Grupo A - still playing for fun

Feliz Natal everybody! As a Christmas present for everybody, I just noticed that mp3's of all the 2007 sambas, plus the lyrics, are online at the newspaper O Dia's excellent Carnaval website:

http://odia.terra.com.br/especial/rio/carnaval2006/#

I've been tuckered out recently and, in honor of the holidays, am taking a bit of a break this week from running around every night. I've been going to so many distant escolas that my samba friends have started calling me the "Guerreira de Samba" - the Warrior of Samba. Well, this Guerreira needs a little rest. So I stayed in tonight, and didn't go play in my Grupo A escola, Sao Clemente, and didn't even go see the excellent Tuesday choro at Trapiche Gamboa that I've managed to miss every single week since I got here.

But I thought that even if I didn't go to Sao Clemente, I'd write about it a bit, because I haven't yet described the Grupo A escolas at all.

Grupo A, or Grupo de Acesso, is the second group of the Carnaval escolas. Every year, one of its member escolas is promoted to Grupo Especial (the top group); and one is demoted to Grupo B. (I've been told there are lower groups, too, but have never seen hide or hair or them). Grupo A parades on Friday and Saturday of Carnaval, before Grupo Especial's famous Sunday and Monday parades. They're the great secret of Rio's Carnaval; they're really very good parades, the baterias have wonderful players (most of them also play in Grupo Especial), but they're doing it more for the joy of it than for the money and glamour - because Grupo A doesn't have any money or glamour! Old-timers always tell me that Grupo A is like Grupo Especial used to be in the good old days, a Carnaval of the people, before it became completely commercialized and touristified. And... Grupo A tickets only cost five dollars. (compare to US$200 or more for Grupo Especial!)

I'd planned this year to try to play in either Sao Clemente or Estacio de Sa, which are among the best of Grupo A. Unfortunately (from my point of view), Estacio de Sa won the Grupo A competition last year and was promoted to Grupo Especial, which immediately made it less likely that I could play there. But Sao Clemente turns out to be perfect. Its quadra is luxuriously close - just a single subway ride to downtown Rio!!! unbelievable!!! It's also actually my neighborhood escola, because it's based in Botafogo, just a half a mile from where I live. In fact I walk on Sao Clemente Street almost every day, on my way to my practice space in Botafogo. But most importantly, the Sao Clemente mestre and directors are friendly and willing to let visitors play. My friends Olivia and Tanit have recently started playing there too. "They're super nice at Sao Clemente. Unpretentious," says Olivia. On my first trip there, I was having a little trouble telling the directors apart, and later Tanit explained "It's all one family who runs this escola. I mean, literally one family. Brothers and cousins. And you can tell, because they all sort of look alike!"

After the raucous, enormous Friday and Saturday parties at the Grupo Especial escolas, I was shocked at how tiny Sao Clemente's Friday party was: a tiny clump of 25 players or so, lots of unused drums sitting around in piles, just a few bunches of friends watching. One beer stand. No food. Apparently, this is normal for Grupo A. "Hardly anybody comes to the weekend party before Christmas...." said the mestre. "Sometimes I think we shouldn't even really do this Friday thing till after New Year's. But, you should come on Tuesday! Tuesday is the technical rehearsal and it's much bigger." So I came the next Tuesday to find a bateria that was about five times bigger and ten times better, with a good set of porta-bandeiras and passistas practicing their dance choreographies on the main floor. (Still no food. But lots of beer.) It suddenly sounded like a genuine bateria. Powerful. And FAST!

Sao Clemente, turns out, also has the best repique player I've ever seen. They also get points for being the only escola so far whose caixa pattern I couldn't play instantly. This is partly because the Friday caixa players were playing about seven different variations. But even on Tuesday, when they'd settled down to business and were finally playing a single pattern, there were some soft double-right hits tucked into it that still elude me. I made do with the "standard" Viradouro/Salgueiro pattern, which fit well enough, but I still want to figure out what they're doing exactly.

So that's my Tuesday night escola!

Many foreign sambistas also run across Alegria de Zona Sul, a mid-range Grupo A escola that has its street rehearsal right on Copacabana beach every Sunday. At about 6pm, at the Ipanema end, near Posto 6. If you can play at all (especially if you have your own instrument) they'll almost certainly let you join. They are friendly and fun.

For a little more information about Grupo A, here are some excerpts from a recent article on Grupo A from the O Globo newspaper's Carnaval blog. As to who might win this year, the blog writer says:

"I think that maybe this is the year for Uniao da Ilha, which for years has tried to return to Grupo Especial, but has always "hit the goalpost" [just missed]. I doubt that Rocinha or Caprichosos will succeed in returning soon to the top group; I think that maybe they will have to spend some time in Acesso. Santa Cruz, Sao Clemente, and Tradicao are always among the favorites of Grupo A. And it seems to me that Arrancao, Cubango, and Imperio da Tijuca are in competition to see who will fall [to Grupo B]. The escola Renascer, for me, is still an unknown. This is just a general impression; we have to wait a little longer, because Grupo A's preparations always occur closer to the time of the parade."

Other tidbits (paraphrased):
- It's common belief that Grupo A gets very little funding from the city of Rio, compared to Grupo Especial. Not true. An escola in Grupo Especial gets R$361,000 from the city, and one in Grupo A gets R$280,000, which really isn't too bad. However, the Grupo Especial escolas also rake in an enormous amount of money from TV contracts for Carnaval, cd sales, the ticket sales from the Sambodromo, and ticket sales at their weekly parties. All told, a Grupo Especial escola can count on about R$2,700,000 per year. (That's the "official" money, not including the substantial funding that many escolas get from the neighborhood gangsters, nor the recent trend for sponsorship for undisclosed amounts from Venezuelan oil companies and the like)

- Caprichosos fell to Grupo A this year. They apparently didn't like the tiny TV deals offered to the Grupo A escolas, and refused to sign the TV contract. As a result, Caprichosos' parade will not be televised this year! The other nine Grupo A escolas will be televised but apparently they will just cut to commercials during Caprichosos' parade. Ouch.