Field Notes from Campo Grande: Sweat, Street Food, and a Drummer’s Desperate Quest for Rhythm
the first thing that punched me in the face when i stepped off the bus wasn’t the heat - although that was close behind - it was the smell. not bad, just… alive. like wet earth and grilled meat and someone’s lunch reheating in a plastic container. campo grande had announced itself without bothering to say hello.
i’m touring with a *session drummer gig right now. it pays just enough to keep me stumbling between mato grosso do sul towns that sound like rejected marvel characters. campo grande’s got this low thrumming energy, like it can’t decide if it wants to be a capital or just a really big rest stop between bonito and wherever the hell you're actually trying to go. if you get bored, corumbá and dourados are just a couple hours away. but i wasn't here to leave. i was here to drum. supposedly, there’s this underground samba circle that meets on saturday nights behind the mercado municipal.
i just checked and it’s 24.19°C out right now, which feels like a solid lie when every breeze is soaked through with humidity. the kind where your skin never really dries, just pretends to. gotta love a city where even the ground level pressure is a low 947. makes the whole place feel like it's barely holding itself together. and yet, there i was, one snare away from collapsing in a puddle of my own sweat, trying to find the groove in a place that doesn’t even care if you’re in time.
someone told me - and let me stress, this person was very drunk in a bar called O Saci - that if you don’t respect the groove in campo grande, the city will personally drag you out of the jam session and dump you next to the ponte dos leões bridge. it wasn't exactly a threat, more of a… vibe. like, sure, the locals are soft-spoken, but they’re serious about rhythm. i heard the candomblé community sometimes even plays at the circle, and i wasn’t about to show up with a practice pad and call it a day.
the whole week i spent there, the humidity wouldn’t dip below 83%. like the weather was personally invested in making sure every shirt i wore looked like i’d gone swimming in it. according to yelp, campo grande has like eighteen restaurants claiming the best panqueca sul-mato-grossense, but i’ll tell you what: bar do zé has the most chaotic lunch service and a chef who i swear can drum with his spatula. if you get the chance, try the peixe na telha and just let it happen.
i stayed at this guesthouse called pousada casa do baião, which was run by a guy who gave me “tips” that were just tragic poetry. here’s one:
in campo grande, the drums are not played, they are memorized. you should bring not your sticks, but your silence.
that was supposed to be profound. it was not. but damn if i didn’t carry that silence with me when i finally found the saturday samba circle. it was under a cotton tree, covered in cigarette smoke and fruit peels, three old guys and one french backpacker arguing over clave.
i played like hell. for about twelve minutes, i was part of the city’s heartbeat. then it rained. not a sprinkle. a biblical purge that had us all running like it was the end times.
but that’s campo grande. humid as hell, slightly disorganized, and quietly magical. someone at the market told me that the real drummers here don’t practice. they just listen - to the rain, to the buses, to the city breathing at 3am.
it’s easy to miss if you’re just passing through. which, let’s be honest, most people are. if you do stop, though - if you actually stop* - trust me, the groove will find you.
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