Carnival in Rio de Janeiro

Samba Schools

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. Samba schools include: Mocidade Independente, Imperio Serrano, Academicos do Salgueiro, Unidos da Tijuca, and Beija-Flor de Nilopolis.

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.

Street Carnival

As the parade is taking place in the Sambadrome and the balls are being held in the Copacabana Palace and beach, many of the carnival participants are at other locations. Street festivals are very common during carnival and are highly populated by the locals. Elegance and extravagance are usually left behind, but music and dancing are still extremely common. Anyone is allowed to participate in the street festivals. Bandas and bondos are very familiar with the street carnival especially because it takes nothing to join in on the fun expect to jump in. One of the most well known bandas of Rio is Banda de Ipanema. Banda de Ipanema was first created in 1965 and is known as Rio’s most irreverent street band.

Music and Dance

Incorporated into every aspect of the Rio carnival are dancing and music. The most famous dance is the samba, an African dance brought over by the slaves. 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.

The samba is the main dance of Rio Carnival but it is not performed in silence. Music is another major aspect of all parts of carnival. As stated by Samba City, “Samba Carnival Instruments are an important part of Brazil and the Rio de Janeiro Carnevale, sending out the irresistible beats and rhythms making the crowd explode in a colourful dance revolution fantasy fest!” The samba that is found in Rio is batucada, referring to the dance and music being based on percussion instruments. It “is born of a rhythmic necessity that it allows you to sing, to dance, and to parade at the same time.” This is why the batucada style is found in most all of Rio’s street carnivals.

Instruments of Carnival

Before the samba gained the percussive style, it was played with flutes and string instruments because percussion was looked upon as corrupt. It was in 1930 that the shift came to allow for percussion instruments. There is an ensemble of drum and percussion players that are led by a man that plays an apito, a whistle used to control the music. The apito has three tones but is not very loud, so many leaders prefer to use referee whistles instead.

There are several types of drums within the ensemble including the surdos, caixas, repiniques, and tamborim. The surdo is a wide and deep drum that gives the bass drum foundation sound. The caixas is similar to the snare drum that gains it sound from the thin springs underneath the scin of the drum. Repiniques are just like the caixis except they do not have the sharp snare sound because they are missing the springs. Tamborims make similar sounds to the snare but are actually small cylinders covered with one tight skin. Not like any other of the drums is an instrument called the cuicas which is used to promote the melody. It creates is sound by rubbing a wet sponge alone a stick that is attached to the head of the drum on the inside. Accompanying the drums are shakers called chocalhos, made from metal, and ganzes, made from seeds enclosed in a cylinder. Little bells called agogos are used to promote the melody with two to five tones.

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.”

Controversy

From the early 1970s until now, some Rio de Janeiro samba schools are under the control of so-called bicheiros – operators of the illegal lottery in the city, known as the Jogo do Bicho ("the animals game"). To foster public support, the bosses invested part of their enormous earnings in samba schools. The bicheiros control the Liga Independente das Escolas de Samba do Rio de Janeiro (Independent League of the Samba Schools of Rio de Janeiro) or LIESA, the principal association that organizes the Rio Carnival.

A bicheiro fixed the results of Rio de Janeiro's 2007 carnival parade. Press reports suggest that Anísio Abraão David, the honorary president of Beija-Flor that dominated the competitions that year and previous years, used bribes and a hitman to buy and intimidate members of the carnival jury. According to extracts from a federal police report "some individuals who worked as carnival jurors and refused to accept benefits from Anisio were threatened or had their relatives threatened with death if the Beija-Flor school did not win the 2007 carnival". Investigations have yet to yield anything conclusive.

The parade has also been pushing the envelope in terms of nudity. While female dancers can come out topless, judges draw the line when it comes to exposing genitalia.