Brazil : 6 Rio (part III)

Rio. Last of three parts. (Click [] for pictures.)

In this piece I have been rambling about the carnival for a while now but many readers may have only a fuzzy notion of what it is. In Brazil, the entire country shuts down and parties for four days, starting on the Saturday before Ash Wednesday. (Ash Wednesday is defined to be 40 days before Easter.) For 2003 it meant the carnival would start on Saturday, March 1st and run until the 4th. But in reality, most carnival activities are already in full swing by Friday night, with many people taking the afternoon off.

Carnival events and activities also vary depending on the city. In Rio, tourists and locals will most likely do any or all of the following: expensive carnival balls held at clubs and hotels, impromptu street carnivals held all over the city, and the escolas de samba (samba school) parade.

Of the three, the parade of the top league samba schools is easily the most popular event with tens of thousands spectators and broadcasted to millions of viewers. Competing for the championship, samba schools parade down the stadium (called a sambodromo) designed specifically for this purpose. (It does seem like a waste to build a stadium that is primarily used only a few nights a year.) In fact, the use of the word “stadium” to describe what a sambodromo is not quite correct. A better description of the sambodromo would be for the reader to imagine a concrete runway about 800 meters long and 15 meters wide, with bleachers on one side and VIP box seats on the other.

There are fourteen schools in the top league, and seven teams are chosen to parade on the night of carnival Sunday, with the rest of the schools parading the night after. Since the parade is divided into two nights and we had bought tickets to watch the parade on the second night, we decided last minute to join the parade as dancers on the first night. Through the reception desk of our hotel we were able to buy costumes for a samba school called Imperio Serrano. (Imperio was not my first choice, but with all Mangueira costumes out of stock, what was I supposed to do?) In the past, most people who paraded for a samba school came from the school’s community but nowadays many schools are run more like businesses and they make more money by selling costumes to tourists who want to parade.

It was exhilarating, to say the least, when I took my first step into the sambodromo as a reveler for Imperio Serrano. Tall concrete bleachers with waving crowds stretching from the parade entrance into the distance. The tremendous noise level is welcoming (especially after parading in samba parades in Japan with eerie crowds of silence). At the other end sits a huge signature Oscar Neimeyer arch. Fueled by the energy from Imperio Serrano’s samba enredo – and it helps if the music is a good one – we dance and spin our way towards the Tomorrowland-esque monument, briefly forgetting our worries about life (e.g. what my next job would be, in my case).

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Anyone can parade with any samba school by purchasing a costume, but the Grupo Especial parade in Rio is much better to watch than participate, if you have to choose. However, let me first say that there is no substitute for the experience to parade for one’s favorite team in the sambodromo – that is the ultimate high for the ultimate escola fan – but if you are not crazy about any team per se then watching the parade will be equally enjoyable, if not more.

My guess is: if you love movies, you will love watching the parade. The production of a samba parade is not unlike a movie production: first, every school must choose a theme. Then the school’s composers would write a samba enredo (i.e. the parade song), and costumes and floats would be designed to reflect the theme. From October to Feburary every school would be working frantically to prepare for the parade: costumes are being sewn, floats are being built, and the school bateria (percussion band) practice their drumming to the new theme song, while the singers train hard to make sure they can sing the samba enredo for almost 90 minutes non-stop.

Every school is allotted 85 minutes to parade. If a school took longer to finish its parade, points will be deducted from the score. Thus the pacing of the parade becomes a daunting task for every school because of the sheer number of people involved. In general, 2000 to 4000 revelers and five to seven giant floats (some up to 80 meters long) per school will have passed through the 800 meters of the sambodromo in less than one hour and fifteen minutes.

After parading for Imperio Serrano the day before, here we are, finally sitting down on the bleachers at the sambodromo and waiting for the parade to start. It was raining furiously for an hour or so, and we had all gotten drenched walking towards the sambodromo (not to mention I almost got pick-backpacked along the way.) But once we reached the venue all was fine, though we felt sorry for Tradição dancers whose feathery costumes got wet while they waited in the rain for their parade to start.

