Dance and Travel

“Quem dança é muito mais feliz” (The one who dances is much more happier) People dancing forro in the Streets of Amsterdam This is actually the biggest truth I have ever experienced in my life. However, I am not referring to any kind of dance, I am referring to a couple dance called Forró , which is intimately link to idea of happiness, good vibes and joy of sharing moments with others. What is forró? It is a Brazilian dance typical of the North-West Region of Brazil.  It is associated to various types of popular North-Western music such as baião, quadrilha, xaxado, which have Portuguese influences.  It is played traditionally by three people a "Sanfoneiro" (the person who plays the "sanfona" which is the accordion), a zabumbeiro (the person who plays “zabumba”, a type of bass drum).  The player wears the drum while standing up and uses both hands while playing) and a musician who plays a metallic triangle (triangulo). The three instruments o...

When I approach first the Portuguese language as Italian speaker, I was thinking to a single unitary block. I already expected some dialectal influences, in particular in Brazil, due to the fact that is composed of many federal states. However I could never expect that Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese could differ in grammatical, syntactic and lexical forms. We are not talking about British English and American English, we are talking about almost two different languages and cultures. Of course also for the people who do not know the syntactical and lexical differences, it seems to be evident the musicality of the Brazilian variant, due to the different pronunciations of the words. Pronunciations: Ex. Sauda d e, felicida d e, aon d e, d epois (“d” sound for Portuguese, while “gi” sound for Brasilian variant) Ex. Noi t e, gen t e, sen t ir  (“t” sound for Portuguese, while “tch” sound for Brazilian Portuguese) Besides, I recollect 10 different expression...