but it’s taken a hit: this is SO SAD especially as the sprinklers didn’t work and apparently have been out of service for two years. Portela is one of three samba schools whose costumes and floats were destroyed in this fire, and only a month before Carnaval.
Here’s Paulinho da Viola, Portela alum and immortal sambista, singing one of his most famous songs (A river that ran through my life) about it. Here he is having a chope with his homeboys in happier times. And while I’m at it, here’s nine minutes of heaven; Portela with Clara Nunes and then Vanessa da Mata.
Truly nine minutes of heaven. I don’t know Paulinho da Viola’s work so well but I have loved Clara Nunes’s music for many years and feel her untimely death was a blow to music lovers everywhere.
Thank you.
Axe.