Rio Stories

You dropped your eye

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Tue, 4 Mar 2014 22:22:00 -0800

I was awakened at 2:30am Saturday night by a gentle knocking at my bedroom door. I thought for sure I must have dreamed it, but no, there it was again, a gentle tapping.

I staggered out of bed to find Olivia whispering "The guys from Mocidade are here with our costumes and they need the money right now."

Mocidade (moh-see-DAH-jee) is a beloved Rio escola-de-samba - one of the huge parade groups - that we have signed up to parade with. It's a storied escola, with a great history, that we both have personal connections to. It's had a rocky road recently, but Mocidade has a truly great song this year, and they've also just had a very exciting change of leadership. They have been struggling under the directorship of a very controversial escola president for years, and a few scant weeks ago they actually somehow got rid of him. I don't know the whole story but it was big news in Rio, and the general sensation is that "Mocidade is back." That the people of the Mocidade community have reclaimed their escola. So we've both signed up for a costume in one of the parade sections.

But, two-thirty in the morning? And a sudden demand for close to US $300, cash on demand? Seriously? It feels like a drug deal, but we open the door and there are two very tired-looking guys with big black trash bags full of mysterious costume objects, one of them whispering "Sorry about the time" and both of them looking absolutely exhausted. It turns out they are doing FORTY last-minute home deliveries tonight. They hand over two very large strange silver cross-shaped things about four feet wide that I decide later are supposed to be crab carapaces with four gigantic silver lightning bolts shooting out of them; and also two extremely strange-looking hats that seem to have giant fuzzy orange lightning bolts shooting out the top, plus fake fuzzy orange sunglasses; and large trash bags containing clown suits, clown shoes, a truly enormous shoulder harness of some kind, and some other objects I can't figure out.

Yeah, so, it's two-thirty in the morning, Sunday morning really, and the parade is at nine pm Monday night. There is an unmistakable air of last-minute-ness about this. I wonder if money came through at the very last second, if the costumes were thrown together last-minute; I wonder if it's got something to do with the recent change in leadership. Or, possibly Mocidade's just super disorganized, which (knowing the Rio escolas) is also possible.

Anyway, we heap everything on the floor and everybody falls back asleep. It's Saturday night, after all - meaning, it's our last night of sleep before the Grupo Especial escola parades. Grupo Especial will run all night Sunday and all night Monday, till dawn, and I don't expect to any sleep at all either night. So all day Sunday we sleep, and all night Sunday we're at the Sambodromo watching the six Grupo Especial parades. And by "up all night" I mean the last parade ends AFTER dawn and I don't get to bed till after 8am the next morning.

So it wasn't till mid-day Monday - the day of the parade - that Olivia and I woke up and finally had a moment to take a serious look at the costumes. Okay...

This is going to be difficult.

Rio Carnaval costumes are not the "sexy samba dancer" costumes that everyone always seems to imagine. They're more like bizarre modern art sculptures that are wrapped all around your body, almost smothering you in layers of strange headpieces, shoulder-pieces and strange accessories. The idea is that they're illustrate some aspect of the escola's parade theme that year, but the theme could be anything (South Korea, environmental destruction, the history of photography, whatever). You might end up dressed as a satellite dish, a fish, a newspaper, Mahatma Gandhi, you name it. And you don't have much choice - you sign up for an ala and you have to wear exactly the costume that ala is committed too. (everybody in the ala has to wear an identical costume.) Anyway, this time Olivia and I are in an ala (parade section) that is supposed to be "manguebeat", a genre of Brazilian music that we both love and that is often represented by a crab, so it's sort of a crab costume except with lightning bolts added everywhere. Nice idea but as we get a look at the costume it becomes apparent the hat is horribly designed, unbelievably tall and top-heavy and there is no possible way it is going to stay on our head. The costume's also already falling apart. It looks like it was indeed glued together at the last second, with not enough glue, and the silver lightning bolts are shedding their silver tips even as we hold them up to look at them. Not a good sign.

Also, I begin to notice that we will be wearing, in 90F heat: a one-piece clown suit made of thick black plastic; on top of that, a huge foam chestpiece that drapes down nearly to my knees; attached to that, a the big silver carapace with the giant lightning bolts; on top of all that, a choker around our necks; tall socks and closed shoes; crab claws on our hands; and the giant hat.

We're just kind of idly looking at all this and haven't said anything to each other yet and Olivia says calmly, "Kathleen, you know we are going to die, right?"

In true Carnaval fashion the thing we are most worried about is not our impending death, but rather the fact that the hat won't stay on. Because the escola doesn't get marked down if people die but DOES get marked down if the hats don't stay on. And, of course, the Rio Carnaval is a competition. There are 3 levels of competition. Some escolas, the heavy hitters, the rich ones that can afford to blow seven million dollars on a parade, parade to win. Others - the "poor" escolas that only have the two or three million dollars in base annual funding that the city of Rio provides them with - fight just for a chance to finish in the top 6, which get a position of honor in the champion's parade next week.

And some escolas just fight for their lives, trying not to come in last, because the last escola is demoted to the "second group", which is a terrible blow. Mocidade, unfortunately, has been the last group recently, the escolas that struggle just to stay in Grupo Especial. We want Mocidade to do well. That means the hat needs to stay on!

We're so worried about the poor design of the hat, and the impossible crab claws while we're at it, and the costume falling apart, that Olivia actually calls up the ala director (director of our parade section) to warn him about the unfeasibility and poor construction of the costumes and tell him he's got to bring glue to the parade assembly point tonight, just to help glue all the pieces back on. Plus string to help tie the hats on.

Olivia hangs up and tells me "He knows, he apologizes, and he said, the whole escola is like this." Apparently every ala has been complaining that ALL the costumes are too huge, all the hats are too unwieldy, everything's just unbearable and everything's falling apart. Right then. On with the show.

The evening starts off with the perpetual problem of "how the hell do we even get to the Sambodromo, which is clear across town, when all the taxis are taken by the 300,000 drunk college kids who are all running around town going to the street parades, all the buses are either re-routed or stuck in the street parades also" etc. There's the rush of panic as we realize we are late, the usual additional panic as we realize that no free taxis exist in the world, the usual last-second plea for a friend to drive us to a certain subway station that we think is open, the additional excitement of accidentally getting on the wrong subway line and then missing our station and going one station too far and having to walk back. Finally, an hour later we are staggering with all our heavy costume pieces to the Sambodromo and I finally have to confront a huge complication that I've been thinking about all weekend: I am trying to do two completely incompatible activities at the same night. These are: (1) be in one parade, (2) watch the other five parades.

If you are thinking "those don't sound like completely incompatible activities", you have never paraded in the Rio Sambodromo, have you?

Here's the jigsaw-puzzle pieces I've been thinking about since Thursday, when I first had the bright idea of trying to parade with Mocidade:

- you cannot carry any personal possessions in the parade. At all. Of any kind. Unless you can completely hide them under your costume (where they will get SOAKED with sweat and when I say soaked, I mean dripping).

- you cannot wear your own shoes in the parade. You can only wear the costume shoes.

- but the costume shoes are very badly made and don't fit and will give you hideous blisters within minutes; and the costume itself is going to make you die of heat stroke and sweat like a stuck pig, so you can only wear your underwear underneath it and you are going to need to take the costume and the shoes off IMMEDIATELY after the parade or you will WILL die of heat stroke (and I'm not even exaggerating, you would actually need medical attention)

- ok, that leaves you standing there barefoot in your bra and panties at the end of the Sambodromo, doesn't it? But where can you leave your clothes and shoes during the parade? There is nowhere to leave your clothes. Nor your phone, keys or money.

- Yay, you have a ticket to a private seat! Perhaps you can leave your stuff there? But not without your friends to watch it, and since you're in the first parade and have to arrive early for it, your friends are not there yet to hold your bag for you.

- But yay, Dudu can hold your bag for you!

- But Dudu is in Sector 6 and your own ticket is for Sector 10. And for a completely inexplicable reason, people in Sectors 2, 4, 6 and 8 can all walk freely between each other sectors, and people between Sectors 10 and 12 can intermingle too, but there is a heavily militarized zone between Sectors 8 and 10 and it's absolutely impossible to walk from one to the other. So if Dudu has your bag and he walks into Setor 6 with it, how will you ever get it back if your own ticket is for Setor 10?

- Also don't forget you have to get a Magic Bracelet to re-enter the Sambodromo. But to get the Magic Bracelet you have to walk TWO FRIGGIN' MILES in your damn costume shoes (all the way around the Sambodromo through infinite warren of tiny little back alleys, following a taunting series of "Sectors 10 and 12 This Way" signs that seem to be laughing at you as they lead you further and further south, practically down to Argentina)

... and there's about 10 more things I need to add to that list to explain how I finally managed to retrieve my bag from Setor 6, but never mind, just trust me when I say that (1) being in the first parade and (2) watching the rest of the parades, just those 2 things, represents a feat of Rio logistics that has to be experienced firsthand to be believed. Anyway, I end up limping all the way to Setor 10 dragging my whole huge impossible costume there, limping in my damn clown shoes - and why am I not surprised that the elastic on one of Mocidade's knee-high clown socks broke instantly and is dragging around my foot, and that I'm already getting a blister? Or that the entire Mocidade costume is disassembling itself as I haul the damn thing five thousand miles to goddamn Sector 10 to get my goddamn Magic Bracelet so that I can re-enter the goddamn Sambodromo later? This HAT, my god, it's supposed to be sort of a crab, remember, and it is in the form of a gigantic and incredible heavy crowd about 2 feet tall and 2 feet wide, and on top are 2 long eyestalks (each two feet long), each with a black eyeball at the end surrounded by silver sequins. Obviously the crab also has 2 orange lightning bolts on top of its head and a huge pair of bright fuzzy orange sunglasses, plus a sequinned silver ball on top of everything, because, well, obviously that is what crabs look like, right? (And obviously crabs have a gigantic silver carapace with four ENORMOUS silver lightning bolts shooting out of it that are about four feet wide) Anyway I'm dragging my huge carapace-with-lightning bolts in one hand, the other hand has the trash bag with my gigantic shoulder harness and also the hat, which is upside down, and I'm wearing the black plastic clown outfit, and clown socks and one sock is down and is dragging around my foot, and I'm like an hour late and by the time I get my wristband, I'm at least a million miles from the north end of the Sambodromo where Mocidade is assembling and I am LATE. So I'm RACING up the side of the Sambodromo - did I mention it is a million miles long? - really starting to panic about the time, when a man comes running after me and says "You dropped your eye."

He hands me an eyestalk. With a black eye at the end. He also hands me the bright orange giant sunglasses. I look down at my hat and realize it must have been literally falling apart as I walked, because it's now missing:

- both orange lightning bolts

- the sunglasses

- one eyestalk+eye

- the silver ball.

All that is left is one lonely eyestalk + eye (also, the lonely remaining eye is trailing a long string of silver sequins that is coming unglued). Plus a spray of pointy pieces of wire and it is a damn miracle that I haven't put somebody's eye out. Plus, one of the green ribbons at the side is unraveling and I'm trailing a thread of green polyester that is probably 15 feet long. It's tripping random people behind me, but it's so thin that they can't see what they tripped on and they're all looking around in puzzlement. Also one of the silver lightning bolts has fallen off the carapace. I'm like a one-woman walking disaster area.

I rip off the green string, stuff all the pieces in the bag, tie the trailing edge of the clown sock to the clown shoe with the shoelaces, ignore the blister and keep on going.

Anyway, I finally find Mocidade, and am soooo relieved I just drop all my stuff in the street, buy a bottle of icy-cold water (from a kid who seems to be selling beer and water on the street all by himself and who can't be more than seven years old), pour half the water over my head, and chug the second half. The Mocidade gods are smiling on me and I actually find a porta-potty with a working door lock that is not entirely disgusting! Truly I am blessed. I retrieve all my stray costume pieces and make my way into the Mocidade "concentration" area, where the paraders are assembling, and, oh my god, MASS CHAOS in all directions. CHAOS.

Mocidade's got about 3800 paraders (not a typo... I'm not sure of the exact number but know it was just under 4000) and every single one of them is jammed into this single stretch of street that is only one block long, and it appears that every single costume is falling apart and everybody is in a panic and there are costume pieces all over everywhere, and we're all wedged into that section of street so tightly I literally cannot turn around. (especially not with that carapace thing, which I am beginning to hate with the force of a thousand suns) There are dozens and dozens of alas, each with nearly a hundred people, every damn ala with huge weird hats and huge pointy backpieces, and it is JAM-packed and nobody can get anywhere and everybody is frustrated and panicky and I can't find my ala. I'm dragging my lightning-bolt carapace, my sock is tripping me up again, I can't get anywhere. I finally nearly get bowled over by a band member who is hauling an enormous first-surdo that's nearly as wide as my crab carapace. He's got a Mocidade director who is acting as a kind of snowplow for him, charging ahead hollering for everybody to make way, and that's who's just shoved me aside. I take advantage of this and I wedge myself in right behind the drum guy and basically follow in their wake for as long as I can.

And then I see them! Silver carapaces ahead, and orange sunglasses and orange lightning bolts! My people! I have found my people! I'm so relieved. I still can't actually GET to them but I can SEE them up ahead. About ten minutes of struggle later I've actually gotten to the ala and located Olivia and only then do I realize what deep shit we are all in:

NONE OF THE CARAPACES WILL CONNECT TO THE SHOULDER HARNESS.

They're supposed to connect together. The silver carapace thing has 2 little metal prongs that are supposed to fit into 2 metal holes in the shoulder harness. But the prongs are way too short. They were all made incorrectly. The ala directors seem to be utterly baffled by this and Olivia's trying to ask one of them about it, but he seems to decided to devote all his mental energy just to gluing broken silver lightning bolts back together (which, granted, also needs to be done) but it seems to be taking 15 minutes per lightning bolt, there's hundreds of lightning bolts, people are starting to really despair about the metal prongs, and the parade starts in less than an hour.

A pause here to remind everybody that the Rio Carnaval is a competition, that Mocidade has been in trouble recently and it has only escaped being demoted by the skin of its teeth. Last year it came in 11th out of 12th. If it comes in 12th, it gets demoted to the second group, loses two million dollars per year of city funding, and, most of all, it would just break everybody's heart.

And one of the categories it's judged on is costumes, and one of the things the costume judge looks for is that all costumes have all their pieces.

We have to get the carapaces attached somehow. We have to. It become apparent the only thing that will work is if we all, all of us, stab 2 holes in the thick fabric of the costume with a pair of scissors so that the too-short metal prongs can reach their little metal holes. But does anybody have a pair of scissors? Of course not. Did any of the ala directors think to bring a pair of scissors? Of course not. I actually overhear one of the ala directors screaming "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DOES ANYBODY HAVE SCISSORS? OR A KNIFE? ANYTHING SHARP? ANYBODY?" I dig out my house key but discover it's one of those weird Brazilian keys that doesn't have sharp teeth. I try tearing the fabric, I even try biting a hole in it - no dice.

