melo, a socialist militant, faithful and practicing Christian and fan of Botafogo, worked during that intermediate period of the 70s in the financial world. Until he received a large commission for the sale of a plane, which allowed him to free himself from the shackles of the capitalist world and fulfill his dream: to buy the Bip Bip to meet up with his friends.
August 2012. Bip Bip is already a famous hideaway, one of those “best kept secrets” of Rio de Janeiro, the last link of the Carioca bohemian scene. The Argentine Matías Bidart has just begun his adventure in the city with a backpack, a guitar and a job in the kitchen of a hostel. Shortly after arriving, someone warns him that he has to visit Bip Bip: one day you could meet Cristina Buarque de Hollanda or Nana Vasconcelos.
That same day it was. And when he arrived he saw what everyone who ever set foot in Bip Bip saw: a tiny 18-square-meter establishment, with just three tables on top of each other, no door, no windows, a continuation of the street, and a very particular host, bearded and grumpy, sitting at a small table on the sidewalk, who wrote down on a sheet the beers that the musicians and clients took out of the refrigerator for personal consumption. A system that was in disuse, chaotic and based on the trust of “when you leave, you pay me everything.”
Matías also never imagined at that moment what would come next: his deep friendship with Alfredo, his death years later, just on a Carnival Saturday, and the enormous responsibility of keeping his legacy alive.
“That first time it was raining a lot. I arrived and saw Alfredo sitting at the door and only a couple, two Italians who were fascinated by the photos stuck on the wall. It was bossa nova Wednesday. A musician arrived immediately. But it was raining so much that no one else came,” Matías says.
The solitary musician looked at Matías’ guitar-playing nails and invited him to play. Without music, Bip Bip is like a still heart. Bidart, who had already seen figures like Milton Nascimento hugging Alfredinho in the portraits on the walls, resisted. He said no twice.
Alfredo’s gaze was pure pressure. Silence and credit cards are the only things prohibited at Bip Bip. So he grabbed “a disastrous guitar that was in the bar” and played everything he had learned at home in the southern suburbs. Alfredo looked him up and down. An Argentine playing bossa nova? He liked it. It was the spark of brotherhood. That morning, Melo and Bidart, a little drunk, lowered the bar’s shutters together. They would always do so from then on." - www.infobae.co...