Pontal

Pontal is a municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. The population is 45,978 (2015 est.) in an area of 356 km². The elevation is 515 m.

References

Recreio dos Bandeirantes

Recreio dos Bandeirantes (or simply Recreio) is both the name of a beach and neighborhood in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is a recent development, with no skyscrapers, and the area also contains jungles atop rocky cliffs and hills. High waves permit surfing at Recreio Beach and the white sand beach is used by beach volleyball players. It is about one hour from the Rio de Janeiro city centre, and most of the people living there are middle-class and high middle-class families, who moved in trying to escape the growing violence of both the North and South Sides.

Apocryphally, the neighborhood received the name Recreio dos Bandeirantes, or "Bandeirantes' Leisure" because the company that mapped and hired a real estate agent to sell lots there had that name. Another version says that many of the newcomers were from São Paulo, the city from which the Bandeiras departed in colonial times, and therefore Paulistas are associated with them. Still another version states that Recreio was the first (or last) resting place with fresh water for Bandeirantes traveling between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Nova Ponte

Nova Ponte is a Brazilian municipality located in the west of the state of Minas Gerais. Its population as of 2007 was estimated to be 11,586 people living in a total area of 1,105 km². The city belongs to the mesoregion of Triângulo Mineiro and Alto Paranaíba and to the micro-region of Araxá. It became a municipality in 1938.

Location

Nova Ponte is located at an elevation of 791 meters, 70 km. east of Uberlândia on the western end of the Nova Ponte Represa. The distance to the state capital, Belo Horizonte, is 479 km. Neighboring municipalities are: Romaria and Iraí de Minas (N), Pedrinópolis, Santa Juliana, and Sacramento (E), Uberaba (S and W), Indianópolis (NW).

Communications

Nova Ponte is connected to one of the most important export corridors in Brazil by way of the Ferrovia Central Atlântica.

Weather Facts

Economic activities

The GDP in 2005 was approximately R$441 million, with 70 million reais from services, 218 million reais from industry, and 85 million reais from agriculture. Nova Ponte receives royalties from the hydroelectric plant—Usina Hidrelétrica de Nova Ponte. There were 358 rural producers on 69,000 hectares of land. The land is very fertile and agricultural production is high. 131 farms had tractors (2006). Approximately 1,600 persons were dependent on agriculture. The main crops are coffee, sugarcane, soybeans, potatoes, and corn. There were 32,000 head of cattle (2006) and almost one million chickens.

Tim Maia

Tim Maia (Portuguese pronunciation: [tʃĩ majɐ]; September 28, 1942 – March 15, 1998), born Sebastião Rodrigues Maia in Rio de Janeiro city, was a Brazilian musician, songwriter and businessman known for his iconoclastic, ironic, outspoken, and humorous musical style. Maia contributed to Brazilian music within a wide variety of musical genres, including soul, funk, bossa nova, disco, romantic ballads, pop, rock, jazz, baião and MPB. He introduced the soul style on the Brazilian musical scene. Tim Maia is internationally recognised as one of the biggest icons of the Brazilian music.

Tim Maia recorded numerous albums and toured extensively in a long career. After his early death in 1998, his recorded oeuvre has shown enduring popularity. A theatrical retrospective of his career, the popular musical Vale Tudo, was first staged in Rio de Janeiro in 2012.

Biography

1950s

Maia was born in the Tijuca neighbourhood, in the southern suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. He began writing melodies while still a child, the second youngest of nineteen children. Then known as "Tião Maia", he wrote his earliest songs at age eight. At fourteen, as a drummer, he formed the group Os Tijucanos do Ritmo, which lasted one year. He then took guitar classes and was soon teaching other children in Tijuca. He also gave lessons to his friends Erasmo Esteves and Roberto Carlos, fellow members of the so-called Matoso Gang. Named after the street where they used to hang out, the gang also included Jorge Ben and Erasmo Carlos, among others. They liked to listen to the earliest styles of rock and roll, with both Maia and Ben being nicknamed "Babulina" after their enthusiastic pronunciation of Ronnie Self's song "Bop-A-Lena".