Perhaps it will not be a surprise if I tell you that everybody's hats have been shedding orange lightning bolts and silver balls and eyestalks and eyes every which way. There's carapaces underfoot everywhere, giant fuzzy orange sunglasses, people are putting orange lightning bolts on only to have them fall off again instantly, and DID I FORGET TO MENTION THE CLAWS? I haven't mentioned the claws? the two claws that are attached to each costume by 3 separate colored long pieces of rubber - so, just to be clear, that's SIX long things-to-trip-on attached to each costume, that trail across the ground and tangle in your feet and tangle the feet of the person next to you? I'm just not going to mention the claws anymore because I'm trying to erase them from my memory.

Olivia and I start out sort of confident and determined, certain we will be able to solve all these problems, but after a half hour drifts by and it's creeping closer to 9 and none of our efforts work and the ala directors disappear searching for scissors, we end up sort of standing there in slack-jawed disbelief. It is beginning to sink in that the parade is only minutes away, we only have half our costumes on, each of our costumes is missing half their pieces, the carapace cannot be put on the costume, the hat has more problems than I can even describe. I'm starting to laugh, but Olivia has this heart-breaking expression on her face of stunned shock mixed with near-fury (because, you have to understand, it MATTERS how well Mocidade does). I'm trying to tell her something like "You have to laugh, otherwise you'll cry," when there's screaming and yelling behind us and somebody's hollering "GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY! THE BAIANAS NEED TO GET THROUGH!"

Baianas are the older women in hoop skirts. One of the Rio Carnaval's more peculiar rules is that each escola is required to have at least 70 older women who are all wearing large hoop skirts, and they generally have the hugest costumes. And for some reason, some of Mocidade's baianas have showed up late and they've decided that the best way to get to the front of the parade is not to use the same path everybody else has been using all along, but instead to simple charge straight through the middle of alas that have all their costume pieces spread out on the floor for assembly. They charge DIRECTLY across the middle of all our stuff, actually yelling at us, and trample right over our carapaces - which till now I've been detesting but as I see the baianas walking ON OUR CARAPACES I suddenly become extremely protective of the stupid hideous carapaces and just can't believe that anybody would DARE step on my silver crab carapace!

The baianas plow right through my ala and destroy everything we've been working on. Till now the whole situation has seemed sort of sad but also sort of funny, but now the mood goes truly black. For a second there it's teetering on the edge of either murder or suicide, I can't decide which.

But as I look at the carapaces I discover the damn things have been through so much hell already, and have lost so many pieces already, that a little baiana-trampling hasn't really done any detectable additional damage. Everything looked like shit before and it still looks like shit, that's all.

I begin to accept the fact that we are not going to be able to get the costumes together, and I ask Olivia, "So, if we can't get our costume together, what do we do, should we stay out of the parade?" and she gives me sort of a fierce look and just says "We are going to parade."

The fireworks go off. The parade is starting. There's no way. We look at each other again.

And then suddenly there's a different ala director with us, a young guy who's working at nearly the speed of light, and - unbelieveable, unbelievable - HE HAS A PAIR OF SCISSORS, he's hacking holes in Olivia's shoulder-piece, he's GOT HER CARAPACE ATTACHED to her back, holy Jesus, he's hacking holes in my costume too, he's GOT MY CARAPACE ATTACHED TOO, he's hacking various essential holes in the hat, he's got strings to put through the holes to tie the hat on, he's gluing things on, he's found some stray orange lightning bolts on the ground and stray orange sunglasses, he's jamming them on the hats, suddenly we've got our huge shoulder things and silver carapaces on. All the little pieces are suddenly reappearing and getting jammed on the hat, he's wedging lightning bolts onto Olivia's hat, he fixes somebody's eyestalk, we figure out how the damn claws work, I feel hands on my foot and I don't even know who it is (I can't look down) - somebody is fixing my sock! Well, they're trying to, and they fail, but the sock problem has caught somebody's attention (clearly somebody has been ordered to crawl around and inspect the socks) and pretty soon I've been handed a little piece of string and I manage to tie the sock up around my calf. And the floats are moving and the song is starting and it turns out we're all in entirely the wrong place (why am I not surprised?) and we're all being hustled over to the correct float and we all get in line behind it and an ala director gets us all in line - Olivia has advised me to drift into the back line where we'll have a bit more space and air, and the ala director arranges the back line in a certain order. Then a 2nd ala director appears and he is appalled at the order we are standing in, and he puts us in an entirely different order, and a 3rd director shows up and gets agitated and puts us in a different order, and a 4th director appears and is very upset about the order we're in and puts us in an entirely different order, and we're moving and the parade's happening and we are turning now, the gigantic float in front of us is slowly wheeling onto the parade route, and we follow it around the wide turn and the millions of lights hit our eyes, the stadium full of thousands of people, and - oh my god - we've made it!

We're on the runway! We're in the Sambodromo! I look around and, holy Jesus, EVERYBODY'S COSTUME IS ASSEMBLED. Everybody's hat has 2 orange lightning bolts and orange sunglasses and 2 eyestalks and a little silver ball. Everybody's got their silver carapace. Everybody's socks are up.

We look incredible!

We did it! We did it! We did it!

At the very last second a 5th ala director is horrified at the way the back line is arranged and puts us in an entirely different order, and then we're dancing, we're singing, we're walking under the first judge's booth and it's ON, we're being judged now, we sing like our little hearts depend on it. My goddam hat is still trying to fall off and I have to keep my little crab claws up the whole time, hanging on to the green ribbons on either side to keep it level, trying to pretend the hat is fine and that I'm just holding my little crab claws up because it makes me happy to have my little crab claws up, but honestly, I think this the best song I've ever heard in my life and it is suddenly the most amazing parade I've ever been in, in my entire life.

I honestly, truly, love the song.

As I take the very last step off the parade route, my sock falls down.

At the end Olivia manages to sneak us off to the side, to a place we're probably not supposed to be, and we wait there and watch the rest of the parade come pouring over to us. We're in the area where the gigantic floats go right after they come after the parade route. A huge float full of mostly-naked, very sweaty, extremely good-looking men comes by and they all pile off right next to us and stand all around us. Several destaques (the girls in the amazing glitter bikinis with gigantic feathery wings) are also standing around. We stand there with the gorgeous mostly-naked guys and the gorgeous mostly-naked girls, in our weird crab outfits (we've already jettisoned the carapaces and hats and I've ripped off the detested claws), we watch the parade pour off the end of the parade route and I begin to realize that somehow, by the skin of their teeth, at the last possible second, against all odds, Mocidade has pulled off an incredibly good parade. I hear the crowd actually SCREAM when the Mocidade bateria does an exceptionally beautiful break. (As Pauline points out later, Brazilians don't usually scream like that.) The bateria is the last group off the parade route and when they come off we all go running up to greet them, and start leaping and dancing and singing with them, the whole crowd just ecstatic. My god; Mocidade has done it. And as I tell Olivia later, "I am never, ever, going to forget this parade."

GALERA! WE ALL HAVE TO PLAY SURDO!

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Tue, 4 Mar 2014 20:42:00 -0800

I just want to get this one down quickly before I forget it. Dudu's new group was supposed to play at a little bloco parade in Botafogo last Thursday (the evening of Carnaval, which officially started Friday), but - very long backstory here that I am skipping - we ended up having to throw a tiny bateria (drum group) together at the last second. Anyway, the result was that on Thursday night, Olivia and a friend of hers and I are all piled into a car looking for this unknown little parade in Botafogo and we can't find a parking spot. Olivia's in the back seat on the phone with Dudu and she starts laughing to us "There's only going to be 6 people." So... a bateria for a parade is normally at least 30-40 people - for the big samba escolas it's over 400 drummers - and we're going to be just 6 people total? With more than 6 instruments parts to cover? With a repertore that none of us knows? And I haven't been playing any of this stuff in years.... Olivia jokes, "I think we're going to be the entire surdo section". (Bass drum.) We break up laughing over this because the surdo section is actually pretty damn critical, there are 3 separate parts to play, it's almost always big tough guys and here we are just 3 girls (and me a gringa). And you really need to have players who know the repertoire solid to cover the 3 different surdo parts. Olivia says to her friend, who is driving, "You're going to have to be second surdo". The look of sheer panic that flashes over the friend's face sends both Olivia and me into hysterics. The friend comes out suddenly with "Did I ever tell about the time I ended up in this bloco full of these experienced escola guys and somehow they put me on first surdo and I was the only first surdo and I'd never played first surdo in my life and they nearly killed me?" She launches into the story, we're getting into more hysterics, we still can't find a parking spot, we're circling around and around. Olivia gets another call from Dudu. She reports, "He says they really need us! He's not joking! We have to get there NOW!" More dithering about parking. The friend is thinking now about what she will actually play - maybe snare drum? perhaps shaker? Olivia yells from the back seat, "GALERA!" (one of my favorite Portuguese words - literally "gallery", it means something like, "Hey gang!"). She yells, "GALERA! WE ALL HAVE TO PLAY SURDO!" - and something about the mock-desperation in her voice gets us all laughing again.

We manage to find a tiny dead-end street, clearly resident parking only, patrolled by a parking guard of some kind who looks at us suspiciously. Olivia's friend puts down her window and pleads to the guy, still nearly choking with laughter, "For the love of god can you find us somewhere to park? We're supposed to be in that bloco on the next street over and it's starting right now!" Olivia yells from the back seat, "WE'RE THE ENTIRE SURDO SECTION!" and we all bust out laughing again, including the parking guy. He actually manages to find us a spot and makes us move the car a few times till it's wedged up onto the sidewalk.

Anyway, we get there, and WE ARE IN FACT THE ENTIRE SURDO SECTION just as Olivia predicted. This is getting too surreal for words now and I can't believe that we are, in fact, the entire surdo section, and am further horrified when Dudu makes me.... the only first-surdo player. (It occurs to me right about now that he doesn't know I haven't played surdo in five years). It also turns out we are playing for a modern-dance group that starts off with a choreography to "Age of Aquarius". There's a singer standing up on top of a tiny pickup truck festooned with flags, and she starts belting out out "When the MOOOOOOOOON is in the seventh HOOOOOOUUUUSE" (in a Brazilian accent) and we're trying to drum along with the recording, and the modern dance group is leaping around and a huge number of drunk people with funny hats on their heads have appear out of nowhere and are starting to follow us, along with a dozen or so beer vendors, and somewhere in there I realize that this parade is going to end up on my "Weird Gigs" lifetime list.

Later, the dance group do a piece about "filth" that for downright mystifying reasons seems to require the dancers wearing trash bags on their head and rolling around on the ground. I wish I were joking; I am not; they put trash bags on their heads and rolled around on the ground; I have proof, I took a video; and it goes on for over three minutes. It was about at this point that the gig shot to #1 on the Weird Gigs List.

But then a miracle happens. Dudu drafted some of his excellent musician friends to play along with us (i.e., actual melody instruments), and as soon as the dance group turns us loose to play on our own (rather than trying to play along to an only-half-audible recording of "Age of Aquarius"), a huge crowd accumulates around us and everybody is dancing and suddenly it becomes one of the most unexpectedly fun parades I've ever done. Dudu has me playing a sort of doubled part at first - both first and second surdo on one drum - then switches me to first, then switches me to second, I guess because he doesn't want me to get too comfortable or anything (or possibly I was screwing up too much). Olivia and her friend are both on third beside me and thank god they actually know a lot of Dudu's surdo repertoire, but I'm of course completely clueless about everything and Dudu's having to mime parts in the air at me. I'm doing pretty well though (I think?), except for a slight rush that keeps creeping into my hands out of nervousness, but not too bad really, for my first time on first or second surdo in five damn years! - and alone on the parts in a Carnaval parade with some of Rio's best musicians at my side with a bunch of dancers rolling around on the ground with trash bags on their heads. Not too bad at all. Now, you gotta understand, I've played with Monobloco, I've played with Banga, I've played with Rio Maracatu, I've played with a lot of great groups; but this weird little Botafogo gig ends up being my favorite bloco experience of the entire 2014 Carnaval.

Batuca's first show!

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 15:10:00 -0800

I'm staying with my friends Eduardo and Olivia, who I met years ago when I first came to Rio. Eduardo's a professional musician and directs Carnaval street bands here - his specialty is bands that play a variety of Brazilian rhythms, not only samba - and Olivia, who is professionally a film director, loves to play as well. Anyway, the next morning I'm blearily awakening at mid-day after my late-night Tijuca adventure, when Eduardo comes knocking on my door saying "Vamos tocar?" ("Let's play?") and saying something about terceira. Ten minutes later I've chugged down some coffee and Eduardo's saying in Portuguese, "So, I've got this brand new group, about forty drummers, and we've got our first ever public show, and since it's a brand new group it's mostly beginners so I think we need you on terceira, is that okay? You don't mind playing terceira do you? It'll be simple. Very easy. There's only four pieces and each has two or three different patterns and just a few hand signs and a couple of breaks and an entrance and an ending thing, and sometimes a little weird thing in the middle, okay? Very easy! Don't worry, you can just watch Vanessa and you'll be fine!"

An alarmingly short time later I'm in a little van full of excited chattering Brazilians heading over the long bridge to Niteroi, the city on the other side of the bay from Rio. The group turns out to be called "Batucalacatuca", or Batuca for short. (Eduardo's previous group, a group I played in for years, was called "Bangalafumenga" and I'm trying to figure out what his deal is with these extremely long names that start with B?) Several of the bell players adopt me for some reason and give me a variety of festive little hats to wear and help me cut up my t-shirt. (you always have to wear the band t-shirt when you are playing in a Carnaval street band, but it seems to be required that the girls all immediately cut pieces off of the t-shirts and re-work them into much sexier little tanktops decorated with festive little colored ribbons.) Then suddenly there we are in Niteroi, milling around on a little street by a new hostel that is hosting our little Carnaval show. Ages pass with no clear plan apparent, everybody wandering around chattering, drums piled up all over the street. We start drifting over to a tiny street bar that has sprung into existence on the corner and start chugging down coconut-smoothies, which are absolutely incredible. I see a cluster of perhaps a dozen black guys coming drifting up the street. They're all wearing identical green t-shirts and I realize they must have just finished parading in one of the local Carnaval groups here in Niteroi. They stand in a bunch with their arms folded over their chests, watching us with that skeptical "can these white girls actually play?" sort of look. I'm starting to get a little worried that I've stupidly agreed to perform in a group whose repertoire I only saw for the first time a couple of hours ago, but Eduardo zips by a few times to mention again "Just stand next to Vanessa," and "You'll be fine, just watch Vanessa", except I he forgets to point out who Vanessa is. Then all of a sudden we're starting! I think, well, hell with it, I strap on the terceira, I get in the middle of the 35 or so drummers, suddenly we're playing and I realize that next to me is a slender, tanned Brazilian woman who also has a terceira on, and she is playing like HELL. Strong and clean, and wonderful technique. All her syncopations are spot on. I decide "I'm just going to assume this is Vanessa", and I play next to her for the entire show. Watching her for every break. Laying out of the 1st measure of each piece and coming in on the 2nd once I see what the pattern is. She realizes what I'm doing and shoots me a grin now and then.

