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Amazonas State has a big ticket project to curb deforestation. Trees aren’t cut down here to the same extent as they are in, say, Mato Grosso (where soy is a passport to profit) - but even so Amazonas governor Eduardo Braga is adamant that the rainforest in his state be preserved.

I spoke with Braga back in Boston. And on Wednesday - just before I catch my flight home - I’ll meet Virgilio Viana, who leads the Sustainable Amazon Foundation. Before taking up that role, Viana was Braga’s Secretary of State for the Environment. Together, they’ve come up with something called the Bolsa Floresta, which loosely translates as ‘forest subsidy’.

The idea is that families in certain areas of the rainforest be paid a monthly sum of money not to cut trees down. The Bolsa Floresta is making waves: it’s been highly publicized here in Amazonas, and in the environmental community. So - is it a good idea? Depends who you ask. I’ll examine the program in one of my radio stories for PRI’s The World (which I’ll write when I’m back in Boston, and when I have the expertise of my editor William Troop to call on).

But today I met someone who’s firmly against the program. He runs a guitar workshop for disadvantaged teenagers in Manaus. The specifics of his criticism will have to wait - I want to put that criticism to Virgilio Viana before writing anything else. But here’s a quick look inside the workshop, fresh off the laptop.

Before we left, I traded Jobim names with the workshop leader. You say Corcovado. I say Wave. You say One Note Samba. I say Desafinado. And then he beckons me to play one of the newly-minted guitars. Now by this stage I was sweating buckets from running around grabbing video and still photos and pure audio and - oh yes - interviews. But he was insistent.

I spare you the resulting cacophony.

Tomorrow should bring music of another order. I’m off to the opera! (Really? The opera?  Yes, really. The opera.)