parade of champions

I´m on ilha grande now without email access, so have been unable to post anything to the blog (already lost a whole post when my computer at the internet cafe froze and lost everything after an hour of writing... dang... )

so just some quick things to get up to date:
I got completely into Sambodromo overdrive all through Carnaval - I could not seem to stay away from that place. Bloco parades all day, then I´d end up drifting over to the Sambodromo. I accidentally ended up back there Saturday night for the Parade of Champions, which I´d never been to before, but I went there with Party Jason (always a dangerous influence) and of course we ended up buying scalped tickets and heading on in for the evening.

It had a really cool relaxed, fun feeling. The paraders were totally relaxed, waving signs to their moms, kicking off their uncomfortable shoes and hats. The floats were falling apart a bit, everything a bit bedraggled; and several places on the floats were missing people; the baterias were only half the size that they are for the Carnaval nights. But it was really cool! It still all looked damn impressive, and it was really nice to know that the paraders were leaping around and singing because they really wanted to, not because they had to for judges.

And the crowd in the stands was much more mellow. Fewer tourists, many more locals. On Carnaval night, the vibe in the grandstands is very strange - people are so territorial about their seats (sometimes rightfully so, sometimes not) that they get very grumpy and unfriendly. You can spend all night getting scowls from clumps of French and Germans on either side and never feel like you´re in Brazil. But on Parade of Champions night, everybody just packed in cheek-by-jowl, friendly and chatting. (and overheated. we did get a wee bit too packed. Maybe the French and Germans were onto something after all)

Seeing the parades again was interesting... some that had impressed me the first time were no longer as interesting (Viradouro - I guess its tricks only last one time - and Grande Rio) while others remained as stunning as before (Mangueira and Beija-Flor).

I´ve heard griping comments from various escolas about Grande Rio´s perfect-10 bateria marks, but I have to say, it seemed to me like the other escolas were really rushing their breaks terribly. Beija-Flor consistently rushed their major break so badly they got probably a full quarter note ahead of time. Mangueira suffered a HUGE out-of-phase tempo fracture while going in and out of the recuo, and their surdos were flamming during the breaks! I´d heard the exact same thing in their parade on Sunday and was so startled I thought I´d imagined it - I didn´t think it was possible for Mangueira to get out of phase? I thought it must be a speed-of-sound time delay, or an echo off the walls, that was confusing me. But later I talked to several other musicians who heard the same thing, and then I was watching extra-carefully Saturday, and they did the exact same thing in the Parade of Champions.

Unidos da Tijuca´s opening float had a huge devil with a giant flash bulb and a camera (I guess it was the Devil of Photography, or something... I never could figure it out). The flash would go off every now and then. Until, just past us, the whole flash caught fire, and then the whole arm... it was scary! The flames just kept spreading and a huge column of black smoke was boiling up into the sky. All the dancers scrambled off the float, and, then a few moments later, some little trapdoors popped open and several guys came bolting up out of the inside of the float. Looked like everybody got out in time. Finally a fire truck pulled up and put the fire out, to huge cheers, and the parade finally went on its way with the sagging devil, sans dancers and sans arm, still leading the way but looking very pathetic.

That´s the second float fire this week. When Grande Rio came along I had a double-take moment when I thought "Oh, that´s the float that was destroyed by fire. What a pity, it´s so pretty! WAIT a minute..." how could the float still BE there if it was destroyed by fire? As it drew nearer I realized it was a replacement float that Grande Rio must have thrown together in 4 or 5 days. The old float burned to ashes on Tuesday morning (when it hit a power line in an alley on its way out of the Sambodromo), and here it was Saturday night and they had somehow pulled together a float of huge oranges and orange blossoms with a big Grande Rio logo, and feathered dancers all over. Damn impressive for a five-day job! I studied it as it drew nearer, and it was a cool lesson in how to toss together a float - just get a bunch of giant flowers, 35 enormous oranges, a huge drum with your escola logo, drape it all in orange cloth and enormous silver streamers, put a tall thing in the back with some stuff on top (giant oranges, silver pipes, whatever), put girls in feathers all over it, and hey presto! Of course, the girls in feathers are the key.

dashed back home from that, caught 2 hrs sleep and raced to the Monobloco parade. Very, very cool. Very, very hot too. More next time, I have to go lie on a beach now.