Pretty soon I've got hold of the rep and - My. God. It is so magical playing terceira again. I feel like I've come home after years of exile. Even though it's a new bloco, even though it's mostly beginners, this is SO much fun. The repertoire is fantastic. (Eduardo has a particular skill at devising arrangements that are not too technically difficult, and are achievable by beginners, but that have a truly intense fun groove once all the different instruments are playing together). We're not playing all that fast or anything, but the whole crowd is dancing. I look over to the side at one point and spot all the black guys in the green t-shirts again, and they're all dancing now. One of them actually holding his beer cup in his teeth just so he can clap his hands over his head while he dances.

Partway through the parade I realize it was definitely a stupid idea to jump in on terceira without having played it in years. There's certain back and leg muscles you need just to be able to carry the thing, there's stamina you need to build up, there's calluses you need on your hands, there's arm muscles that need to strengthen. An hour into the show I'm dripping with sweat, my legs are shaking, my back aching, I've got bruises on both knees and blisters in 3 different places on my right hand. I also have a POUNDING headache that I have not managed to shake since the plane flight, I dimly realize I haven't really had much sleep in the last forty-eight hours, I feel basically like hell. And yet I'm so happy, and I keep thinking: This is where I'm supposed to be. Playing terceira in Rio.

If there is a Heaven, if you go to your favorite ever moment, this is where I'll be: playing terceira in Rio. Perhaps right at that gorgeous moment in the maculele when we switch from pattern 1 to pattern 2 and the terceiras come rolling in like thunder, like wild galloping horses. Everybody dancing, all my friends around me.

At the end the slender Brazilian woman turns to me. It turns out she is indeed Vanessa. She says with a smile, "Toca bem." (You play well.)

Watching terceira

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 14:57:00 -0800

I'm finally back in Rio and simply can't believe it's actually been THREE YEARS since I was here. Everything seems so extremely familiar; I feel certain I must have been here just a few months ago, and have to keep reminding myself that I was last here in 2011.

I started a new marine biology job in 2011 that requires a certain amount of commitment, and I could only come for a short trip in 2011, and only a short trip now in 2014. The great thing about short trips though is they take the pressure off. I've arrived just 1 week before Carnaval, which is way too late to join any of the major groups. They've all been rehearsing for months by now. The major escolas closed out their final rehearsals of the year on the weekend that I arrived (last weekend before Carnaval). But that's actually really relaxing because it means I don't have to dash around like a madwoman from one rehearsal to the next. I don't have to feel like I "have" to parade in the Sambodromo, or "have" to play with a Grupo Especial escola, or any of that. I'm purely here to see my friends. I'm just here for fun, and I think: I'm just going to relax. I'll do a bit of work for my job, I'll go see the Monday parades, I'll go to the beach... I won't even try to play anywhere.

So of course the second I arrive, bleary-eyed and exhausted after a six-hour delay in New York due to a sleetstorm, an extremely long red-eye overnight flight and then a bewilderingly long taxi ride ("Apologies," said the taxi driver, "there's a parade group in the street up ahead"), my friend Olivia greet me with a huge hug and then says immediately "Oh, before I forget, my mother's playing with Unidos da Tijuca this year [one of the very best groups] and their last rehearsal is tonight at midnight and she could take you along if you like? Oh and - my new band is playing our first show tomorrow afternoon... do you want to play?"

What else can you say but "yes" and "yes"?

So off I went to Unidos da Tijuca. This is an escola rehearsal, which of course means, it STARTS at midnight and goes till four in the morning. This is completely normal for the weekend rehearsals of hte major samba parade groups. And the whole community shows up: eighty-year-old women, tiny little kids, the hot sexy passista dancers, and everybody in between - everybody's there, from midnight to four in the morning.

So once again there I was camped out at the foot of Tijuca's bateria stand (the elevated bandstand), watching Casa Grande ("Big House", the tall white-haired director of the Tijuca bateria) call in the band with that thunderous breathtaking entry. Once again squeezing my way through crowds of chattering Brazilians to buy an Antarctica beer or two, a few waters, a mysterious little pastry full of mysterious something, maybe a caipirinha. It was a full-on rehearsal, complete with passista dance show, a quite long practice sessions for the baianas. (The baianas are older women who dance in hoop skirts. In one of Rio's more peculiar parade requirements, every parading group in the competition is REQUIRED to have a large section of women over the age of 40 who are all wearing hoop skirts. The ingenious thing about this old rule is it makes women-over-the-age-of-40 a valued group of parade members.) They also have 2 pairs of flag-bearers practicing their mesmerizing spinning dance (this is another parade requirement, with its own set of peculiar rules). But, as always, I ended up drifting over to the bateria. It's the first time I've been able to be with a real Rio bateria in years and I'm blown away by the crispness of Tijuca's tamborims, the incredible clean, locked swing of the snares, the strength and power of the third-surdos.

The third-surdos (terceiras) kept catching my eye. Terceira is the smallest of the bass drums and the one that does the most complicated patterns. It typically does a lot of fill and syncopations and it's a tremendously exciting part to play. There's also usually competition to play terceira; you have to be very solid technically and pretty strong too, and there's constant jockeying for who gets to play it. It actually used to be my specialty - I was surdo section leader ages ago back in Seattle, and have played surdo in several groups here in Rio in my 2006-2008 time when I was mostly living here. But I haven't played it in years now.

So I kept standing at the base of the Tijuca bateria section, looking up at the terceira and thinking, aw, I'm just here on vacation, but.... jeez, it would be fun to play terceira again, wouldn't it?

By the time two-thirty rolled around I was really staggering with fatigue. Olivia's mom Tanit eventually decide to leave "early" (2:30am) and drove me back home, weaving her way in and out of huge amounts of construction, which she says is all World-Cup and Olympics related. We spent the whole drive back talking about escolas, and Tanit launched into one of those Rio-samba-fan discussions that I love so much: All the gossip from every escola, which group has the best song this year, why on earth Mocidade's songs have been so bad recently and how wonderful it is that they have a good song this year, who's got the best parade theme and who has the worst, which band has the best snares, who's got the best swing.

She says, "Two weeks from now it will all be over. And then I'll be thinking, now what do I do on Saturday nights? For months and months now, I go rehearse with Unidos da Tijuca on every single Saturday night! Everybody goes into a little bit of a depression after Carnaval, you know, because suddenly we don't know what to do with ourselves."

I'm still thinking about terceira the next morning when Eduardo pokes his head in my door and says "Can you play terceira today? We kind of need you on terceira at our show today. You don't mind, do you?"

Someday it'll happen

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:47:00 -0700

My last day in Rio and for the very first time I'm on a fast reliable internet connection, so I'm posting a couple more quick stories now. This has been my first trip in years sans laptop... my first DAY sans laptop in at least five years running. quite a weird and lovely experience.

I have to go catch a cab to the airport in about half an hour. Am right now scarfing down my last Guarana, my last little ball of cheese bread, soaking in my last 90-degree heat and searing sun for months, and getting my last sunburn. I still have so much I want to write about, especially the terrifically stunning Bangalafumenga moments (the parade at the Botanical Garden, and their last show in Lapa last Saturday). But I just wanted to point out one thing about women being drummers, here in Rio. It's been stunning how rapidly it's changed, in the last five years. When I first got here in 2005, women drummers were still kind of rare, and Mangueira (that bastion of tradition) still did not allow women in the bateria at all. Now they're just all over the place! Mangueira was the last holdout, actually; they folded a few years back and started letting women play, and they now regularly recruit the best female percussionists in all of Rio. There's even a little show group of the Women of Mangueira. There are at least three all-female blocos that I know of (two in Rio and one in Niteroi). Quite a few of the more "modern" blocos, the ones that play a variety of rhythms and that play more than just samba, are more than 50% women now. (Banga, for one, is probably about 2/3 women).

In the escolas, women are extremely common in tamborim and chocalho - those are the traditional "women's instruments", to some extent - and have crept to a surprising degree onto caixa and surdo.

One of my Rio friends said she'd seen a little tiny girl at a Grupo Especial escola a few weeks before Carnaval, about seven years old or so. You frequently see little boys in the bateria, and playing damn well too, but only in the last couple years have I ever seen little girls. A new generation of girls is growing up inside the baterias. Most of the little girls just play at being passistas (the sexy dancers) but now at least they have a choice, and they know they can be in the bateria too if they want.

Anyway, this little girl was pretending to be one of the escola directors, the guys that give the cues. She was correctly giving all the start and stop hand cues, signalling the breaks correctly. And watching the mestre - the conductor/director of the whole bateria, the guy in charge of everything - like a hawk.

My friend (a woman percussionist herself) asked the girl, "Do you want to be in the bateria when you grow up?"

The girl said "No. I want to be mestre."

Mangueira's 9 was for "second surdo"??

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 12:27:00 -0700

So, in the midst of the Libya crisis and the Tokyo nuclear reactors overheating and the ghastly tsunami videos and everything, somehow the fact that the Rio escola-de-samba Mangueira got a 9 for bateria from one Sambodromo judge has just been fascinating me, and is just about the only news story I'm following right now. (Possibly because it helps me avoid all the other horrible news).

In a statement to the press that utterly mystified me, the judge who gave the Mangueira bateria an unheard-of 9.0 (that's very low) says it was not because of the "paradona" (the silent 20-second break). (That had been the dominant theory circulating, including among the bateria players.) The judge said the silent break was fine. He says the 9 was because Mangueira was using a second surdo, and that Mangueira is supposed to have only a first surdo, and he thought the second surdo messed up the pure tone of the first surdo. He said, it's fine for escolas to innovate but you shouldn't mess with tradition.

OK so.... First off. WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT? I've got a video of the bateria entering the Sambodromo and I've stared at that video about twenty times, in slow motion, backward and forward, and I can't see a second surdo anywhere! My video's not exactly definitive - it's shaky (hey, they were far away, and I was excited, and did not know I was going to need to be scrutinizing every damn surdo later) and for some idiotic reason I didn't pan all the way to the back of the bateria. But I can see quite a few of the surdos and they are... well, first off, they are STUNNING. That unbelievable power and confidence of Mangueira is all there.... even with the sound turned off, just the sight of those surdo guys, pounding, pounding, pounding that 2 in perfect synchrony, perfect power, perfectly relaxed... everybody singing, everybody dancing, BOUNCING even... so relentless.... so Mangueira. (and hey! Mangueira's got a woman on surdo!)
Anyway, all I see are first surdos and Mangueira's distinctive little third-surdos (called surdo mo'.) Playing the all time classic Mangueira surdo pattern. They did not mess with tradition.
I do think I might maybe possibly see two different SIZES of first surdo (though the size is hard to judge). Perhaps that's what the judge is talking about - maybe he is calling the smaller size a "second surdo"? Which is a pretty lame excuse for giving them a 9...
My other theory is that the judge thought the surdo mo' was a second surdo ... which would be embarrassingly ignorant if that were the case.

Second. Suppose Mangueira had indeed added a second surdo. So what? What on earth does it mean to say "It's fine to innovate, but don't mess with tradition"... let's see... giving them a 9 would therefore mean it is NOT fine to innovate, wouldn't it?

Third. A NINE? Even if Mangueira'd added a weird new surdo part, even if they'd broken with tradition, even if this is a judge who likes tradition, even if you want to penalize them for breaking with tradition - ok, give 'em a 9.8, sure! But a NINE? An entire point off? Many Carnaval championships are decided by less than a point, so that's potentially a death blow to the entire escola. A nine should mean they could barely play! That they couldn't hold tempo, that they fell apart! You don't give a 9 to a bateria that's playing better than almost every other bateria in Grupo Especial!

I'm not the only one who was confused by the judge's statement. The Mangueira mestre himself (a new mestre this year btw, Ailton Nunes) misunderstood this statement to mean that the judge was penalizing Mangueira for NOT having a second surdo, which actually is the opposite of what the judge said. Ailton made an appropriately baffled statement to the press about it.

Anyway, the judges all have to post the explanations of their scores a few weeks after Carnaval, but those have not been posted yet. Stay tuned... You may now return to your regular news of war, death, destruction.

Rio Carnaval results

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:31:00 -0800

Have finally clawed my way to an internet access point and am actually typing on a normal keyboard for the first time this trip. Good lord, it´s Thursday already...Ash Wednesday was yesterday, the Rei Momo has handed the key of the city back to the mayor, and Carnaval is actually finally over. And last night I slept for nearly 14 hours and woke up at two in the afternoon, since I´ve been up pretty much nonstop since Friday. I hadn´t gone to bed before dawn for the last five days running, and usually would snatch only 4 hours sleep or so, 8am to noon, and then run out to catch the 2pm blocos. Saturday night I never get any sleep at all, since I always have to run from the Grupo de Acesso parades (which end at 7am) straight to the Banga parade (which starts at 9am, clear across the city).

On Ash Wednesday is the Apuracao, the reading-of-the-scores of the escolas de samba. Even after seeing five Carnavals here, it´s extraordinary to me how intensely interested the entire city is in the results of the judging. (Note to new readers: the massive parades of the escolas-de-samba in Rio are judged. It is a competition.) People follow the apuracao as intently as if it were the World Cup or the Super Bowl. What´s really funny is that it´s just a guy reading numbers... for about an hour and a half. But somehow it´s simply fascinating, as this or that escola starts to pull ahead in its total score.

The actual event takes place in the Sambodromo itself, right under the famous arched statue at the end of the parade route. Each escola has a little team of key people - the president, the carnavalesco [parade designer], the mestre-sala and porta-bandeira [the flag couple], the puxador [lead singer], mestre of the bateria [director the drummers] and so on - all seated at a table under the arches. Plus a battery of die-hard fans waving flags from the bleachers.

On a higher table sit the LIESA officials who will read the scores. One by one they go through each of the ten judging categories, which are (let´s see if I can remember all ten...)

- Evolucao - roughly, parade flow)
- Harmonia - singing. Singing quality, enthusiasm, and whether all paraders know the words. When that judge looks at you, you´d better be singing, or at least faking really well! Or, in the immortal words of an Imperio Serrano director who ran screaming past me during my first parade as we approached the judges´ booth: "SING, DAMMIT! SING, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! SING, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! AND LOOK LIKE YOU´RE HAPPY!"
- Enredo - the theme of the parade. Each escola has a new enredo each year. (Enredos this year included Charles Darwin, hair, fear, a famous musician, a famous author of children´s books, the sea, etc.)
- Samba-enredo - the song. Each escola has a new song each year, written to match that year´s theme, and that one song is sung over and over in an endless loop during the parade. By the end of the hour-and-twenty-minute parade you either LOVE the song or you hate it with a passion. It´s always interesting, and mysteriously unpredictable, to see which songs grow on you and which don´t. (The escola with the best song this year, everyone seems to agree, was my own beloved Imperio Serrano. They won an Estandarte de Ouro for it).
- Comissao de frente - "comission of the front", this is the dance group that opens the whole parade. Typically it´s a very inventive, clever, choreographed show with amazing acrobats and dancers, illustrating some aspect of the enredo. (The comissao de frente that really got the crowd´s attention this year was Unidos da Tijuca - it was half dance and half magic show, involving the dancers´ bodies falling apart. The dancer´s heads seemed to fall off of their shoulders, and later the tops of their bodies somehow separated from the bottom halves.)
- Mestre-sala & porta-bandeira - the porta-bandeira is the woman who carries the escola flag, typically wearing a gown that is approximately the size of a pickup truck and covered with some ten million gems, and she whirls the flag around in an incredibly majestic sort of stately dance, while the mestre-sala [her consort] flies around her like a little satellite zooming around the sun. Each samba escola has its own unique flag; and each escola flag is so beloved, and is presented to the judges with such intense pride and respect by the porta-bandeira and mestre-sala, that it makes (say) right-wing Republicans´ reverence of the American flag seem kind of casual and ho-hum in comparison. Anyway, the mestre-sala and porta-bandeira have probably the heaviest burden of anybody in the parade, since those two people are responsible for a tenth of the escola´s total score, all by themselves. (The TV kept showing the porta-bandeira of Mangueira, who, during the reading of porta-bandeira scores, had her head down on the table for the entire time, her face hidden from view. She was gripping the mestre-sala´s hand so hard that both their hands were shaking. Thank god, they got 10´s, or I think she might have died on the spot)
- Bateria - the samba drummers. Usually there are between 250-400 drummers, all under the command of the mestre of the bateria and his crew of directors. This is, of course, the category that most fascinates us musicians.)(
- Alegorias & Aderecos - Floats and their decorations.
- Fantasias - Costumes.
- Conjunto - Overall effect (roughly).

