Loud music

One thing about living in another culture is learning to live with cultural differences. I used to have kind of a Pollyanna view of cultural diversity and differences, thinking that everyone should embrace and even love every aspect of all cultures. Now I am under the belief that while all cultural differences deserve respect and understanding, you don´t have to actually *like* all the different aspects of another culture.

Take music for example. Brazilians seem to have a different set of eardrums from mine. They love listening to their favorite songs over and over again and at a very loud volume. And it doesn´t seem to matter what time of day it is, they like their music good and loud.

I have this neighbor who lives in the apartment below mine. He listens to two kinds of music- Axe (the music of Carnaval) and really bad club music from the late 90´s/early 2000´s. Now I am all for Carnaval music, but only during Carnaval and not at 6:30AM or 11:45PM when others are trying to sleep. I have been woken up a number of times by his music, which is just really awful to listen to. He has horrible taste.

Last weekend I was awoken at about 12:30PM on Friday night by the song in this video. I go to bed early and so was sound asleep and rather irritated by the noise. I thought it was the guy downstairs, but it turns out that it was a sort of rave happening at this space down the hill from my apartment (and I should have known it wasn´t my neighbor, this song is too good for his tastes!). There has been one other party there, and both these events were unusual as my neighborhood is generally pretty quiet and totally residential. I could see disco lights eminating from the doorway and everything!

So if you want to get a taste of what it´s like to be in Brazil, you can put this video on a timer, have it go off in the middle of the night when you are sleeping, and play it really really loud and you will have some sense of what I experience on a regular basis here. Bonus points if you listen to Ivete Sangalo after this song is over!