Category Archives: Music and Video

Apr25

Last Video from my journey is finally here! Filmed in Bahia, finished in San Francisco, “This World is Yours!”

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This World is Yours by Mira Manickam, featuring Jenny O’Connell on vocals.  Instrumental by Mira Manickam, with live drums sampled from the Didá youth drum orchestra.  Dancing by Jazz Vassar.

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It’s finally here – the last video of the trip, from Salvador and the coast of Bahia!

And you can download the song HERE 

For those of you who have been following my blog, you will recognize many of the people and references in this song and vvideo

This video was inspired by the girl drummers and surfers I met in Bahia, the last stop on my Surfer Grrrls Brazil adventure, during which I travelled up the coast of Brazil, meeting other girl surfers and musicians, surfing my heart out, and creating original raps to celebrate my adventures and inspire other girls and women to live their own. While staying in the incredibly musical neighborhood of Candeal, I heard children making danceable beats by beating on just about anything they could find – tin cans, playground equipment, water bottles, you name it.  One little girl practiced singing and drumming on a tupperware container every day on her front stairs. She is featured in this video.  The live drum beat was recorded from the extraordinary youth orchestra of Didá, who I encountered one evening rehearsing on the streets of the Pelhourinho in Salvador da Bahia. The surfers featured here (besides me!) include Érica Prado, and other inspirational women I met in Bahia and elsewhere in Brazil.

Screen Shot 2014-04-25 at 12.57.33 AMIt took me over a year to finally post this video.  My harddrive with much of my Bahia footage crashed and died when I returned from Brazil.  Heartwrenching. Luckily, I still had the footage of the girl drummers, and some surfing footage from my time in Itacare, but it took me a while to piece it all together once I got back to California and had to get back to the grind of daily life. To fill in for the lost footage from Bahia, I did a video shoot at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, and collaborated with my wonderful housemate Jenny O’Connell (the beautiful voice), and the talented Jazz Vassar who I met in Salvador and in our 36 hours together had become a dear friend.  It seemed appropriate that after some beautiful footage of Jazz and I going surfing on the beaches of Salvador was lost in the harddrive crash, that Jazz bring her energy back to the video through her capoeira-inspired dancing on our own California home beach.  Another incredibly generous friend Luis Montoya, filmed for us, lending a skilled eye to the camera work.  It turns out that collaboration really does take you to the next level!!  Please share this video with as many girls and woman as you can.  I have also been performing it alive along with other surf and non-surf related raps I’ve written, so shoot me an email at miramanickam@gmail.com if you’re interested in a performance.   Thank you to all who contributed and supported!

Aug31

New Video, “If you Love to Ride,” with the Rocinha Surfe School! Hot off the Press!

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Hi All!  It’s been ages since I last posted.  It’s been a whirlwind summer of book tours, coming back to California (yay!), and teaching kids about nature in the Marin Headlands.

I’ve landed back on my feet in California, and while I am figuring out my next steps,  I’ve been keeping up the momentum of Surfer Grrrls Brazil in a bunch of fun ways.  I’ve teamed up with my friend Farhana, and we are now working together on BrownGirlSurf, the organization she started, named in honor of Polynesia’s first surfers, to support women’s surf community and female surf pioneers all over the world.  We’ve started offering beginner surf lessons for women and girls, and the first ones have gone really well, with folks coming back for more!   Check it out here if you’d like to learn!  I’m also representing Surfer Grrrls Brazil at a panel discussion about girl surfers around the world at the Patagonia store in SF on October 8 (The International Day of the Girl!).  More on that to come!  I am hoping that the future may hold further video collaborations with girl surfing projects on the California coast.

In the meantime, I’ve been slowly sorting through and editing all my video files, mixing beats with all my samples, and recording all the lyrics I’ve been writing.  And now, I am THRILLED to present Surfer Grrrls Brazil’s latest video, “If You Love to Ride.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RQS_Mrxj7g

