Entrevista/Interview

OK, so right after I posted about this I called to see if they'd want to interview me for Planeta Brasil. I told them about this here blog, my trips to Brazil, my approximately 40 gigs of Brazilian music MP3s, my self-taught Portuguese, etc., and they said they were interested.

They also said they'd want to interview me em Portugues, which always makes me nervous. To be put on the spot like that (especially knowing that millions of Brazilians will be watching once the interview airs) makes me freeze up, forget words, and make mistakes. Or at least, that's what I fear will happen.

Brazilians tell me how great my Portuguese is but I always feel out of practice, as I don't speak it nearly often enough (and singing along to a song you know by heart just isn't the same as having a conversation). It's good for pronunciation practice, and it's a subtle vocab lesson/reminder, but it doesn't help nearly enough with grammar/syntax/verb conjugation.

I love that Brazilians are always so encouraging to foreigners who make any attempt at their language, but that very encouragement is what gives me doubt--my pessimistic side tells me that I'm not as proficient as they say, they're just easily pleased with any effort whatsoever.

So last night I sat down for an hour to talk about how I came to discover Brazilian music, why it spoke to me, why it became such an important part of my life. I talked about how it's not one aspect of the music but many: the rhythm(s), the joy of expression, the way it makes me want to dance, the poetic lyrics of composers such as Caetano, Chico, etc.

They also asked about why I started this blog, how many readers it has, etc. The interview was lots of fun once my nerves settled down and I got excited to tell my story.

They even filmed my laptop with the blog up on screen and asked me to play an MP3 (Caetano's "Terra") and sing along with it. Cheesy, I know, but I suppose that Brazilians will be fascinated to see an American singing along, verse after verse, to their music.