Carnival!

It’s that time of year, its Carnival time!

The biggest party on the Brazilian calendar, Carnival is held every year the weekend before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday. The festival traditionally starts on the Saturday and ends at midnight on Shrove Tuesday, however, the partying is known to start on Friday and continue well into Wednesday morning. Rio de Janeiro hosts what is probably the biggest and well known of festivities but parties and parades occur in cities throughout Brazil. Carnival takes on different forms from the very organised Samba School parades to the informal ‘blocos’ or neighbourhood street parties.

We were surprised that our small town of Vitoria also hosts a Carnival parade but it can’t be that insignificant since it is mentioned on Wikipedia. The difference is that it is held the weekend before the real Carnival weekend. This is because a lot of people travel to other cities for the main weekend and also has the advantage of attracting people from neighbouring towns if it is held on a different weekend. We were sad that we missed Carnival last year due to our last-minute trip to South Africa, as awesome as it was, and were looking forward to making up for it this year! The event was held last weekend and we can confirm that Vitoria Carnival has it all: costumes, make-up, lycra, sequins, feathers, killer platforms, glitter, incredible floats and more.  

The first mascot to enter the Sambão do Povo for 2015

How do you samba wearing a dinosaur suit? #talent

A dragon float

One of the principal dance pairs with a Samba School flag

Justin's secretary was in orange in this group

These are the masters of the school that traditionally join at the back of the parade

Vitoria has a Samba School parade area, the Sambão do Povo, which is similar to Rio’s Sambodrome. The Sambão consists of a paved strip about 500 m in length lined with stands and private boxes. Each Samba School has an hour for the entire group to cross the Passarela do Samba and is judged and marked on the chosen song, the band, the costumes, the quality of samba, the floats, time keeping and much more. It is quite complicated and everyone takes it very seriously. Our conclusion of the evening was that if Brazilians took everything as seriously as they do Carnival, the country would run like clockwork.

Map of the Sambão do Povo

(I know it says 2013, but it's no different in 2015)

Bron and Vivian 

Despite being slow on the uptake, we were able to procure tickets for Sector C, the stands closest to the parade entry point. The fun already started when we got out of the taxi since the road leading up to the entry gate was filled with all the floats and people in costume getting ready and warming up. It was really cool to see some of the floats close up and to appreciate the amount of work that goes into them. We were surprised and amazed when the parade started at the advertised time of 22:00 as in our experience things in Brazil never start on time.

Each Samba School chooses a theme for the parade and the song, costumes and floats should reflect this theme. We however failed to recognize any of the themes, lol. Each school also writes a new samba song with lyrics for each year and we were surprised that this one song is played continuously for the whole hour that participants cross the parade area. We found this a bit of a pity as the music drowned out the Samba Drum Band when they came past, one of the best parts of the parade. Each parade had similar aspects such as starting small and ending big. They generally begin with a few mascots introducing the school, a banner or similar with the name of the school, some bigger groups follow with some principal dance pairs inbetween, and then the floats start with some more groups and pairs inbetween. There are also members of the school walking inbetween the participants setting the pace and helping to keep time so that everyone can cross in the allotted one hour. We didn’t realise this before but it makes sense. We were quite concerned for some people on the floats as they are really high up and the floats were bouncing quite a lot.

Even little children take part! 

Unfortunately we only saw 2 schools pass because it starting raining quite heavily before the third school entered and since we quickly got soaked, decided to leave. We can’t complain about the rain though since we are in the middle of a severe drought and desperately need it, it just came at an inopportune time. But rain at Carnival seems normal and most people came prepared. It was already 01:00 by the time we left and the last group was scheduled to start at 05:00 which we wouldn’t have waited for anyway. We, and others, found it a pity that the parade starts so late.

We really enjoyed the evening out and our first Carnival experience. Preparing for the evening we thought security would be a concern but we actually felt quite safe the whole time. We also enjoyed that the spirit of carnival is very inclusive, everybody from the community joins in and gets involved. There was a guy in a wheelchair in the parade and there were lots of children of all ages participating too. A lot of the Samba Schools are located in the favelas, but everyone is welcome, rich and poor, young and old. I don’t think there are so many wholly inclusive things like that in the world anymore.

We are currently enjoying a 5 day weekend since it is ‘real’ carnival weekend. More about our long weekend next time!