So they go through each category one at a time. Ten categories. Five judges for each category (one in each of the five judges´ booths that are at different locations along the parade route. Nine escolas (this year. It´s usually 12). That´s a lot of scores to read! The top score is 10; and in Grupo Especial, the top league of samba escolas, the scores are supposed to be between 8 and 10. Typical Especial scores are clustered in the 9.8, 9.9, 10 range.

What that all adds up to is an hour and a half of the announcer saying things like "Evolucao. First judge. For the escola Mangueira....[dramatic pause]... NINE POINT NINE. For Unidos da Tijuca .... [dramatic pause]... TEN!"

But what´s always fascinating to me is how riveted the whole city is by this reading-of-the-scores. EVERY bar, and I mean EVERY bar in the entire city, is carrying the live TV feed of the reading-of-the-scores. EVERY escola has a big-screen TV set up in its rehearsal hall, with legions of fans waiting with bated breath for every number. If you take a taxi ride during the apuracao, the taxi radio will invariably be tuned into the radio broadcast, with the taxi driver muttering comments under his breath. And with every TEN (or, DEZ, in Portuguese) there´s a huge cheer from the fans from that escola, and moans of despair from fans of the other escolas.

Today I read an interview with the score announcer. He said, quite seriously, "You can´t just read the scores. You have to interpret them," as if the reading of the score is an Oscar-worthy performance. He said he gives great thought to how long a pause he uses before saying each number. The newspapers all commented on his especially dramatic five-second pause before Beija-Flor´s final score of the day. (which was a ten, when he finally got around to reading it)

And everybody´s got an opinion, about EVERY score. Me, I was invited to an Apuracao Party at the house of some Brazilian friends. It was a crowd of maybe 15 or 20 people, all of whom had watched all the escola parades all weekend. Everybody´d brought their little kids, and even newborn babies, and there was an endless flow of beer and a huge spread of sandwiches and cashews and little chocolate treats (and that rarest and finest of Brazilian delicacies, imported Pringles potato chips). And with every score, people were FULL of opinions. The afternoon unfolded like this:

Announcer: "Comissao de frente. Escola Beija-Flor.... TEN!"
Woman next to me: "WHAT? Are you KIDDING me? A TEN? OK, I could not make head or tail of that dance. There was the little boy and that giant box, and then these people in blue all spring out of the box and then run back into the box and suddenly the box falls apart and the people in blue are all holding up this woman dressed in white, right? WHAT WAS IT SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT?"
Man: "It was perfectly clear! The box was a radio! The people in blue were music! Didn´t you see the musical notes on their costumes? And the woman in white represented voice, the power of the singing voice, and the little boy was a young Roberto Carlos, which was the theme, right? So the whole dance was about how Roberto Carlos was inspired as a young boy by the music and singing that he heard on the radio. IT WAS OBVIOUS."
Woman: "All I can say is, IT DIDN´T MAKE ANY SENSE TO ME. I couldn´t see those little notes on the blue costumes. It should make more sense if it gets a score of ten."

Announcer: "Fantasias. Escola of Salgueiro... TEN."
Woman seated next to me: "Yes, that´s exactly right, they really had lovely costumes this year, don´t you agree?" [Long discussion ensues about this or that costume:] "Personally I really liked the hoop skirts, they were so charming this year, just adorable," "Yes, but why would such-and-such escola be scored lower? They only got a nine point eight, but I really think that they were every bit as good as Salgueiro´s..." "No no no, Salgueiro´s had more attention to detail and were much more creative..." "But didn´t use see so-and-so´s headdresses?" "But without Ilha being judged we just can´t make sense of these scores! Didn´t you all see Ilha´s kangaroo costumes?!" "But Tijuca´s Velociraptors had the same idea -" "But BOTH the kangaroos and the velociraptors were really inspired by Beija-Flor´s elephant and giraffe costumes from four years ago, don´t you remember those?) [Long discussion ensues about Ilha´s kangaroo costumes vs. Tijuca´s velociraptors vs. Beija-Flor´s giraffes]

Announcer: "Floats and decorations. Porta da Pedra... NINE POINT EIGHT. Imperatriz... NINE POINT EIGHT. Mocidade... NINE POINT SIX. Beija-Flor...TEN!"
Crowd around me responds to this with: "VAI MORRER! VAI MORRER! VAI MORRER!" (You´re gonna die!) - This judge´s scores seemed so clearly skewed toward Beija-Flor that the crowd instantly assumed the judge had been bought. The "you´re gonna die" chant was in jest, but in fact, the escola competition is so fierce and bloodthirsty, and the politics of Rio´s crime-ridden escola neighborhoods so dangerous, that people have indeed been assassinated over matters of escola politics.

Announcer: "Bateria. Escola of Mangueira..... NINE."
We´re all waiting for the announcer to add "...point nine" but he doesn´t. Slowly we realize it´s just NINE, as in nine point zero, as in 9. Just nine. Mangueira is one of the very best baterias of all of Rio and they´ve just gotten the worst bateria score we´ve seen in years.
Everybody talking simultaneously: "WHAT? WHAT IS THAT? NINE? REALLY? NO WAY! THAT´S CRAZY!" One of my musician friends, who plays in the Portela bateria himself, says: "Where do they FIND these judges? Do they just grab random people off the street to be judges? They must just drive around and find someone and say, Hey, you, you there by the bus stop! You look like you don´t know anything - would you like to be a bateria judge in the Sambodromo this year? I mean, come on, this is just unbelievable!"

[The rumor on the net later was that the 9 was because Mangueira happened to hit their long 20-second break exactly when they passed the last judge´s box. That is... they were NOT PLAYING AT ALL when they walked past that judge! In which case he really should have given them an 8, the lowest score possible. However, one of my most knowledgable sambista friends has since passed me a little clue from a media interview in which the 5th judge commented that "another surdo" was messing up the clarity of Mangueira´s traditional one-surdo sound. This is utterly baffling to me, because if he´s talking about the 3rd surdo, he´s out of his mind - Mangueira´s always had a third surdo.)

And so it goes.

As the scores start piling up it becomes clear that:
- Beija-Flor is winning by a landslide. Beija-Flor is a truly formidable escola - they´ve already won three championships in recent years. They´re generally one of my favorite escolas: hard-working, dedicated, traditional. And I love the silky swing of their bateria, with its beautiful frigideira section. But their parade left me cold this year (I´m not really familiar with Roberto Carlos, their theme this year; and definitely not a fan of gigantic weepy-looking Jesus statues - their last float. Ilha´s kickass Charles Darwin parade was much more my style) Anyway, it´s a bit peculiar how big the landslide is, since regardless of what you think of Roberto Carlos or Gigantic Jesus, the Beija-Flor parade had some technical flaws that seem to have been overlooked by the judges. They did have a really good parade - nobody´s disputing that - but they shouldn´t be winning by such a huge margin.
- Unidos da Tijuca´s clever, fantastic parade has received some oddly low scores. Perhaps it´s just not a traditional enough parade for the judges? However, their magic-show comissao de frente did receive five perfect 10´s.
- Salgueiro´s terrific bad luck with float breakdowns will bump them from 3rd to 5th, but has neither cost them the championship nor kept them out of the Parade of Champions. They went horribly over the allowed time - a shocking ten minutes over - leaving the Salgueiro paraders literally in tears at the end of the parade route. But in the end they pulled through ok.
- Everybody´s increasingly frustrated that Portela, Grande Rio and Uniao da Ilha were excluded from judging this year. This was because of the devastating fire at the escola warehouses some three weeks ago, which destroyed all of Grande Rio´s floats and costumes, and half of Portela´s and Ilha´s costumes too. (That´s over two thousand costumes destroyed for both Portela and Ilha, over four thousand for Grande Rio. That´s a lot of costumes to make in three weeks). At the time it seemed like a kind thing to exclude those three escolas from judging, but now it´s suddenly apparent that we are all just dying to see what the judges thought of those elements that were not affected by fire: the wonderful Portela bateria, for example, and the porta-bandeira, the singing, the parade flow, the song, the theme.

What´s more, Ilha did such a phenomenal job reconstructing their entire parade that people are now saying they might have actually won!

And in fact, Ilha did win the prestigious Estandarte de Ouro award for best escola. This is an unofficial award, given annually by the O Globo newspaper, but it´s quite prestigious. Kudos to Ilha for pulling this off; they really showed a lot of guts and creativity in being able to reconstruct more than two thousand costumes, and a giant float of a walking spider, in three weeks, and in the end put on such a great parade. (By the way, they also won best parade theme - for the Charles Darwin theme. Go Darwin go!)

So three escolas have parties tonight: Beija-Flor of course, because they won; Salgueiro, because they were so relieved that they still managed to get into the Parade of Champions (the top 6 escolas) despite their appalling string of float breakdowns; and Ilha, because they won the Estandarte de Ouro despite the horrific fire.

Final results:

Grupo Especial: (top group of samba escolas)
1. Beija-Flor
2. Unidos da Tijuca
3. Mangueira
4. Vila Isabel
5. Salgueiro
6. Imperatriz
7. Mocidade
8. Porta da Pedra
9. Sao Clemente

Excluded from judging due to fire: Grande Rio, Uniao da Ilha, and Portela. Grande Rio, which was worst affected by the fire, had to parade under a torrential downpour that lasted exactly, precisely, the duration of their parade. How ironic.

Due to the fire, no escola will be demoted from Grupo Especial this year, but as usual 1 escola will be promoted from Grupo de Acesso. (The winner was Renascer de Jacarepagua. See below) This means Grupo Especial will have 13 escolas next year (instead of 12); so next year 2 escolas will be sent down.

Mangueira won best bateria in both the newspaper-based awards (Estandarte de Ouro and Tamborim de Ouro).

Grupo de Acesso results:(second group of samba escolas)
1. Renascer de Jacarepagua
2. Viradouro
3. Estacio de Sa
4. Cubango (This is the escola I played with last year. Their parade was great; a lot of people thought they´d win.)
5. Santa Cruz
6. Imperio Serrano (who I have paraded with 3 times.)
7. Imperio da Tijuca
8. Innocentes de Belford Roxo
9 Rocinha
10. Caprichosos (demoted to Grupo B). Caprichosos´floats were unfinished. One of my Cubango friends said "When I walked past the floats just before the parade, the Caprichosos guys were still actually painting their floats! And some floats were still just the iron framework! I thought maybe their theme this year was about iron."
11. Alegria da Zona Sul (demoted to Grupo B). This is the friendly little escola that tourists often run into along Copacabana beach. They´re usually in Grupo B, and back they go to Grupo B again - they´re just a bit too disorganized to stay in the upper leagues.

And that´s the results.
Till next year.
Today, Thursday, just hours after their celebration party, Beija-Flor announced its likely theme for next year. And so it begins again...

Grupo Especial Sunday night

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Mon, 7 Mar 2011 12:27:00 -0800

Well, it's 4pm and I just woke up - spent all night at Grupo Especial. Dawn was breaking as the Mangueira bateria came thundering past us. It had started to rain too, but nearly the whole crowd stayed till the very end, drenched and exhausted, to see Mangueira. (the oldest escola of Rio, the most famous, the most powerful, and also with the most unique samba rhythm.)

What a day. The Banga parade that morning, was, I thought, the best Banga parade ever. Crowd estimate was 50,000 people. It had been dumping rain nonstop for the whole carnaval weekend, but, not only did it not rain on Banga, but by the end of the parade the clouds had broken and sun was streaming down as we played our last ciranda. An INTENSELY happy, joyful crowd; tremendously wonderful music. Rodrigo Maranhao said to the crowd "In 14 years it has never rained on a Banga parade. Never."

A few hours later, the sun disappeared again, and by Mangueira it was raining.

Ok, I had this plan of giving the grupo especial report today, but I just got a text from my Cubango buddies (the escola that I played caixa with - in the sambodromo parade - last year) who say they are all going to the Sargento Pimenta bloco's street parade in a few minutes and do I want to come along?

Sargento Pimenta... Sergeant...Pepper? Looking it up I discover it's a new bloco that plays only Beatles songs... with a samba bateria (several hundred drummers playing Brazilian samba). Because, Sambista Commandment Number One: Everything Is Better With A Samba Bateria.

And it's four blocks from my house. As soon as my stupid camera finishes uploading all its Grupo Especial videos I am out of here. But the quick report is: Unidos da Tijuca totally kicked ass and clearly the crowd favorite. The jawdropping baterias last night were Portela (beautiful silky swing and very cool breaks), Imperatriz (now featuring timbal and berimbau!), Unidos da Tijuca (stunning as always), and of course thundering unstoppable Mangueira.

BTW Mangueira's apparently taken to heart the comment of the judge (friend of a friend of mine in fact) who docked them a tenth of a point recently for lack of innovation - because Mangueira's now got some elaborate breaks, AND a couple of timbals who are dramatically featured in the breaks. (Take that, Imperatriz!)

And Portela did an amazing job reconstructing its thousand of burned costumes in just three weeks! Some floats were unfinished; I guess maybe they decided to prioritize getting costumes done so all their community members could parade, instead of finishing floats. Good call.

Tonight is the second and final night of Grupo Especial. Me & a Danish saxophone player that I met in Banga are going to try to get done cheap tix from scalpers halfway through the night.

Camera's done. Oh! I can hear Sargento Pimenta approaching outside! Gotta run!

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Sun, 6 Mar 2011 15:07:00 -0800

Right! So! I think it posted! For technical reasons I cannot back up and proofreader, nor view the actual blog, so damn the autocorrect glitches and full speed ahead. I'm sitting here pecking away on my iPhone because I got here two and a half hours early to save seats for a bunch of friends, including two who are playing in the bateria (400-person drum band) of Portela. (These two are Dudu Fuentes, one of the brilliant musicians of the band, and Carnaval parade group Banga, and his wife Olivia, a dear friend who for many years has been one of my most helpful and informative samba contacts). They've just shown up, and all their friends, a chattering horde of friendly Brazilians. Helicopters are hovering overhead - a robotic camera is zooming along an elevated track above the parade route - the lights are blazing. The sound system abruptly roars to life with the Brazilian anthem, and then the Rio city anthem. Everyone's singing along enthusiastically - despite the reputation of Grupo Especial as being too overpriced for local Brazilians to afford any more, in fact the crowd around me in Sector 7 is mostly Brazilian. Mostly middle class, true, but heart-and-soul cariocas nonetheless. Most have saved up all year to buy a ticket for just 1 of the parade nights - the night when their favorite samba escola, the "escola of their heart", is parading.

BTW, this year's fire resulted in Portela and Mocidade swapping nights - Portela was switched to Sunday and Mocidade to Monday - causing tremendous chaos among Portela and Mocidade fans who'd already spent a month's rent on a ticket for the other night. The directors of both escolas arranged a meeting where Portela and Mocidade fans could exchange tickets. Dudu and Olivia also caught in this net - they'd known they would parade on Monday with the Portela bateria, and bought Sunday tickets to watch the other parades. Then Portela was switched to Sunday! So their huge bags of costume pieces are sitting all around us; they'll have to miss half of tonight's show because of having to dash out to play in the Portela bateria (of course, then they'll be IN the show, but that's a different thing.

The first escola of the night, Sao Clemente, is lined up at the end of the runway; I can just see their first float. I can hear a distant, faint thumping that must be the bateria, already playing (the sound system's not on yet).

Now the sound system comes back on - the singer hollering " SAI CLEMENTEEEE!!!", the cavaquinho and guitar blitzing away. The song starts! My god, the whole crowd around me is all singing along. The fireworks go off - Sao Clemente is officially starting. The huge clocks along the Sambodromo all set to zero and begin timing the parade (god save any escola that goes over it's allotted time.)

THE BATERIA STARTS. (This time they're miked). Drums! Fireworks! Here comes the parade! Eighty thousand people on their feet singing along. I have to go now.

iPhone report from the Sambodromo

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Sun, 6 Mar 2011 15:03:00 -0800

Well, I've been in Rio since Wed but have been unable to post anything because I'm staying with a friend who has no Internet (oh, the horror!) - and I'm also not in a tourist area so have no Internet cafes nearby. And, of course, Carnaval. When you're racing at 6am from the Sambodromo parades to the early-morning meeting of your next bloco parade, or wandering through the million-person kegger that is Lapa, or maybe just hanging out in Ipanema at one of the beach kiosks trying to make the terrifically hard decision about what fruit to have in your caipirinha (tangerine? passionfruit? mango?) ... getting on the net suddenly seems not very important!

However, this year I brought my iPhone, and sprung for an international data plan that should give me just enough mb to post a few carnaval updates.

So. Short rundown. Took practically of Thurs & Fri to get my cell phone and arrange tonight's Sambodromo ticket. Carnaval officially started Friday, with the ceremonial handing of the key to the city (an actual huge glittery gold key) from the mayor of Rio to the Rei Momo, the "King of Fools"/"King of Mischief"/etc, who rules the city till Ash Wednesday. Immediately began the Carnaval chaos... which for me has been: INTENSELY AWESOME Monobloco show till 4am Friday night, street parades all Sat, the magnificent Grupo de Acesso (second rank) escola parades on Sat night till 3 (well, actually, they go till 7am but I had to leave early). Then today I hauled my butt back out of bed after 3 hrs sleep, booked it over to the Botanical Garden to play repique in the three-hour Banga parade. Then ran into another bloco... and now I'm at the Sambodromo again.

So I'm writing this sitting in the bleachers of Sector 7 of the Sambodromo (Rio's samba-parade stadium - I know some readers are new to this blog so I'll be giving a little more explanation than usual.) Tonight is the first night of the Grupo Especial Parades, the top-ranked parade groups, the multi-million-dollar competition that will determine the champion escola of the Rio Carnaval, which is the biggest show on earth. It's 7:50pm, parades don't start till 9 (and will run all night). My ticket cost three hundred dollars... and that's for the cheap seats! (The really good seats run $1500 and higher.) So I'm perched up in the crowded, uncomfortable concrete bleachers - all open seating - jammed in with 80,000 other people (mostly Rio natives right around me... I seem to be in a clump of Mangueira fans cause they're all belting out the Mangueira song). The crowd is so giddy they're giving huge cheers to anyone who walks along the parade runway. HUGE ovation for the little street-cleaning machines that just rolled by, the four guys driving them waving and bowing like royalty. OK, I'm going to see if all this text can actually post before I write any more... here goes nothing...

Fire updates

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:36:00 -0800

Three of O Globo's news stories from today & yesterday about the Cidade do Samba fire:

***
BUSINESSES DONATE 1.5 MILLION REAIS TO ESCOLAS HIT BY CIDADE-DO-SAMBA FIRE; MAYOR EXPECTS TO DOUBLE THIS
By: Simone Candida and Tais Mendes
Feb. 8, 2011
O Globo link (in Portuguese) http://tinyurl.com/4qnpps5

RIO – Mayor Eduardo Paes announced this morning, during the opening ceremony of construction on the João Nogueira Cultural Center, that the escolas hit by the Cidade do Samba fire will receive an additional 3 million reais so that they can rebuild the destroyed floats and costumes. Grande Rio will receive R$1.5 million reais, and União da Ilha and Portela will each receive R$750,000. Paes expects to reach this sum by means of private initiatives. Three businesses have already guaranteed that they will donate R$1.5 million, according to Paes’ Twitter feed. The mayor said that he’s confident that new donors will appear. As of now the businesses did not want their names revealed. The mayor said that if necessary, some of the money can be raised by public contributions.

LIESA director Elmo José dos Santos said that LIESA will begin on Tuesday to erect large tents in front of the Cidade do Samba, which will be used by Portela and Ilha to re-buidl their floats. Grande Rio is occupying warehouse #7, recently vacated by Ilha. The tents should be ready in 3 or 4 days. Until then, the escolas can use the central patio of the Cidade do Samba.

According to Elmo, the escolas have already begun to make new costumes in their rehearsal halls in their home communities. Their fellow escolas are also helping; several have offered float frameworks to Grande Rio for rebuilding the floats.

“They want to parade with dignity on the Avenida. I think this will be a very emotional Carnaval. It’ll be a Carnaval with a lot of ‘chão’ .” said Elmo. [chão = literally ground, earth; in this context, community spirit, grit - KH]

Elmo said that it is almost certain that the fourth floor of the warehouses will be demolished. Construction business Delta, which originally built the Cidade do Samba, is already in the Cidade do Samba isolating the area, but the demolition is awaiting approval by the Fire Department and by the Civil Defense. According to Elmo, such reconstruction work is covered under the contract arranged when the complex was first built five years ago. The maintenance of the Cidade do Samba is the responsibility of RioUrbe, a part of the City Works.

Elmo denied the rumors that there was no fire alarm in the Cidade do Samba and that the sprinkler system has to be activated manually. He said only that there is no need to worry about setting a precedent that every time there is a fire, there might be an alteration of the rules about demoting escolas. [This is in reference to Liesa’s recent decision that no escola will be demoted this year due to the fire - KH]

He did not comment on the request by escola Alegria da Zona Sul, whose warehouse caught fire last weekend, destroying the costumes of six of their parade sections. That escola formally requested LESGA (League of the Escolas de Samba of Grupo-de-Acesso – the group below Grupo Especial] that, just as with Grupo Especial, no escola would be demoted from Grupo A this year.

“That’s a question for LESGA. In LIESA, everything was decided by consensus. The escolas all signed a document that this year no escola would be demoated. There’s no reason to think that every fire would have the same result,” said Elmo.

Next Tuesday, state representative Dionísio Lins will request that ALERJ (the state congress – Assembleia Legislative do Estado do Rio de Janeiro) set up a Special Commission to investigate the fire at the Cidade do Samba. The commission will have five members and will work for 90 days, with the option of another 30. Lins pointed out that many people who were working in the warehouses have said that there were many problems in the initial attempts to fight the fire.

***
DESPITE LOSING COSTUMES TO FIRE, GRANDE RIO, ILHA & PORTELA PROMISE TO SURPRISE THE PUBLIC
By: O Globo
Feb. 8, 2011
O Globo link (Portuguese): http://tinyurl.com/494n8kk

RIO - The members of the escolas-de-samba of Grupo Especial that were affected by Monday’s fire say they will put on a Carnaval that will thrill the public. For example, Grande Rio’s bateria director Mestre Ciça said that they were going to do eight paradinhas (fancy breaks) in the Avenida. He said that even if they aren’t in the running for the overall championship, they’ll be fighting for some of the Carnaval awards, like O Globo’s “Gold Banner” awards. [Gold Banners are given for specific categories like Best Bateria, Best Song, etc. – KH]

“Among our new elements this year, we have 15 timbals [hand drums], which at a certain moment will form the mouth of a big cauldron, with special effects involving smoke, and the queen of the bateria, Cris Vianna, samba-dancing in the middle.”

Grande Rio’s honorary president Jaider Soares said that Mestre Ciça’s bateria will definitely still be using one of its planned new elements: all the drummers will be wearing ultra-modern masks imported from New York. But they have to be bought new, since more than 350 that were in the warehouse were burned.

Jaider, too, promised a great parade for Grande Rio. According to him, there will be five floats (three frameworks have been purchased from escola Inocentes de Belford Roxo) and about 4000 costumes. He said that everything will be simpler than what had been planned. The comissão de frente [opening dance group), for example, was supposed to have one of their members transforming into a werewolf, but that is no longer possible since the costume was burnt.

For the last two days, carnavalesco Cahe Rodrigues has been using a loaned office in Barra da Tijuca to re-design floats and costumes. “We’ll put on a beautiful Carnaval, for the people. We’ll use between 3 and 4 millino reais for this reconstruction,” said Jaider. He pointed out that the most elaborate costumes – the “luxury costumes” used by celebrities who parade with the escola – were saved because they were being constructed in private workshops.

União da Ilha, too, promises a Carnaval with almost everything that they had originally planned. The costumes are being re-made in simpler form. The float of the giant spider with moving legs, which was burned, is going to be re-built from scratch. Meanwhile, this week Portela is beginning to re-make its costumes with teams of volunteers in Madureira.

***
GRANDE RIO, PORTELA AND UNIAO DA ILHA RACE THE CLOCK TO RECOVER FROM THE CIDADE DO SAMBA FIRE
By: Rafael Galdo
Feb. 9, 2011
O Globo link (Portuguese): http://tinyurl.com/4wxmphk

RIO - “Rise up, shake off the dust and get back up.” For the members of the three escolas hit by Monday’s fire at the Cidade do Samba, those famous samba lyrics [from “Volta Por Cima” – KH] have become their motto. And, after the shock of seeing their carnaval turn to ashes, Grande Rio, Portela and União da Ilha intensified their efforts this Wedneday to resume preparations for the parades. In Grande Rio, carnavalesco Caha Rodrigues spent the day re-designing costumes and floats. He’s already planning an homage to the artists of the warehouse that caught fire.

“They’ll all be on the last float. Ironworkers, decorators and carpenters who saw their work burned,” he said, explaining that he’s preparing another large float, an abre-alas (opening float bearing the escola’s name), and five tripods (small three-wheeled floats).

To put together these floats, the escola received on Wednesday two float frameworks from the escolas Inocentes de Belford Roxo and one from Unidos do Viradouro. 3000 costumes will be made using donated sewing machines that have just arrived at warehouse #7 of Cidade do Samba, where the escola will make its carnaval. As for the materials needed to make the costumes, Cahe said that it’s dribbling in slowly, and that they’re missing some items like wires and feathers.

“They’ll be light costumes, so that the paraders can have fun. Right now, we have to swallow our tears. Until Carnaval, we’re not going home. I’ll be sleeping in a hotel here in Centro.”

Grande Rio is also receiving the support of fans like 68-year old seamstress Marina Mendonça, who after 15 years without parading has offered her help. The same wave of solidarity has reached União da Ilha. Ilha’s Carnaval director Márcio André said that they’ve received 30 sewing machines loaned by a business. Other escolas, like Viradouro and Mocidade, are also helping Ilha. Ilha is inviting its fellow escolas to come to its technical rehearsal this Saturday in the Sambódromo.

Meanwhile, this Wednesday, workers from Ilha and Portela resumed float-decorating work in stands mounted at the Cidade do Samba, since the tents that will serve as the warehouses for the two escolas are not ready yet.

Portela also began making costumes in their “Little Portela” rehearsal hall in Madureira, where sewing machines have arrived on loan from neighboring escola Império Serrano. Volunteers have been meeting there.

“I took a course in headdress-making at the escola, and so I’ve come as a volunteer to put into practice what Portela taught me,” said Maria Isabel Mota, one of the volunteers. She was working side-by-side with famed escola VIPs like Natalino Maia de Melo, president of Portela’s Velha Guarda (Old Guard).

Freedom from judging - what will they do?

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Mon, 7 Feb 2011 15:25:00 -0800

It just occurred to me that something very rare might occur in the Grupo Especial parades this year. Three groups will parade, but (according to Liesa's press release a few hours ago) their parades WILL NOT BE JUDGED. That's unprecedented. Though I'm still waiting for details to confirm this, it could potentially mean that they will be freed from the usual constraints on their parades. Escolas are always paranoid about losing a precious tenth of a point on this or that tiny little detail, and this makes them pretty conservative, following Liesa's every little regulation with slavish obedience. But now those three escolas can do whatever they want. They can go over the time limit; they could have horses! trained monkeys! trumpets! Full frontal nudity! (All those are against regulations.) Paraders could have all the gaps in parade that they want! They can stop under the judges' booth, take their costumes off and do cartwheels! They can bring beer and - at laaaast - be able to bring their digital cameras! Most of all, paraders will be singing the song because they WANT to, not because they have to.

There is potential here for three free-wheeling, invigorating, and extremely creative parades. Done on a shoestring and in just a month. Kind of the way escola parades used to be, way back in the old days when it all started. Though I'm terribly sorry for the three escolas (I'm actually writing to Portela now to see if there's any way to send donations), and terrifically frustrated that I'm not there right now so that I could go help make costumes, I'm also kind of curious to see what they'll do.

Liesa decides not to send down any escola in 2011

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Mon, 7 Feb 2011 14:57:00 -0800

News release from Liesa, 7 Feb 2011:

The three escolas-de-samba affected by the fire that hit the Cidade do Samba on Monday morning - Grande Rio, Uniao da Ilha and Portela - will not be judged on their parades this year. And Grupo Especial of the Carnaval of Rio de Janeiro will not have any escola sent down in 2011. This decision was made by the Independent League of Escolas de Samba (LIESA) on Monday night.

In addition to this, there will be a change in the order of parades. Portela, which was to have paraded on Monday - along with all the other affected escolas - will parade on Sunday.

****

Another brief report from O Globo, 7 Feb 2011:

The head of the Cidade do Samba, Aílton Guimarães Jorge Júnior, announced that the escolas are mountaing volunteer work parties to help their brothers who were hit by fire. For now, União da Ilha will use warehouse 7, which was unoccupied. According to him, Portela will use the central tent. Portela's floats will remain in the burned warehouse, with the approval of the Civil Defense.