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This video was filmed in Rocinha, the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro, with original music produced by myself and the Rocinha Surfe Escola and Projeto Maré Mansa, who provided the live percussion track and wrote the verses in Portuguese. While the focus of my journey through Surfer Grrrls Brazil has been my own surf adventures and those of other female surfers I met along the way, each place I have travelled has held its own surprises. In Rio, I was taken under the wing of Bocão the ever jovial founder of the local surf school, which has been providing “rehabilitated” surf boards, surf lessons, and a variety of arts and wellness programming to kids in Rocinha for over 15 years. This transformed my experience in the city as I became part of this loving surf school community, full of fun times and colorful characters of all ages. For almost a month, I went surfing with the kids in the afternoon, helped with English classes, and made music with them in the evenings. The kids loved my raps, and we had great times freestyling together. I asked them, and their talented music teacher Delão Allen of Projeto Maré Mansa, to collaborate with me on a song I was writing which was a particular favorite of the kids (they loved singing, “put your hands up!). In Rio, it rained almost every day, and the waves were either terrifyingly huge or frustratingly non-existent. But I learned from the kids and Bocão all the different ways you can have fun by the beach. The video reflects the real Rocinha I discovered – where more people body boarded than surfed, where there were still a lot of social barriers to girls surfing, but a few brave girls got out there and showed their mettle, where the time we spent on land, skateboarding, samba dancing, drumming, and kicking it around the neighborhood was just as meaningful as our time on the waves.  Enjoy!

May3

Post Brazil – Surfing adventures continue in INDIA!

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Screen Shot 2013-05-04 at 3.29.45 AMHi all!   I must apologize for the radio silence.  How does one keep up a blog about adventures in Brazil when one is no longer in Brazil??  I have been thinking on this myself, and don’t have all the answers.  But, it occurred to me that even though I am no longer in Brazil, I AM still having adventures.  So I figured I’ll share them!

When I left Brazil, I had an exciting opportunity to visit a place that has been a big part of my life in the past – Thailand. I worked and lived in Thailand for much of the last decade, before moving to California and becoming a teacher and surfer.  I wrote a book about my experiences in the far South of Thailand, an area which has been suffering from a violent conflict for the past 9 years.  This book was just published about a month ago, and I went to Thailand to promote the book and visit old friends who helped me write it.  (You can learn more about the book here: www.facebook.com/justenoughbook.)

On my way back from Thailand, I stopped in India, where my Dad grew up, and I have been visiting family here for the past few days.  While I did have some AMAZING outdoor adventures rock climbing in Thailand, I’ve been missing surfing like crazy.  A big part of my family lives in Chennai India, right on the coast, and I figured I’d try to seek out some waves and some fellow surfers.  It didn’t turn out exactly as I planned, but it was a great adventure none the less.  Here’s a little video journal of my surf day in India.

Dec21

The vida Floripa, immortalized in music video!

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Screen Shot 2012-12-21 at 10.09.44 PMS1260021Here’s a little song I made with my homies Dan Eisenberg and Tiaraju Verdi – two people who I miss a lot now that I am no longer in Floripa. One afternoon, we had a fun time jamming on the tablas, pandeiro, and berimbau to this sweet funk beat we found on the internet by Kunde.  In the aftermath, I put lyrics to it, all about the “Vida Floripa” – my journey to Florianopolis and the beautiful life that we enjoyed on the island.    Before taking off for Salvador, I made a couple video clips on my favorite sand dune and beach with my friend Therson Mehl, and just for fun, put together this little video.  Hope you like it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cZbyC19o78

I’m going to sign off now for the holidays, which I am blessed to be spending with my family.  Wishing everyone a joyful holiday Screen Shot 2012-12-21 at 10.08.05 PMseason and a happy New Year!!!

Dec7

Ela Era Assim!

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Screen Shot 2012-12-07 at 7.37.21 PMCheck out our very first Surfer Grrrls Brazil original music video, Ela Era Assim – with lyrics in both Portuguese and English, by super skater philosopher poet teacher Dani Antunes (Portuguese), and yours truly, me (English), with Ca’roll on drums and Alice on poesia!  Starring many of my new surfer grrrl friends in Brazil from Florianopolis, Parana, and Sao Sebastão.  Special thanks especially to Aloha Maciel, Marina Rezende, Manuella Brasil, Janaina Rezende, Luanna Ribeiro, and Maria Liza Monteleone — who have made many of my first surfing adventures in Brazil much more fun!  Big thanks also to Mike Deni, Zazo Alves, and Alice Besnard – without whom I would have no video documentation of my own surfing/skating/musical adventures.

http://youtu.be/3Jg_Lv7qv4M

Oct16

The last week and a half in video

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So… a fun and important part of my Surfer Grrrls Brazil adventure is making music videos.  I have been writing raps, collaborating with some very special people, like my friend Dani, and working on some instrumental tracks.  I am also learning that all of this takes quite a bit more time than I planned, a big challenge is just getting everyone together to get all the pieces in place.  But it’s all happening!

In the meantime, I thought it might be fun to share some parts of my journey these last couple weeks in rough and ready video format.  So here are some highlights: