HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: The 2012 Rio Carnival Parade
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Can it get any hotter?
WORD OF THE DAY: Feathers, sequins and very loud music
TODAY IS PARADE DAY.
We are in Rio and attending the big daddy of the 5 day celebrations-The Rio Carnival Parade!! To say I am excited is an understatement!!! But firstly we did have a morning favela that was to take us through one of the slum areas of Brazil and show us how they live and are pretty much self-sustained in their living quarters.
The surprise of the tour was when we got into the shuttle bus to take us to one of the largest favelas of the city we stopped at the bottom of one of the roads that lead up. This is where we found out that we would be getting in Moto-taxis, yes a motorbike!!, for the 10 minute ride to the top where we would start our tour making our wake back down through the favela. My main issue with motorbikes is the getting on and off the damn machines and making sure you don’t burn your leg on the exhaust. You always hear and see horror stories of legs getting, massive burns from them. I was picked first (of course) but it was probably best to get it over and done with and with an extra shoulder I don’t think I did too badly at all! The ride up the hill was exhilarating as my bike dude over took trucks and other bikes as we wound our way up the mountain. I thought about the helmet I had on that wasn’t fastened and if insurance would cover me for the motorbike as they only cover up to a certain cc amount. A bit late to be thinking all this as I am on the bike, but there was no other option so I just sucked it up and enjoyed the ride.
A favela is the generally used term for a shanty town in Brazil. In the late 18th century, the first settlements were called bairros africanos (African neighborhoods). This was the place where former slaves with no land ownership and no options for work lived. Over the years, many freed black slaves moved in. Even before the first "favela" came into being, poor citizens were pushed away from downtown and forced to live in the far suburbs. However, most modern favelas appeared in the 1970s, due to rural exodus, when many people left rural areas of Brazil and moved to cities. Without finding a place to live, many people ended up in a favela. Census data released in December 2011 by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) shows that in 2010, about (6%) of the population lived in slums in Brazil. It means that 11.4 million of the 190 million people lived in the country areas of irregular occupation and lack of public services or urbanization.
The first favela, or hillside shantytown, appeared on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro 100 years ago. Despite numerous official attempts to eradicate these hand built renegade suburbs, housing the poorest of the poor, they have multiplied over the past century. Today there are more than 600 favelas, where one in five Rio residents lives. The favelas are units of irregular self-constructed housing that are occupied illegally. They are usually on lands belonging to third parties, and most often located around the edge of the cities, often crowded onto hillsides. Residences are built without permission or a license and are often disorganized, without numbered streets, sanitation networks, electricity, a telephone service or plumbing. In recent years favelas have been troubled by drug-related crime and gang warfare. In the past the authorities have taken a number of steps to reduce problems in favelas. They have set up self-help schemes, with the local authority providing local residents with the materials, such as breeze blocks and cement, needed to construct permanent accommodation. The local residents provide the labor; the money saved can be spent on providing basic amenities such as electricity and water.
However a recent campaign is threatening the existence of the favelas, which are home to 1.1 million of Brazils poor. The favelas are close to some wealthy areas of cities and these residents are keen to evict the poor from their homes. Officials are citing a variety of reasons including environmental protection, land ownership disputes and concerns over the safety of those living in the hilltop favelas.
After the tour we were shuttled back to the hotel for free time till our meeting time at 7.15pm when we were going to get escorted by foot 15 blocks to the Sambadrome. A lot of us had plans to get in an afternoon nap as it came to light that the parade starts at 9pm and to see all 6 Samba schools the parade was due to finish at 5.15am the following morning! Who knew it was such a long night. I had no idea. In saying that Svendog needed to get an outfit for the night and I didn’t want to wear my feathers again so we took the plunge back into the hot weather to look for some costume/accessories for tonight. Like any major South America city being a Sunday a lot of the shops are closed, so traffic wise and shop hours not a lot was open. Mark said that a lot of the shops close over the Carnival weekend but the last few days haven’t been a problem for supermarkets etc….. The big issue was a lot of the ATM’s were out of cash. There was a bank 2 doors down from the hotel and Sven needed to get some money out and out of the 9 machines they had their none of them had cash. We walked to the supermarket as we knew they had one that we used the other day and there was a queue of 15 people all waiting to use it. As I had some excess Reals, I let Sven use the Bernie Bank with very high interest rates and he was going to pay me back in US dollars which were fine with me and he saves on bank fees.
We found a couple of costume stalls out the front of the supermarket so we kitted Sven out in 10 minutes with a wig, hat, glasses and a pair of pants. I was a little more picky and settled for a mascarade mask that had colours to match the dress I was going to wear. It was still so hot; we stopped in at a café for just one beer to wet our whistle, ended up having 2 and then were back at the hotel by 3pm. We cut into some serious sleeping time, but I could still get 2 hours before we had arranged to meet at 6pm for dinner before heading to the ‘drome’.
So what is Carnival all about?
The Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is a world famous festival held before Lent every year and considered the biggest carnival in the world with two million people per day on the streets. The first festivals of Rio date back to 1723.
The carnival parade is filled with people and floats from various samba schools. A samba school can either be an actual school or just a collaboration of local neighbors that want to attend carnival. The purpose of carnival is for samba schools to compete with fellow rival schools; this competition is the climax of the whole carnival festival. Each school chooses a theme to try and portray in their entry. The samba schools work to build the best floats and costumes to represent their themes, and to include the best music they can from their band called the bateria. There are many parts to each school's entry including the six to eight floats and thousands of participants.
There is a special order that every school has to follow with their parade entries. Each school begins with the "comissão de frente", which is the first wing. The "comissão de frente" is made up of ten to fifteen people only, and they are the ones who introduce the school and set the mood. These people have choreographic dances in fancy costumes that usually tell a short story. Following the "comissão de frente" is the first float of the samba school, called "abre-alas".
Some of the important roles include the porta-bandeira and mestre-sala. The porta-bandeira is a very important lady who is in charge of the samba school flag, including making sure to not allow the flag to roll. She is accompanied by the mestre-sala, who is supposed to draw everyone’s attention to "his queen", the porta-bandeira. Floatees, who are also important, are the people who populate the floats, also known as destaques. The floatees have the most luxurious and expensive costumes that can be extremely heavy. Along with all the floatees is one main floatee that is located at the top of each float. The main destaque dances and sings for the entire time that the float is on the runway.
One other aspect that is mandatory is the presence of the ala das baianas. This is a wing of the samba school entry that includes at least 100 females only. These women along with many other people do not ride on the floats as many others do; instead they are passistas, the people who belong to the samba school that do the marching alongside and between the floats.
Incorporated into every aspect of the Rio carnival are dancing and music. The most famous dance is the samba, a Brazilian dance with African influences. The samba was created by the African slaves mixing with the choros, street bands, of Brazil. The samba remains a popular dance not only in carnival but in the ghetto villages outside of the main cities. These villages keep alive the historical aspect of the dance without the influence of the western cultures. Other dances include the lundu, the polka, and the maxixe. With the combination of the parade, the balls, and the street carnivals, Rio’s carnival is said to be the greatest show on Earth. As the Rio de Janeiro handbook states, “The Rio carnival is probably the most famous party in the world.”
The Carnival of Brazil is an annual festival held forty-six days before Easter. On certain days of Lent, Roman Catholics and some other Christians traditionally abstained from the consumption of meat and poultry, hence the term "carnival," from carnelevare, "to remove (literally, "raise") meat." Carnival celebrations are believed to have roots in the pagan festival of Saturnalia, which, adapted to Christianity, became a farewell to bad things in a season of religious discipline to practice repentance and prepare for Christ's death and resurrection.
Carnival is the most famous holiday in Brazil and has become an event of huge proportions. The country stops completely for almost a week and festivities are intense, day and night, mainly in coastal cities.[ The consumption of beer accounts for 80% of annual consumption and tourism receives 70% of annual visitors. The government distributes condoms and launches awareness campaigns at this time to prevent the spread of AIDS. Rio de Janeiro's carnival alone drew 4.9 million people in 2011, with 400,000 being foreigners.
Modern Brazilian Carnival originated in Rio de Janeiro in 1641 when the city's bourgeoisie, largely Portuguese, imported the practice of holding balls and masquerade parties from Paris. It originally mimicked the European form of the festival, later absorbing and creolizing elements derived from Native American and African cultures. In the late 19th century, the cordões were introduced in Rio de Janeiro. These were pageant groups that paraded through city avenues performing on instruments and dancing. Today they are known as Blocos (blocks), consisting of a group of people who dress in costumes or special t-shirts with themes and/or logos. Blocos are generally associated with particular neighborhoods; they include both a percussion or music group and an entourage of revelers.
Block parades have become an expressive feature of Rio's Carnival. Today, they number more than 100 and the groups increase each year. Blocos can be formed by small or large groups of revelers with a distinct title with an often funny pun. "The blocos in Rio de Janeiro, for the singles, are places to meet and even kiss people.") They may also note their neighborhood or social status. Before the show, they gather in a square, then parade in sections of the city, often near the beach. Some blocos never leave one street and have a particular place, such as a bar, to attract viewers. Block parades start in January, and may last until the Sunday after Carnival.
We all had to meet at reception at 7.15pm and it was a hive of colour, feathers, costumes and laughter. It was a cool atmosphere with 60 odd people all on a high wearing some form if costume to watch the parade tonight. The walk to the Sambadrome took us 25 minutes and there were also other people and tour groups also waking the same route. With a few stops to purchase beers for the walk and there were some people selling small cushions as well which were only 5AUD. I had packed a sarong for me to sit on and we were told it was safe enough to take our bags and big cameras tonight as security is pretty tight once inside. It will just be the walk home as I am sure that not everyone will be staying the whole duration with the last school due to finish at 5.15am tomorrow morning. We were getting to the drome early as the first school wasn’t due to start till 9pm, but this was a good thing so we could puck where we got to sit. The entry to the drome is a little like a football game, you have gates that get you to certain sections of the stands. We didn’t have to wait too long to get to the security check where we had to walk through a scanner, like the ones at the airport to get in. It was funny as Paul had dressed as ‘gayed’ up Superman with a tiara, glasses and empty beer cans attached around his waist. This was cause for concern with security for some-one reason and we had to wait a few long minutes before we knew the fate of whether his costume was going to make it through security. After a few tense moments he was given the all clear and got through to ‘the other side’.
It was open seating, so we could pull up a pew anywhere in our stand. Here were people already here, but we pretty much had choice of the stand so we decided to go high to get a better view of the parade and to the center. It was just a massive concrete seating slab, step formation, so we were happy without position and settled in for the next 9 hours. There were plenty of drinks people and a few food people walking around all night, so short of a toilet stop there was no reason to move from your spot for the whole night.
The Sambadrome is a purpose-built parade area in downtown Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where samba schools parade competitively each year during the Rio Carnival. The parades attract many thousands of Brazilians and foreign tourists each year. The Sambadrome was designed by Oscar Niemeyer and built in 1984. It consists of a 700m stretch of the Marquês de Sapucaí street converted into a permanent parade ground with bleachers built on either side for spectators. Its capacity is 90,000. The complex includes an area located at the end of the parade route, the Praça da Apoteose (Apotheosis Square), where the bleachers are set further back from the parade area, creating a square where revelers gather as they end their parade. In December, the samba schools begin holding technical rehearsals at the Sambadrome, leading up to Carnival. Outside Carnival season, the Praça da Apoteose is occasionally used as a venue for international music concerts.
The official Carnival parades take place just before the start of Lent. They are held for four consecutive nights, during which schools parade one after another from 9pm until the morning. The Access Group A samba schools are hosted on Saturday, Special Group on Sunday and Monday and Group Rio de Janeiro 1 on Tuesday. The Special Group nights are by far the biggest attractions. The parades are televised nationally and are watched by large audiences. Each samba school has a preset amount of time (90 minutes) to parade from one end of the Sambadrome to the other with all its thousands of dancers, its drum section, and a number of floats. Each school has its own unique qualities according to its own traditions. Schools are graded by a jury, and the competition is ferocious. On Ash Wednesday, grades are gathered and one school is declared the winner. The Parade of Champions is held the following Saturday featuring the five winning samba schools in the Special Group category.