On Monday evening at 7:00 pm, there was a meeting at Liesa's headquarters in Centro to decide the course of Carnaval 2011. According to Guimarães Júnior, no escola will be sent down this year.

Although Mangueira was not affected by the fire, Mangueira president Ivo Meireles offered assistance to the affected escolas. "It's horrible. It's heartbreaking, it's a true catastrophe. Anything Mangueira can do to help the other escolas, with materials or with labor, Mangueira will do. I'm here to offer my solidarity."

The honorary president of Beija-Flor also offered assistance from the escola of Nilópolis. "The work of a whole year was lost. You can't rebuild that in a day. Grande Rio doesn't have a chance of recovery. Whatever Beija-Flor can do, we will do to help the escolas that were hit."

Other escolas were also offering assistance in making the tripods (small three-wheeled floats) inside their own warehouses.

LIESA president Jorge Castanheira, who is in Minas Gerais, said in an interview with Bom Dia Rio that the scale of this loss, just a month from Carnaval, is unfathomable. According to him, each escola had probably invested about 5-7 million reais. But he added, "The problem is not just financial, it's the time needed to rebuild everything."

Details on fire losses of Portela, Grande Rio & Ilha

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Mon, 7 Feb 2011 14:05:00 -0800

More news regarding the Cidade do Samba fire. Translated from O Globo by me.

PORTELA, GRANDE RIO AND UNIAO DA ILHA'S CARNAVALS ALMOST TOTALLY DESTROYED
by: Alice Fernandes, Rafael Galdo & Ana Carolina Torres

RIO- Insurance company representatives have already made an assessment of the escolas' losses due to the fire that hit four warehouses at the Cidade do Samba on Monday morning. Though the details of the losses are still not clear, members of Grande Rio estimate their losses at up to 10 million reais. In Portela, about 2800 fantasias were lost, according to Portela president Nilo Figueiredo. Uniao da Ilha's carnaval director Márcio André said that at least 2300 fantasias were burned, as well as one float and part of another.

The worst losses were in the warehouse of Grande Rio. According to Grande Rio members, 90% of their Carnaval materials were being made at the Cidade do Samba and all of these were lost. Seven floats caught fire, and four tripods (little parade floats) were also burned. The escola lost almost four thousand fantasias. Helinho de Oliveira, president of Grande Rio, said that the only surviving fantasias were about 500 costumes of five commercial alas [alas that take paying tourists - KH] that were not being made at the Cidade do Samba.

He said, however, that the escola will parade. Not with the Carnaval they had planned, but with all its members in the Avenida. "We haven't lost the dream of being champion in the next few years. The samba wasn't burned. Neither has our desire to parade. We'll be on the Avenida even if it's in t-shirts and Bermuda shorts with spangles. We'll show the "força" [force, guts, will] of Caxias," [Grande Rio's home town] said Helinho.

He said that the warehouse of Grande Rio had 12 firefighters battling the fire, six at a time taking turns. But it wasn't possible to contain the flames.

The carnavalesco of Grande Rio, Cahê Rodrigues, said that 98% of their Carnaval materials were ready. The fantasias had already been bagged for delivery to the members.

"I'm in a state of shock. We lost the fantasias of the baianas and the comissão de frente. It hasn't really sunk in. I'm only happy that there were no victims. My mother woke me at 7 am, and my "Good Morning" was to see on TV that my Carnaval was destroyed. What makes the sadness even worse is that everybody was saying that we were a strong candidate for the title." lamented Rodrigues. He added, "I don't know if in 29 days we are capable of a spectacle equal to what we had made. We had many important materials in the warehouse, and a lot of the technology had come from outside. [I think he means from outside Brazil - KH] Now it's all burned, destroyed. We'll do everything possible to reconstruct our Carnaval. The biggest problem is the morale of our workers," he said.

The flag-bearer of Grande Rio, Squel, who arrived at the Cidade do Samba in tears, pointed out that there was a lot of foam used in Grande Rio's Carnaval. She said that one float was entirely made of foam, which is highly flammable. "Practically the entire Carnaval of our escola was being made at the Cidade do Samba. The fantasias of the comissão de frente and the baianas were already done and all was lost. We thought that the Cidade do Samba was safer than this. How could the fire get through the walls?" she asked, trembling and crying.

Ilha And Portela Also Assess Losses

Ney Filardes, president of the escolas União da Ilha, said in a telephone interview with the news program "Bom Dia Brasil" (on Globo TV) that he would not lose his "alegria" [joy, happiness, good spirits]. "We had our workers [fighting the fire] and we also had a fire brigade. Now, it will be as God in Heaven wishes. We will never lose our alegria," said Ney, crying.

Ilha's carnavalesco, Alex de Souza, said that the escola lost many fantasias that were being made on the fourth floor of the warehouse and also a float of a gigantic spider. "We don't have any costumes for baianas or for the bateria. The float of the huge spider, which was the most talked-about float of our Carnaval, was also burned. I think we won't have our rehearsal in Sapucai next Saturday. I think our 3000 members will have to come to the Cidade do Samba and help rebuild our Carnaval."

As to the suggestion of mayor Eduardo Paes that no escola should be sent down this year, Alex said: "That's the very least that should be done. The situation of Grande Rio, for example, will be very difficult to fix. That escola doesn't have the minimum conditions to parade. [Escolas are heavily penalized and/or disqualified if they don't have certain minimum parade components, including a minimum number of floats - KH] But the result of Carnaval is not really important. First place goes to those who were asleep in the warehouses and escaped with their lives."

The carnavalesco of Portela, Roberto Szaniecki, said that after the loss of the fantasias, the directorship is now beginning to rethink their Carnaval plans so that the escola can parade in the Sambódromo. "At the moment, we're rethinking what we're going to do to have a new structure for the parade. Our escola has the capacity to recover, and this will show our "força"," he said. Portela is mounting a strong plan for re-making the fantasias. Directors of the escola and students from the escola's social-outreach project were invited by the first lady of the escola, Val Carvalho, to help make new fantasias, which will be made in the escola's rehearsal hall in Madureira.

"We've got over a thousand alumni, and they're all going to help the Blue-and-White. We still don't have the details on everything that was lost, but the fourth floor, the worst hit, had the most important costumes, like those of the bateria. The ala of baianas was also lost. But we will do our best and we will put our carnaval on the streets" said Val, who is head of Portela's costume workshop.

The queen of Portela's bateria, the actress Sheron Menezes, was in the Cidade do Samba watching the clean-up work, and said that she would help put the escola back on the Avenida. Her costume was being prepared on the fourth floor and was burned. "I'm here to help, I'm going to the quadra with everybody else to remake the parade," said the actress.

The escola had already begun the work of carrying damaged materials, and some floats that were not hit by fire were being moved out of the warehouse and carried to the central plaza of the Cidade do Samba.

The director of harmonia of Portela, Alex Fab, said that the only reason things weren't even worse was that there had been no deaths. He said that everybody who was sleeping in the warehouse managed to get out in time. "Our Carnaval was 100% destroyed. The scene is disastrous," he said.

Cidade do Samba hit by devastating fire

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Mon, 7 Feb 2011 10:28:00 -0800

I'm kicking this blog back into gear today, two weeks before my next Carnaval trip to Rio, to report a devastating fire at the Cidade do Samba. The Cidade do Samba is the sprawling ring-shaped complex where all 12 Grupo Especial escolas build their magnificent floats and store most of their costumes. Early this morning, it was hit by a fire that badly affected three escolas, destroying all but one of Grande Rio's floats and 90% of their costumes; one float and the bateria, baiana, and 2nd-flag-couple costumes of União da Ilha (the "miracle escola" from Grupo A that just managed to hang on to its spot in Grupo Especial last year, due to the unexpected fall of Viradouro); and unspecified damage to Portela and the museum maintained by the Carnaval organizing group LIESA. Very fortunately, there were no fatalities and only minor injuries.

It is less than a month till the Carnaval parades. LIESA is in heated discussion now about whether to alter the parade, and, particularly, whether to suspend the usual rule that demotes the losing escola down to Grupo de Aceso - since the loser is now very likely to be Grande Rio.

I have seen escolas rebuild to an astonishing degree in just one week after losing floats and costumes to fire, but Grande Rio has lost quite a lot. In my circles Grande Rio is sort of the escola everyone loves to hate, but I think they will get quite an ovation if they can put together any kind of parade at all after this.

My translation of O Globo's first report today is below. Related articles to follow soon.

********
HUGE FIRE HITS CIDADE DO SAMBA IN GAMBOA
by: Alice Fernandes, Rafael Galdo & Waleska Borges

Barely a month before Carnaval, a huge fire hit the Cidade do Samba, in the district of Gamboa, on Monday morning. The warehouses of Portela, União da Ilha, Grande Rio, and of Liesa (which maintains a museum of Carnaval), were hit by flames. General Commander of the firefighters Pedro Marco Cruz Macado said that by early afternoon the fire in the Cidade do Samba was under control and that only small fires were remaining. According to him, the firefighters had been fighting the fire since 7:30am. He said, as well, that no fault was found in the fire suppression system. He criticized the placement of a barbeque (churrasqueria) within the Portela warehouse, especially since the area is full of flammable materials.

According to firefighter Alexandre Rocha, the area is still closed until the Civil Defense can evaluate the building. A 30-year-old man was admitted to Souza Aguiar for smoke inhalation. He is doing well and is under observation.

Warehouse workers said, however, that the "sprinklers" [English] - little anti-fire water showers - did not work. About 80 men participated in the operation, with 20 fire trucks from seven firehouses. According to Alexander Rocha, the Cidade do Samba's annual fire inspection had not yet occurred this year. He also said that there is still a risk of more collapses.

According to witnesses, at least 60 people were inside the complex. The flames spread especially rapidly because of the large quantity of flammable materials. An enormous column of smoke, more than 500 meters tall, could be seen from as far as Niteroi. Passing motorists felt the effects of the smoke. The nearby elevated highway of Perimetral had slowed traffic due to rubber-necking by passing drivers.

The entire area of the enormous Cidade do Samba was closed, with firemen and ambulances arriving constantly. Part of the roof and part of the warehouse of Grande Rio collapsed. It is still not known what caused the fire, nor where it began. According to Portela workers, the fire started between 7:00 and 7:30am in the warehouse of União da Ilha. Yet workers from Ilha said that the fire started in the first warehouse, on the fourth floor, which is Liesa's. According to them, the flames descended through a hole through which the sculptures [the tallest parts of the parade floats] passed, and hit the Ilha float called the "Spider". The fourth floor is the sewing workshop and holds their costumes.

According to early reports, six of Grande Rio's floats and 90% of Grande Rio's costumes were destroyed. One worker from that escola jumped from the fourth to the third floor of the warehouse during the fire. 26-year-old aderecista [decorator, adornment-maker] Saimon Garcia said that he could not get down the stairs. He fell on top of a float and suffered only a few scratches. "The pain is nothing. What we've lost is millions and all of our work."

In União da Ilha, only the spider float was destroyed. The others were pulled out of warehouse just in time. Portela's workers have still not moved their floats. One group of aderecistas who were sleeping in Portela's warehouse described how they ran down the stairs. On the fourth floor were the fantasias [elaborate costumes] of the bateria, the second couple of mestre-sala and porta-bandeira, and the baianas. Several of the school's workers were in tears over the loss of these costumes.

União da Ilha had just moved to this warehouse this year. The escola had previously occupied the warehouse of São Clemente, but chose to move to the warehouse vacated by Viradouro, which was sent down [demoted from Grupo Especial] last year. The new warehouse had a superior infrastructure. In 1999, one month before Carnaval, União da Ilha was also hit by a fire. The escola succeeded in rebuilding its parade, with the theme "Barbosa Lima, 102 anos do sobrinho do Brasil", and paraded. In that year, the group finished in tenth place.

Over the weekend, the warehouse of the escola Alegria da Zona Sula, in Grupo de Acesso, also had to be evacuated due to a fire. [this warehouse is in a totally different location, not part of the Cidade do Samba complex.]

***
photos:

Decoding a samba-enredo

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Wed, 3 Mar 2010 08:11:00 -0800

Let´s back up now... to Carnaval weekend.

The Grupo A parade night was overwhelming. Because of the scandal last year, in which the lowest two escolas did not get demoted as they should have, Grupo A was overloaded this year. It´s got 12 different escolas that all had to parade on the same night! (Grupo Especial only does 6 escolas per night.) Yes, each parade is shorter than in Grupo Especial, just 55 minutes in Grupo A compared to 1:22 in Especial. But that´s still 12 hours of parades for Grupo A, and the problem is that the last escola or two ends up parading past dawn.

The last escola on this Saturday parade night was Cubango. (which means Cubango would really be parading early Sunday morning.) I´d already paraded with Imperio Serrano earlier that evening, in an ala. I´d met up with Imperio at about 6pm, spend several hours finding my ala (a 45 min process), socializing and singing the song and getting ready and getting lined up and getting through security and getting excited, then the parade, then the post-parade festivities and singing and chatting and... so, it was nearly midnight and I was already completed exhausted and footsore and hoarse. I limped all the way back home (on foot from the Sambodromo) to change my costume. Cubango wouldn´t go on till maybe 6am and in theory I had time to take a little nap. But I was way too wound up. How could anybody sleep when there were ESCOLA PARADES going on at the Sambodromo?

(I had a friend who had twisted my arm into letting him crash on my apartment floor, and he actually WAS trying to sleep. Yes, he had the impossible and bizarre plan of actually SLEEPING during the nights on Carnaval weekend. It was then that I discovered that escola people and non-escola people really are two different species. OK, so, here´s a warning to ANYBODY who EVER tries to crash with me during Carnaval weekend, especially if you spring it on me unexpectedly: I will be up ALL night, EVERY night, till PAST DAWN, and I will be running in and out of the apartment CONSTANTLY, right past you, and I will need to TURN ON THE LIGHT, and I will be moving enormous costumes and hats around, and I will have the TV constantly on to see which escola is currently parading. DON´T SAY YOU HAVEN´T BEEN WARNED.)

OK, so, I was trying to change into my Cubango bateria fantasia. There are 270 drummers in the bateria and we were all dressed up as 270 identical Philippe Pinels. Philippe Pinel, as I´m sure you know, was the founder of the first insane asylum in Rio de Janeiro.

So before I go any further, I need to explain about Cubango´s enredo (the parade theme) and the samba (the song).

Like a good puppy I´d been spending the last couple weeks carefully memorizing the Cubango samba. (Because I think it is critically important, if you are a gringo parading with an escola, to make sure you know the entire song. Especially because otherwise you can make other gringos look bad. Like it or not, you are representing All Gringos Worldwide when you are in an escola, and your actions will affect the fate of other gringos there in the future.) Anyway. I´d been carrying around a tiny little wadded-up scrap of paper with the lyrics to the Cubango samba, which I would pull out and study whenever I was on a bus. The Cubango samba was, as usual for samba-enredos, very long and completely mystifying. I had dutifully looked up all the words that I didn´t know. But it still wasn´t making any sense! The title didn´t even make any sense! ("The crazies of the beach called nostalgia") And then there were all these mystifying phrases about "shirts of force taking memories" and "haunted, the artist painted" and "bossa nova, a hymn against oppression and a scandalous nudity" and "I raised my flag of rights now... with painted face, I went to protest". I could just barely discern a thread of narrative about protesting the government and about crazy kings, but what on earth was it all about?

