I recall as a child in the UK that the third most exciting day in the Christian year (after Present Day and Chocolate Egg Day) was Shrove Tuesday. A month and a bit before someone had once gotten nailed to a piece of wood you got to eat as many pancakes as was conceivably possible. I think the idea was that as a miserable Christian sinner we were then supposed to give up such luxuries for Lent.
In Brazil Pancake Day was taken a step further and Carnival is the result; a 4 day non-stop party of sex, drugs and samba, none of which would be given up by anyone afterwards. Even as a child I knew it was shit to be English.
Everywhere in Brazil celebrates Carnival to some extent but the carnival capitals are Rio de Janiero, Salvador and Olinda.
The Rio carnival is about the biggest sell out the world has ever seen and sucks in thousands of visitors to be exploited by the Rio de Janiero tourism industry. Prices soar by a factor of ten and the prostitutes start shaking their poupancas, their “savings accounts” – Rio slang for a girl’s ass.
Just as with the blues in North America, samba originates from the African immigrants to Brazil and has always been the protest music of the poor. Toss a bottle of beer and maybe a pair of claves to a few Brazilians on the street and soon enough they’ll have a crowd gathered round singing old samba favourites. Everyone knows the words and when a roda de samba, a samba circle, forms with a guitar player and the odd percussionist, the crowd sing so loudly you can no longer hear the musicians. Can music get any more democratic?
Naturally, the average tourist to Brazil thinks samba is all about the outrageous strip tease dancesof the Carnival queens who gyrate on the floats that parade through the streets. The parades in Rio are amazing affairs by all accounts and good seats go for hundreds of dollars. Huge troupes of percussionists and dancers are costumed in lavish dress as they put on one of the greatest shows on earth. Thing is, no one in the favelas (where samba grew up) can afford tickets to go and watch the parades.
Most Braziliana agree that if you want to do Carnival properly then you need to get involved. People head to Salvador or Olinda to immerse themselves in the street action. I wound up in Olinda when I was invited to pass Carnival in the house of an American friend I’d met the month before.
Olinda is more or less a neighbourhood of nearby Recife but the two are worlds apart. Recife tops the murder and crime charts in Brazil and most people who live there can peel off a few nightmare stories of theft and rape at the drop of a hat. Things are different here though to the organised rackets of Rio. In Recife it’s every bandit for himself and you’re advised to keep both eyes open.
Olinda is just a short bus ride away and it’s a beautiful old colonial town built on a hill with jungle shooting up between the pastel houses. Palm trees grow up in people’s gardens and break up the view, the nonchalant fronds swaying in the sea breeze The town follows the contours of the slopes creating hundreds of places to stop, look down over the picturesque town of white houses, cobbled streets and swaying palms and sigh contentedly.
Most of the year it’s a quiet town that is something of a centre for artists and musicians and the streets can seem quite empty until you get to know people. The sleepy atmosphere is violently shaken once a year though when Carnival sends a million people reveling in the streets.
Due to a difficult relationship my friend my host suddenly decided to up and go visit friends in Rio de Janeiro. She generously left me to take care of the house . A bachelor’s dream.
A few days before Carnival the food and drinks stands began to set up and the first blocos began their practice runs. Each bloco has its own character and music and they tend to stick to the same basic formula as they snake through the streets. Some focus on a strong brass section blowing out tunes to shake your stuff to. Others concentrate on the rhythm with thirty drummers and percussionists in perfect synchrony - the head drummer may well be walking backwards on stilts.
If you’re wondering where they find a few thousand skilled musicians to perform – they’re living all around you. Brazilians aren’t the first people in the world to pick up a book and muse over the meaning of life – but toss them a football or a drum and they'll leave you feeling like a waste of space after just a few moments. I theorised that the intelligence of the country is almost corporal; Brazilians are very at ease in their bodies and know how to express themselves with their dance and sexuality. This is starting tosound like a Lonely Planet entry but after a week of watching thousands of Brazilian girls shake their way through the streets, it’s the only conclusion I can find.
On Saturday morning people were already milling into the streets and I strolled about following bloco after bloco. Each attracted its own following trailing behind, dancing at a slow pace and joining in with the songs. The streets of Olinda are narrow though and the blocos entered in traffic jams with each other. Often the rhythms clashed and we had to squeeze painfully past in the 40 degrees sun.
Carnival is all about fantasy. The creativity of the costumes was inspirational and had me laughing all day. There were people dressed as bees, rabbits and cats; sexy girls in leopard skins and bunny suits. There were fairies with wands, body builders dressed as angels and red devils out to corrupt someone. There were babies in diapers, schoolgirls and nuns, teams of surgeons and Death with his scythe. There were crack teams of S.W.A.T armed with water pistols and even one guy dressed as a telephone booth.
There was a dentist with a sign saying: “Close your eyes, open your mouth and relax.” There as Zorro, escaped bandits, runaway brides and a guy who wore one of the signs normally attached to one of the houses in Olinda reading: “To rent for Carnival”. There were boxers, undertakers, sailors and police. Then there was another guy with a fishing rod who walked around dangling a photo of Brad Pitt in front of crowds of girls with the caption under the picture “Bait”.
Sex is pretty essential to Carnivaland there were people making out everywhere I looked. The best of the Latin Dream was evidently to be found here but on the first day I failed to connect and went home empty-handed and miserable. The next evening though I was resolved to overcome my British timidity and I noticed a black girl giving me the eye on the other side of the street. I walked over to her and asked her how her Carnival was going:
“All the better now I’ve met you.” She looked at me as though she wanted to eat me. Somehow i felt it was still necessary to continue the conversation for at least 30 seconds before kissing. A thunderstorm broke out on top of us as we embraced and in seconds we were drenched to each other’s skin.
She took up my offer to dry off back at the house and she giggled with embarrassment at the laughter of her friends as we set off. Fifteeen minutes later, desired sated we were back in the street. Before I could worry about whether she was expecting to hang on my arm throughout Carnival, she saw the look in my eyes, kissed me deeply and said:
“Adieu.” With a laugh she disappeared into the night.