Brazil meets Glasgow

“Brazil is a place of freedom even though it is so dramatically smashed up and kicked around. We are free and that is just a beautiful thing to be.” Os Mutantes from Sao Paolo talking to DJ Twitch from Optimo Glasgow on the Trocabrahma podcast.

I have been pestering Dougal for a piece of Global Gossip for my blog. He promises at least one story from his travels this year: from Bali to Brazil – with just a brief pause for breath in Glasgow. I know there are many good stories and that they will come but meanwhile I have pilfered some trophies from the trip Dougal and Tommy took to Sao Paolo in May to record the Trocabrahma exchange between UK and Brazilian artists and musicians – and back for return gigs in Liverpool, London and Glasgow.

It’s a wild, liberating concept (and inspired branding on the part of sponsors Brahma beers) with extraordinary results (not least Dougal’s blog about eating liver in a jazz bar in the early hours of the morning in that city of 18 million people). So I have snaffled a flyer from the Trocabrahma website for the podcast series. The first episode appeared on the new Channel 4 Radio website last weekend and I have downloaded it from the Trocabrahma website. It’s great stuff (congratulations to sound man Bobby and production team Claire, Tiff, Tony and Heidi) and I have inside information that the second podcast, out soon, will be even better.

All this will keep me happy for a while, but I will get that Global Gossip from Dougal yet. Maybe something about that complex Latin American culture where danger and freedom seem to go hand in hand with wonderful music and a zest for life, and Os Mutantes finds ‘a bunch of kids starting new stuff…not just writing to a formula…we’re at the start of something.’ And a rehash of the liver would be ok too.

You can subscribe to the Trocabrahma podcast via iTunes (click here) or Feedburner (here).