The thing about these samba-enredos is, every one of those strange phrases is usually a fascinating little morsel of Brazilian history, all rolled up into a dense, impenetrable little packet. If you can decode it, unpack it, you actually will learn a lot about Brazil.

I turned to my friends Renata and Brian one night for help, in the Sambodromo as we were waiting for an escola rehearsal. Renata, a Brazilian who grew up in Sao Paulo, took one look at the second verse ("rights now... painted faces...")and immediately said "Rights now! Painted faces! I did that! When I was a student! I was there!" Turns out this was a reference to the great student protests a decade back, when busloads of thousands of idealistic young college students painted their faces (to hide their identities) and went to Brasilia to try to impeach the president. And they were all carrying banners and placards that bore the slogan of the protest movement, "Rights now!" (Diretas ja.)

AHA. That explained maybe 1/4 of the song.

However, the rest of the song was still eluding us. We puzzled over the "shirts of force" and the "bossa nova...forbidden nudity" and the "crazies on the beach called nostalgia" and we developed some very poetic and creative explanations that I was rather pleased with.

Till Daniel (my Cubango friend) said one day "You know the song is about Rio´s first insane asylum, right?" What?!

Sooo, Daniel had the inside scoop because he´d actually been at Cubango on the night when the carnavalesco was explaining all about the parade theme. So. Here´s the deal. Rio de Janeiro´s first insane asylum was built, years ago, on a beach in Urca. It´s now called the Red Beach. But that beach used to be called...back in the old days... wait for it... NOSTALGIA BEACH. (Praia de Saudade.) "The crazies of the beach called nostalgia." AHA. Nostalgia is the NAME OF THE BEACH, duh! (So much for my super-creative poetic explanation for that line of the song...) The "shirts of force" is not a circuitously metaphorical reference to governmental powers; "shirts of force" are STRAITJACKETS. (There goes creative explanation #2...) The "haunted artist" was an actual famous artist who did some famous paintings while he was in the insane asylum. (There goes creative explanation #3...)

The insane asylum was eventually shuttered and the building sat empty for some years. Much later, it was re-opened to be used as a university, and became famous as the site of many of student protests... including some students who painted their faces and took those protest buses to Brasilia! aha!

As for the bossa nova and the nudity: In the late 1950s a music show was scheduled at one of Rio´s Catholic universities. It was to featuring several young players and songwriters who were developing a "new way" of playing samba, with sophisticated harmonic structures and a distinctive phrasing to their songs. But the Catholic university discovered that the hostess of the show would be an actress who had once done an infamous nude scene in a movie. This did not sit well with the Catholic priests of the 1950s. So they booted the whole show off their campus. So at the last second the concert organizers had to find a new venue for the show, and they found one: at a different university, in Urca, right by Nostalgia Beach, in a building that had once been an insane asylum. That show became one of the most famous Rio shows ever, because it was the birth of "bossa nova"...the "new way" of playing samba.

See what I mean? I learned so much Brazilian history, and Rio history, and cultural history and music history, from this one Cubango song!

So anyway. That´s why the entire bateria was all dressed up as Philippe Pinel, one of the first psychiatrists in the world and an advocate of the benefits of actually treating mentally people instead of just exiling them to the streets. He was born in 1745 in France. So our outfit was:

an enormous french lieutenant´s hat with a fake white wig
A golden vest, covered by
an enormous knee-length white surcoat decorated in gold braid, tied shut by
A huge golden tie, tied around the neck, and
two big lacy golden-decorated cuffs around the long sleeves of the coat
a pair of green velvet trousers
White knee-high socks
and a pair of white leather shoes with big brass buckles.

The sun was going to rise during our parade. It was going to be about 95F.

All in the service to our beloved escola CUBANGO!

Os Niveis

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Wed, 3 Mar 2010 08:04:00 -0800

I've been away from email again - just switched apartments and now I am crashing with a friend in Botafogo who does not have internet in her apartment. So, apologies for the lack of blog posts. I might not be able to catch up till I am out at Chapada Diamantina in Bahia later this week... (Because that's exactly why you take a plane ride and then a 6 hr bus ride to a remote beautiful national park full of gorgeous hiking trails: to spend all your time on your laptop holed up in your pousada writing blog posts. Right??)

Anyway - last Saturday I went scuba diving at a little town east of Rio with two friends, my dear rock-climbing friend Andrezza, and a friend of hers, a professional circus performer called Vera. Vera had just recently finished a full year's tour of the United States in a high-end travelling circus, where she performs aerial acrobatics - she's one of those people who twirl around, high above the ground, on long lengths of fabric.

We'd only just begun the scuba day when Vera said something under her breath that got Andrezza doubled over in stitches. Turned out Vera had referred to our handsome scuba instructor as "Altamente Pegável" - "Highly Pick-up-able". Later on, in the car ride back home, Andrezza repeated this to me and as we were both buckled over laughing about it, Vera calmly undertook to instruct us both in the concept of Altamente Pegável, saying, "Vou explicar as niveis." (I will explain the levels.) Which turned out to be:

1. De jeito nenhum. (No way / Under no circumstances.)
2. Feio. (Ugly)
3. Quase Feio. (Almost ugly.)
4. Normal. (Normal, or rather, "nor-MOW")
5. Bonito. (Pretty.)
6. Muito Bonito. (Very pretty.)
7. Lindo. (Lovely/beautiful. hm, interesting that Lindo is better than Bonito)
8. Altamente Pegável. (Highly Pick-Up-Able. Someone you'd definitely sleep with.)
9. Altamente Ficável. (Highly Stay-With-Able. Someone you'd actually live with.)
10. Nirvana.

See, you something new every day here! My favorite Portuguese lessons always come from my friends....

Later, after the scuba (which was fantastic!), we were all at a little corner shop having an açaí. A crazy man was wandering in and out of the shop - seriously, he seemed truly deranged, full of hallucinations and delusions. (He reminded me of the time I met the Devil in a coffeeshop in Seattle, or at least a fellow who believed he was the Devil.) He was chattering so fast and slurring his words so much that I couldn't quite make out what he was saying, but he seemed to be saying he was an international pilot who flew frequently to New York and who used to fly the Concorde. Okay...not that this is impossible, but, coming from a rather odd man in a tiny fishing town on the coast of Brazil, it seemed a bit unlikely. We must have looked skeptical, so the man asked Vera:

"So what are you then, a psychologist?"

And she said,

"No, I'm a circus acrobat."

Oh, the LOOK ON HIS FACE! He yelled "MENTIRA!!!" (Lie!), got extremely excited, went off on a huge rant and stormed out of the açaí shop.

The best thing was, she really is a circus acrobat! She was only telling the truth!

He wasn't too mad for long, though - he came running back in a few minutes later with a tiny portable radio held up to his ear, yelling "I AM DETECTING SIGNS OF LIFE!"

It was that kind of day. To sum it up... I was surrounded by strange and beautiful Brazilian wildlife all day.

Hibernation and planning

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:20:00 -0800

The Monobloco parade is over... my very last parade... and Carnaval is truly over, and I've gone into nearly completely hibernation. I'm overdue by at least three major blog posts (one each on Cubango, Monobloco and Banga), but I think I've spent at least three days asleep in recovery. Getting over my stubborn cold, catching up on sleep. It's the Ressaca do Carnaval, the Carnaval hangover.

The worst part of the ressaca for us foreigners is saying goodbye to all our friends, as one after another they leave town and flown back north - first Renata and Brian (well, actually, they flew west), then the Germans, then Philip and his American crew, Ben, then JP, and now even dear Xuxa has left me. And Wendy goes tomorrow.

And next will be ME. I have ten days in Bahia coming up - the end of my trip - which means I leave Rio next Thursday - which means today is the first day of my last week in Rio! argh!!!! That means that every time I see one of my Rio friends it might be for the last time. Dudu at Banga on Saturday, Freddy at Monobloco last Sunday, talking to me about killer whales (in what sort of crazy universe do I live in that my brilliant Monobloco caixa leader also turns out to have a degree in marine biology???) - Daniel and his extremely lovely wife at Xuxa's party decoding all sorts of Brazilian cultural mysteries for me - Chris, laughing and taking pictures and belting out "You Light Up My Life" at the top of her lungs (Chris is a Brazilian cultural mystery all by herself) - Denise, last night, dancing forro with me at Democratikos... will it be a year or more before I see any of them again??

I avoid the goodbyes by not saying goodbye, by just saying "See you soon". Which is true enough. Whether in this world or the next.

My main consolation is the wonderful dawning realization that since I won't be teaching next year in Portland, maybe I'll be able to come back to Rio next year! Except, of course, I won't have any money to pay for the plane ticket! Or the rent! Since I don't have a job! I'll be holed up in Jerry's place in Seattle, or Pat's house in Hood River, or living with benevolent family members ("Who's that in the back room making those strange noises?" "Oh, that's my crazy old aunt... she was never the same after she came back from Brazil...just sits in there banging on that weird little snare drum all day") Maybe playing pandeiro on the street for pennies, standing on street corners with one of those hand-scrawled cardboard signs: "WILL TEACH BIOLOGY OR SAMBA FOR FOOD". (All the neighbors will be saying, "man, we thought the crack addicts were bad enough... but then the homeless drummers showed up! hell!")

Got to earn some money. So I've actually spent a lot of time this week revising my CV and sending out job apps left and right. To textbook publishers, to odd teaching jobs here and there, to my fieldwork friends. A few short-term contract jobs have materialized pretty quickly (two textbook jobs that I'm working on right now, a summer bird job)... pretty good for a week's effort, I just need to get more! Got to get enough jobs to not only break even, and pay my health insurance (which IS MORE MY THAN MY RENT - why oh why do I live in such a messed up country!), but also put some savings into that special savings pot: The Carnaval savings account.

Next up: Cubango. Monobloco. Bangalafumenga.

Monobloco takes over the world

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 09:54:00 -0800

Just got back from a stunning Monobloco show last night, and am trying to prepare mentally for what is bound to be a boiling hot, can-I-survive-till-the-end, ultra-marathon type of life experience at the Monobloco parade tomorrow on the Rio Branco. The Rio Branco parades are getting completely out of control - the bloco Bola Preta's last three parades there drew half a million people, a million people, and (last week) a million and a half people. So how many will Monobloco draw?

Well, this happens to be is Monobloco's 10th anniversary, and they've put together a marvelous display of photos and memorabilia at the Fundicao, including some handy data on all their 9 parades so far since 2001:

2001 - 10,000 people attend the first Monobloco parade in Gávea.
2002 - 20,000 people attend. Parade moves to the Jardim Botanico.
2003 - 50,000 people. (Back to Gávea)
2004 - 50,000 (moves to Ipanema beach)
2005 - 80,000
2006 - 80,000
2007 - 100,000 (outgrows Ipanema, moves to Copacabana beach. This was my first parade with them)
2008 - 100,000
2009 - 400,000 (outgrows Copacabana, moves to the Rio Branco)

Here's the newspaper pic of the 2009 parade. Can you find the band?

Extending this trend into the future, we can confidently predict that Monobloco's parade in the year 2039 will be attended by the entire population of Earth. Well, we'll see what happens tomorrow!

Triumph of the Zona Sul escolas

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 09:05:00 -0800

The results for the lower Carnaval escola levels were just announced, and it has become clear that this is a big year for the Zona Sul escolas! The most famous samba escolas are all based in the north zone of Rio, Zona Norte, far from the famous beaches of Zona Sul. But there are plenty of samba escolas in Zona Sul too. This year, not one but THREE escolas of Zona Sul are champions or vice-champions of their respective leagues: Sao Clemente (representing Botafogo) won Grupo A, Alegria da Zona Sul (representing Copacabana/Ipanema) won Grupo 1 (the old "Grupo B"), and Unidos da Villa Rica (also based in Copacabana) came in 2nd place in Grupo 3 (= "Grupo D"). (In the lower divisions, the top 2 or 3 escolas all go up, so coming in 2nd is as good as winning - it earns you a promotion to the next group up.)

Interestingly, all these escolas are based in favelas that have recently been "pacified" by the UPP, which I gather is a division of police aimed at bringing some measure of peace to the favelas (Rio's famously crime-ridden hillside shantytowns). The UPP seems to go into favelas one at a time and occupies them permanently, trying to drive out the drug traffickers. I don't know much about it, so anyone who knows more about the UPP, please comment and tell us what it is all about!

I'm translating an O Globo article below. I especially wanted to put the word out about Alegria da Zona Sul, since I know several international sambistas who have run into Alegria while they were rehearsing along Copacabana beach, and were wondering who they were. Now you know! I played with them couple times and they were very friendly and welcoming. Their quadra is perched on top of the favela that is between Copacabana and Ipanema.

****
Carnaval of the UPPs is Champion in Zona Sul
from O Globo, Saturday 20 Feb 2010
by Rafael Galdo
(translated by KH. Link to original article here)

In the favelas of Zona Sul that have UPPs (Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora, or Pacification Police Units), this year's Carnaval was a champion Carnaval, literally. Practially all of the escolas-de-samba in these communities ended up winning and will go up one level in the lower groups of the Rio Carnaval. São Clemente, which is partly composed of members from Botafogo and its favelas, like the Dona Marta favela and the stretch of Tabajaras in the neighborhood, won Grupo de Acesso and will parade in Grupo Especial next year. Likewise, Alegria da Zona Sul, representing the neighborhoods of Pavão-Pavãozinho and Cantagalo [in Copacabana], won the title of the "Rio de Janeiro 1" group (old group B). Unidos da Villa Rica, from the Tabajaras hill in Copacabana, won 2nd place in "Rio de Janeiro III" (old group D).

These escolas now intend to take advantage of the moment, along with the peace and the visibility that have come to these communities with the arrival of the UPPs, to grow and gain more members. Roberto Gomes, director of São Clemente, remembers that in 2003, when the escola moved its rehearsals to its quadra in Centro [downtown Rio, far from Botafago], some members of Botafogo stopped coming. Today, most of its members come Centro and from Zona Norte. But their goal is to continue their recent project to reconnect with the communities of Zona Sul.

"This year, we had alas [parade sections] from Tabajaras and the Dona Marta favela (both "pacified"). The result was much stronger singing in the Avenida on parade day. Pretty soon, we're planning to bring several of our projects, like percussion classes and dance classes, to favelas like Tabajaras," he said.

In the case of Alegria da Zona Sul, the president, Marcus Vinícius de Almeida, pointed out that the benefits of UPP and the works of the "Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento" (PAC) [program for accelerating growth] in Pavão-Pavãozinho and Cantagalo need to also include escolas-de-samba, which are one of the principal leisure opportunities in those communities.

According to him, the escola has social projects which could be started or increased in partnership with these groups. In addition, the members of Alegria da Zona Sul hope for a renovation of their quadra [rehearsal hall], on the top of the Estrada do Cantagalo. A renovation has been promised by PAC.