There are really no words that can describe the parade adequately. The best teams spare no expense and go all out. At the beginning of the second night, Tradição[] did a popular homage to the Brazilian World Cup hero, Ronaldo, to warm the crowd, but it was really Mangueira (my team) and Beija Flor that won over the crowd with their sumptuous parades. Mangueria’s theme was the Ten Commandments, and their floats and costumes reflected the Egyptian opulence. At one point of the procession hundreds of Mangueira dancers, all dressed in blue, simulated the parting of the Red Sea. However, despite my allegiance to Mangueira, I thought Mocidade was the most creative in the selection of its theme: organ donation. And their designers, as usual, did a wonderful job with the floats and costumes that they never fail to impress. One of their floats looked like a hospital lab: huge glass jars filled with liquid with immersed dancers dressed in a diving suit twisting their bodies to the samba beat[]. In both style and spirit, Mocidade is the samba version of Cirque du Soleil.

We stayed until the very end. The last team to parade was Imperatriz, and when the music and fanfare finally ended the sun was shining brightly. Another morning had begun: it was the last day of the carnival. A tinge of loneliness had settled in no sooner than the Imperatriz’s bateria stopped beating their surdo drums. There is a beautiful Portuguese word for this: it’s called saudade.

Slowly gathering ourselves for the walk back to the subway station, we passed through streets that resembled aftermath of a war zone. Litter everywhere, the foul smell of urine permeating the entire city. The price of having a big four-day party, I suppose. Ironically, to get this devastating look in other cities such as LA or Tokyo would require a big earthquake or disaster of some sort.

* * *

It was only after the carnival had ended that I realized the best part about Rio’s festivities was not the samba school parade. Don’t get me wrong: I loved every bit of it, and the admission for the best seats in the house – the $300 or so dollars that I forked over – was worth every penny. But what left my heart longing for more, even as I type this tens of thousands of miles away from Rio, is to return to those street carnivals held throughout the city. Unlike the sambodromo counterpart, anyone can join and/or watch these street parades for free – truly signifying the people spirit of the carnival.

The best of the street carnivals was the one called Bola Preta, the black dot parade. The parade route circles the central business district of downtown Rio, part of it running along the busy Avenida Rio Branco, Rio’s equivalent of NYC’s Fifth Avenue.

Like most street carnivals, the Bola Preta fanfare begins when the music starts. The music comes from a live ensemble that stands on top of a huge, slow-moving truck with megawatt speakers facing every side. A crowd, eager to dance, will automatically form around the truck and follow it down the parade route[]. If the music is loud enough, more and more willing souls will attach themselves to the parade, instantly creating a massive parade “conglomerate” miles and miles long. (It’s also one massive human heat wave, and you will know what I mean if you have been inside one of these parades.)

What really got to me is the music. The Bola Preta band (the musicians on top of the truck) plays a mixture of classic carnival tunes and samba songs, songs that most Brazilians, young and old, know by heart. So here I am marching forward amidst a massive crowd, every one singing the wonderful songs with the band, and their voices reverberating against the tall office buildings along the avenida. Tears want to come out of my eyes. But wait, the band is introducing a special guest to sing for us: and lo behold, it’s Beth Carvalho! (With Clara Nunes gone and Alcione going soft and poppish in her last couple of albums, Carvalho is the undisputed queen of samba these days.) The crowd goes nuts. I go nuts. And Carvalho pours oil on fire by singing “Vou Festejar”, her own classic. We sing with her as my tear starts dropping, and we are so loud that I think São Paulo can hear us.

* * *

But Rio is a dilemma. I was so emotionally charged during Bola Preta but my spirits would be dampened whenever I saw poor street children savaging the empty beer and soda cans along the parade route for recycling. Or my pleasure of listening to street pagode bands playing samba along Copacabana would be interrupted by hawkers hoping to sell me more sunglasses or by beggars asking for money. Or it was dressed in our Imperio Serrano costumes, our entire team of thousands waiting in the dark outside the sambodromo for the parade to begin; and separated by a fence on the other side, were tens of thousands pairs of eyes that could never afford to buy a ticket to watch the parade, but wanting to feel the spirit. Being in that city, one can hope to be taken as high as possible, but should always be prepared for a sudden violent drop. In that sense, Rio is unique as it can reward and repel, all in the same second. It is a paradise that comes with a price.

(Next: Salvador and the state of Bahia)