99 Hermeto Pascoal stories - 7

The flying bandinha

If you follow my posts here on Substack, you might remember my last Hermeto Pascoal causo, or story, telling how our portable Bandinha got started.

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By the mid-80s, playing while moving around the streets as part of our shows became a common occurrence for our Grupo. All Hermeto had to do was give us a quick signal or musical cue, and we would jump to our portable instruments and play one of several themes composed by Hermeto for us, followed by the public and other people on the streets who would join our parade. We might return to the venue (if they would allow us) or go back to the hotel and wave “good night” to our audience.

As we started touring Europe more often, this kind of public ambulatory performance tactic became more and more frequent. You must remember that air travel was quite different in those days. We became quite friendly with the pilots and flight attendants for Varig, the official Brazilian airline and we would often meet the same crew on flights from Paris to Rio. Since flight regulations at the time would permit us to bring instruments aboard the airplanes (flutes, saxophones, percussion and even a tuba) it did not take long for us to begin doing our bandinha tunes walking up and down the airplane aisles while flying. Since this was the BC era (before cellphones) there are no visual records of our aerial performances that I am aware of. The flight crew, knowing Hermeto well, would often ask us to wake up the passengers on a transatlantic flight before serving breakfast, and we would oblige. Marching up to the first-class level on a 747 and seeing the passengers looking at us wide-eyed as they woke up was quite an experience. On one flight, the crew played our video Sinfonia do Alto Ribeira instead of the scheduled film during the flight. Once a couple of us musicians were invited to sit in the cockpit as the pilots landed in Rio at sunrise, enjoying a wonderful view of the mountains.

Hermeto used to be afraid of flying, because his sensitive ears would perceive any small sound the airplanes would make while cruising over the ocean as a potential danger. He would wake me up and say: “Did you hear that?”. I would tell him that it was normal for the flight crew to adjust the flight path or altitude while flying and that was the source of the sounds he was hearing. Still, the sound of the mechanism on the flaps on the wings was a reason for Hermeto to be concerned. I could tell that he never really slept during those 12-hour flights.