Inflated prices to watch star samba schools exclude many Brazilians from attending. As a reaction to high levels of commercialization, Rio de Janeiro has experienced a resurgence in free block parties (Street Bands and Groups: Blocos) that take place in suburbs all over the city. It is possible for a person who is not a member of any samba school to buy a costume and arrange for a spot as a dancer in one of the parade groups.
9pm came and the excitement for me was unreal. Fireworks were let off as the first school left the other end of the drome. The unfortunate thing being at the other end of the 700m stretch, we had to wait 33 minutes for the procession to reach us, but then I guess it works both way for them as they have to wait once it had passed them for the school pass us. Really the best seats of the house would be the middle as there would just about nearly be a continual flow for the whole duration of the parade. The difference in cost in the big scheme of things probably would have been worth looking into. I think our seats were 40AUD and the middle seats started at 175AUD. You probably are only going to be there once in your life for Carnival right. Any way when we got the first glimpse of the first school I had my WOW moment and the first float was a massive all silver construction with these Greek looking naked men statues. It was impressive, flashing and lit up like a Christmas tree followed by I rekon 10,000 plus people in costumes that are just amazing and to think all that work and money goes into the cost of the outfit and the float for 90 minutes and then it just gets thrown away. Literally tossed into the bin. There were people in the stands that were coming back in with costumes that we had seen in the previous school and wearing them for photos. They did look cool and apparently they were damn heavy!!!
The Samba schools are very large groups of performers, financed by respected organizations (as well as illegal gambling groups), who work year round in preparation for Carnival. Samba Schools perform in the Sambadrome, which runs four entire nights. They are part of an official competition, divided into seven divisions, in which a single school is declared the winner, according to costume, flow, theme, and band music quality and performance. Some samba schools also hold street parties in their neighborhoods, through which they parade along with their followers.
Various “samba schools” compete in a huge parade. Each school presents a different theme, which they expose through their costumes, dance, music and the “carros alegóricos” huge vehicles decorated according to the theme designed specifically for the parade. The schools are responsible for choosing their own themes, which usually revolve around historical happenings or some sort of cultural or political movement.
We could see the clock countdown from where we were sitting so it was interesting how long each school took to get to us and in what time they actually crossed their last dancing person across the line. If they go over time then they lose points in the scoring system. It was just a flurry of colour, sequins and AMAZING costumes it really is hard to put into words the feeling and vibe of the Sambadrome. It was certainly a once in a lifetime experience that was for sure and one I won’t forget in a hurry. Each school has its own supporters and they also just dance to the one song for the whole 90 minutes. One of the schools was super popular and the stand swelled with people for that 90 minutes and it was crazy for people to find spare spots and then when that school finished, the stand was just then back to busy. A lot of people were starting to get really drunk, like really really drunk. We were having beers and were a little merry, but why come all this way to a massive parade to not remember any of it? Makes no sense to me but each to their own I suppose.
Sven, Kate and I lasted for 4 schools and till 4am. We had had enough, and even though each float was different and amazing, there comes a time when the same repetitive tune keeps playing, and similar looking costumes keep coming that it was time to say farewell. We left Paul and Liz who were determined to stay for the 3 remaining school performances and we had plans to meet at 7pm for dinner that night.
Our walk home was uneventful even though we did get lost at one point and what took us 25 minutes to get there took us an hour to get back, but back we did get at 5am and we were totally exhausted. We had to find Nic a taxi to get her back to Copacabana which was easier than we first thought it would be and Kate and I were then tucked up in bed by 5.30am with an alarm set for 9am to wake up and see how we feel to make breakfast.
WHAT A NIGHT AND I TOTALLY AGREE THAT THIS WAS THE BIGGEST PARTY IN THE WORLD.