"The ideal, however, would be to move it lower down the hill. This would facilitate access for "people of the asphalt" [richer people who live in the paved streets in the lower areas] as well as the residents of the hill," said Almeida. "However, the view of the community we have today is quite something. And we are here with open doors for all residents of Copacabana, Ipanema or of any other place."

Antonio Justino da Silva, 82 years old and a member of the "Old Guard" of Alegria, remembers that this union between "the hill and the asphalt" had already existed in the escola before UPP, with the rehearsals that the escola does down on the Avenida Atlantica [on the beach of Copacabana]. But he has noticed that, recently, more residents of the Zona Sul neighborhoods are coming to the escola, including the party to celebrate the title, the day before yesterday. And Armando Fernandes, composer for the escola says as well:

"I believe that these visits from "people of the asphalt" will increase even more soon, because they'll have less fear of coming to our quadra. In Grupo de Acesso, I think that Alegria will have greater visibility and will come into fashion."

The only escola of the "pacified communities" that was not a champion or vice-champion was Mocidade Unida de Santa Marta, which came in 6th place in Grupo Rio de Janeiro 3 (old group D).

Grupo A escolas "threaten rebellion"

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 08:45:00 -0800

Here's interestingly little news item in the paper today about Grupo A. The background: Last year (2009), organization of Grupo was turned over to a group called LESGA. The president of LESGA is also the president of the escola Inocentes de Belford Roxo. In the 2009 Carnaval, Inocentes finished near the bottom and should, according to the rules, have been sent down to Grupo B. Amazingly, no escola was sent down at all - quite contrary to the rules, and leaving Grupo A overflowing with 12 escolas instead of the usual 10.
The 2010 Carnaval results were so surprising they resulted in a near-riot at the Grupo A score announcement earlier this week. Many people have commented that Inocentes placed freakishly high for what was rather an unimpressive parade (Inocentes finished 2nd) and that Rocinha, Cubango and Unidos de Padre Miguel were all scored unfairly low. In another departure from normal protocol, the names of the judges this year were not announced till just before Carnaval.
It is typical for escolas to complain after low scores, but the situation in Grupo A right now seems especially heated.

From today's O Globo newspaper (Saturday 20 Feb 2010):

Escolas Threaten Rebellion in Grupo de Acesso
by Paulo Marqueiro, with Alice Fernandes
(translated by KH. Link to original version here)

Grupo de Acesso (Grupo A) is in an uproar. Just days after the announcement of the results of the parade, in which São Clemente was the winner, several escolas are threatening to "turn the baiana" [cause a loud public commotion] against the League of Escolas de Samba of Grupo de Acesso (LESGA). Directors of the escolas intend to meet in the coming days with the president of the Independent League of Escolas de Samba (LIESA), Jorge Castanheira, who coordenates the Carnaval of Grupo Especial, to ask that either LIESA take over the administration of the Grupo A parades, or that the city of Rio re-take control of the event.

The escola heads had already been dissatisfied with LESGA before Saturday's parade, and the dissatisfaction only grew after the tumultuous reading of the scores last Tuesday. The president of Acadêmicos da Rocinha, Maurício Mattos, one of the most rebellious, questioned the result, which left his escola in 10th place at the edge of being sent down (to Grupo B). He said that the sambistas in Grupo A were only told who the judges would be on the Wednesday before Carnaval.

"In the list of judges, Fernando Bicudo was the only person we recognized. The rest were unknown," criticized Maurício Mattos. "I believe the objective was to make Rocinha descend to Grupo de Acesso B."

In an article published in GLOBO on Feb. 11, mayor Eduardo Paes said that the city government has no interest in re-assuming the administration of the Grupo de Acesso parade, but that they will not permit abuses. Paes was referring to the scores of the 2009 Carnaval, the first one coordinated by LESGA. Contrary to the rules, no escola descended to Grupo B that year, which left Grupo A with 12 escolas parading in just one night.

In the parade this year, Inocentes de Belford Roxo, the escola of the president of LESGA, Reginaldo Gomes, ended in 2nd place. Estácio was in third; Acadêmicos de Santa Cruz, fourth; Império da Tijuca, fifth; Império Serrano, sixth. In 11th place was Unidos de Padre Miguel, and in 12th Paraíso do Tuiuti, both sent down to Grupo de Acesso B.

The president of LESGA could not be reached to comment on the confusion in Grupo A.

Just 379 days to go!

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:08:00 -0800

Immediately after the great Unidos da Tijuca victory on Ash Wednesday, the great heat wave broke. The scalding sunny sky disappeared, the clouds closed in, the rain thundered down. I woke in the night with an extremely strange sensation... I was COLD. Actually, I was being rained on! A frigid wind was blowing icy raindrops all over me. I had to go close the window and even had to get one of those, what are they called, those covery-up things, a "blanket"! It was the most delicious sensation.. shivering, curling up under the blanket. Nothing makes you enjoy cold like three consecutive weeks of 100+ temperatures.

However, I woke up the next day sick, with a sore throat, splitting headache, nausea and absolute thundering exhaustion...the inevitable outcome of five days in a row of staying up all night (followed only by feverish quick naps from 8am to about 11am, when it got too hot to sleep anymore). My first thought was: wait a minute, this isn't fair - if I'm going to have hangover symptoms like this, I ought at least to have gotten to drink something the night before! But no, I was genuinely sick. Stayed in bed sleeping all day, woke up at 5pm and tottered out for some groceries. Slept most of today too... it seems like the whole city, not just me, the whole sky too, is in a kind of depression after Carnaval. Everything seems eerily sad and gray and quiet. A lot of the Lapa clubs are closed. (Actually we've still got a fun weekend coming up, the post-Carnaval weekend with the huge Monobloco parade. But the escola rehearsals are all done... sad...)

Then today I was poking around one of the samba websites and noticed a tiny counter in the upper right hand corner that read:
"379 dias para Carnaval 2011"

And simultaneously the page refreshed to reveal a new news item that Salgueiro has just announced its theme for the 2011 Carnaval (their theme will be Italy). And so it begins again...The great cycle of life, or the cycle of Carnaval, anyway. Nothing ever really ends. It's never really over. There's always another Carnaval to look forward to.

The full results

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:37:00 -0800

Complete list of Grupo Especial results. The most shocking thing is: Viradouro has fallen to grupo A! Equally shocking, Viradouro's fall also means that Uniao da Ilha has accomplished the near impossible - it has STAYED in Grupo Especial instead of falling right back to Grupo A, as the Grupo A winner normally does. Ilha is truly back in Especial! And now they won't have to parade first on Sunday night any more, so they're likely back in Especial to stay. They must be thrilled.

1. Unidos da Tijuca
2. Grande Rio
3. Beija-Flor
4. Vila Isabel
5. Salgueiro
6. Mangueira
The above escolas will be in the Parade of Champions on Saturday night.

7. Mocidade
8. Imperatriz
9. Portela
10. Porto da Pedra
11. Uniao da Ilha (last year's Grupo A winner)
12. Viradouro (falls to Grupo A)

UNIDOS DA TIJUCA!

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:54:00 -0800

I went to the Sambodromo for the apuracao, the formal reading of the Sambodromo results. The scores are read out one at a time by a deep-voiced announcer standing at the base of the arches of the Sambodromo. He definitely takes particular pleasure from dramatic pauses: "Unidos da Tijuca....." [pause] ".... DEZ!!!" (ten! the maximum score) The bigwigs, presidents of the escolas and such, were in 12 nicely shaded tables down on the ground level. The rest of us, the riffraff, the diehard fans, were gathered in the nearest bleachers of Setor 6 and 13. I went up into Setor 13 and found the fans had quite precisely sorted themselves into tidy contingents for each escola. Not all escolas had fans present - Portela seemed to be represented by 1 lone fellow with a Portela banner; only about 5 escolas had major contingents present. Setor 13 turned out to be inhabited primarily by a healthy contingent of Mocidade fans on my right, a rabid pack of Beija-Flor fans in the middle, Grande Rio fans on my left (relatively few of them but with an absolutely enormous flag that was bigger than anybody else's. Classic Grande Rio!). And up high above us, in the highest seats, were the Vila Isabel people. Whenever Vila Isabel got a 10, the Vila Isabel people would race back and forth along the empty seats of the upper bleachers waving their blue-and-white flags.

I'm pretty fond of Mocidade and Beija-Flor, but I have also always had a soft spot for Unidos da Tijuca and their parade really impressed me this year. So I was looking around for a Tijuca contingent and soon realized they were over in Setor 6, small but very vocal, and flanked by two huge Mangueira contingents on either side. They looked like they were about to be swallowed by Mangueira. I suddenly knew I had to be over there, so I ran all the way around the bottom of the Sambodromo and over to Setor 13 to the Tijuca pack.

That was a defining moment, for I'd cast my lot with Unidos da Tijuca. In fact I ended up standing in the battle zone right between Tijuca and Mangueira, which was definitely an interesting place to stand. The moment that you start screaming for Unidos da Tijuca when there are dozens of Mangueira fans on one side of you is an interesting moment. The moment that you start screaming because Mangueira got a bad score (thus helping Tijuca pull ahead) is an even more interesting moment.

It takes quite a while to read the results, since there are 10 categories, each with 5 judges, and 12 escolas. The sun was beating down and it was excruciatingly hot. Luckily the Rio city government had thought of this and had kindly stationed two fire engines, one at Setor 6 and one at Setor 13, and every now and then they'd spray us with FULL FORCE fire hoses. It was EXHILARATING. It was ICY COLD and COMPLETELY DRENCHING and we were ABSOLUTELY DRIPPING WET. It all added to the intensity of the moment as we were all being completely blasted by this fire hose, yelling TI-JU-CA! TI-JU-CA!

We'd gotten through several categories - Bateria, Conjunto and a few others - and it was clear Tijuca was doing very well. Lots of 10's (the maximum score). Tijuca had been tied for 2nd or 3rd for most of this, when suddenly, partway through the "Conjunto" category (this is a special category for overall effect of the entire parade), I noticed Tijuca had just pulled into the #1 spot on the big screen. I was actually the first Tijuca fan to notice this, because the others were all busy chanting something derogatory at the Mangueira fans, but a few seconds later a guy yelled "Olha a Tijuca! Olha a Tijuca!" pointing at the scoreboard and suddenly everybody realized we were ranked #1. Hot on our heels were Mangueira and Beija-Flor. You could feel an electic shock go through the Tijuca fans. The next category was Fantasias (costumes) and the one after that was Alegorias (floats). This was a critical moment, I thought; this is where we're going to find out if the judges really were won over by Paulo Barros' outrageous, funny, creative designs, or whether he was once again too unconventional for them, just too weird, too out there.

The first Fantasia judge's scores were read. At this point all that mattered to us were Unidos da Tijuca and Mangueira.
Unidos da Tijuca: 10.
Manguiera: 9.6.
The Mangueira fans actually gasped and the Mangueira girl on my right said in shock "Caramba!" (an expression of surprise).
I thought "Tijuca's going to win". I had no right to think this - there were still several categories to go, and we only had a lead maybe a tenth of a point, Mangueira was by no means out of the game (especially since the lowest score is automatically discarded, a new rule this year). And Beija-Flor was hot on our heels too. But suddenly I was sure. I ran straight out of the Sambodromo, ran 3 blocks to the first major street, flagged down a taxi and said "Take me to the quadra of Unidos de Tijuca!"

The taxi driver didn't say a word, just sped me out on the street toward the quadra, which fortunately is only about a 5 minute drive from the Sambodromo. His radio was already tuned to the Sambodromo announcements and we listened in silence as the scores for Floats were read out. Unidos da Tijuca... DEZ.

I got to the quadra. It was fairly quiet, just 2 beer vendors outside and a small trickle of fans heading inside. Inside were a rabid pack of maybe 100 Tijuca fans - not a ton of people, just the most dedicated. They were all clustered near the stage, sitting in rows of chairs that had been carefully set out in neat lines in front of a big-screen TV that was showing the live feed from the Sambodromo. By now we were in a tie with Beija-Flor. Result after result came in - DEZ, DEZ, DEZ, for Tijuca, but unfortunately it was also DEZ, DEZ, DEZ for Beija-Flor.

Then came the first 9.9 for Beija-Flor. Tijuca had gotten a DEZ.

Then another 9.9 for Beija-Flor. Tijuca had gotten a DEZ from that judge too.

Inch by inch, tenth by tenth, Beija-Flor fell a tenth behind, another tenth behind.... News photographers started showing up. First two, then four, then five of them. Nobody was in the chairs anymore; everybody was leaping and screaming. We alternated between singing bits of the Tijuca song, and chanting "O Paulo Barros voltou! O Paulo Barros voltou!" (Paulo Barros, Rio's most innovative carnaval designer, returned to Tijuca this year after a few years away. The entire Unidos da Tijuca parade had been designed by him.)

Another 9.9 for Beija-Flor. DEZ for Unidos da Tijuca. The big screen TV started having problems, flickering and going blurry, and we were all screaming so much we couldn't hear what the announcer was saying; so we were just peering at the flickery, blurry screen trying to make out whether it showed a "10" or not for Unidos da Tijuca. Sometimes an excited person on stage would veer in front of the big-screen projector, and the scores would end up shining somewhere on their body, wigglly and small, and we'd be peering at somebody's leg or chest trying to figure out if a certain wiggle was a "10" or a "9".

A small bateria had assembled out of random players in the audience, at first just 2 surdos and a few tamborins, but more and more players were arriving and it was getting stronger and stronger. A very strange-looking Unidos da Tijuca flag showed up - at first I thought it had caught on fire, but later I realized it was the flag that was used in the "undersea secrets" section of the parade, that had been made to look as if it had been undersea - deliberately stained and covered with barnacles and seaweed. (apparently the "good" flag was over at the Sambodromo). There were now 12 news photographers on stage. The strange seaweed-covered flag was whirling around. Now we were on the last category - the TV was so blurry I couldn't read it what category it was - and our second-to-last score came up. DEZ. The lowest score is discarded, so it didn't matter any more what the last score was. No one could touch us. We'd won. CHAOS in the quadra.

- cue endless dancing and singing of the Tijuca song. Somehow I acquire a Tijuca t-shirt that flies into my hand unexpectedly when I'm waving my hand around in the air.

Outside at this point were 6 TV vans, a 7th arriving, lighting guys setting up banks of light, journalists clutching pads of notes and interview questions, a special electrical generator truck squeezing painfully through a too-small alleyway, a helicopter circling overhead, 3 mysterious limos with smoked windows jammed in the entryway to the tiny parking lot. And 12 more beer vendors, 2 hot dog stands and 3 popcorn carts all rolling up (those guys are quick!) And floods and floods and floods of people arriving. Members of choregraphed alas and the commisao de frente showed up and started doing their dances. Everybody was singing the song, the "secrets" song that had won them so many 10's.

It took a while to sink in. They've really won. The brilliant underdog escola that's always unjustly the runner-up and never the winner. UNIDOS DA TIJUCA HAS FINALLY WON!

And the crowd sings...

tweedoo@gmail.com (Kathleen Hunt) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:57:00 -0800

Check out this video from O Globo that shows the long bateria pause when the public sang alone. In case it's not clear from the video, that's really just the crowd singing, unamplified - the singers, band and bateria are all silent.