GG Silva

João Silva drums in the bateria of a São Paulo samba school, third surdo, the heartbeat row, and spends eleven months rehearsing for the one February night when seventy drummers must strike as one. He works days in his father's auto-parts shop and gives the shop radio no peace. The back checker goes. Whenever a hit is available it is the runner that makes it, every time, and the structure he leaves behind takes four rolls to repair and frequently does not get repaired at all. He knows. It is the same instinct that lost him a month of shop wages in a single night at a cash table when he was nineteen, and he has played for small stakes ever since, cheerfully and out loud, as a story rather than a wound. He would rather lose in a blaze than win quietly, and around him there is nothing quiet on offer.