what's with the name?

So I've gotten a few questions from 2 or 3 (of the half a dozen) people that read my blog asking about my nickname. So I thought I should explain myself.

The tile of the blog itself is also a play on my nickname. "Fala, doutor!" is like saying "What's up, Doc?" So, dotô is a wordplay on how doutor is pronounced. Thus, Beto Dotô, was sort of given to me by my dear friend Jean Pierre (a.k.a. Jotapê, as in J.P. in Portuguese!) when we were playing music together.

No, I'm not pretending to be a Dr. or precipitate my eventual Ph.D. (nor would I ever want anyone to call me with the Dr. title, even though Dr. Beto sounds kind of cool...). Brazilians, who just love titles and nicknames by the way, will often call people capitão, or doutor, etc. simply as a sign of respect. Doutor was used in years past to refer to people with university degrees, even if not necessarily a doctorate or a medical degree. A few friends sometimes say "fala, doutor!" when they see me, so I thought the whole darn thing was just peachy keen.

How you like that?

You'll probably notice throughout this blog that most musicians take on nicknames, usually attaching the name of the instrument that they are (or once were) associated with. As I have said before, though, you have to have some mad skills for people to start calling you with an instrument as a surname! Nicknames, on the other hand, are as common here as curse words... Even our President Lula goes by a nickname (actually one of his middle names but sounds like a nickname). The national soccer team (all soccer teams for that matter) all use nicknames or first names on their team uniforms, and even university professors go by their first name, rather than their last name... People will also often use tia (aunt), or mestre as a sign of respect for elders that have paved the way the younger generation of musicians.