Roda de Samba's "Carnaval judges" speak up

Here's an interesting analysis of the Carnaval results, from Leonardo Bruno (one of O Globo's two escola-de-samba reporters who write the O Globo "Roda de Samba" blog):

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Friends, the post I put up yesterday here was a success, about who deserved to go to the Parade of Champions and who deserved to be sent down to Grupo A. There were over 40 comments posted, and, from those, it was possible to calculate an average classification of Carnival from your opinions, adding up everybody's votes. Here we go, so that we can analyze it:

1. Beija-Flor
2. Salgueiro / Viradouro
4. Mangueira
5. Vila Isabel
6. Unidos da Tijuca
7. Portela
8. Grande Rio
9. Mocidade
10. Imperatriz
11. Imperio Serrano
12. Estacio de Sa
13. Porto da Pedra

Well, starting from these numbers, we can reach the following conclusions (many of which have already been discussed here):

- Beija-Flor's championship is deserved.

- Salgueiro suffered the largest injustice of Carnaval; they should have been in the race for the title, but they ended up out of the Parade of Champions.

- Grande Rio, with its strange results in recent years [comment from KH: There is widespread suspicion that Grande Rio has been buying votes], is turning into an extremely disliked escola. Even with its good parade this year, the blog readers only awarded it 8th place.

- Ten escolas were mentioned as being the "group in front" [the better half of Grupo Especial]. Eight were mentioned as being in the "group behind" [the worse half].

- Mocidade was poorly judged by the official judges.

- Imperatriz has become an apathetic escola [that people also don't care much about]; nobody thought that it should be among the champions, and nobody cited it as deserving being sent down either.

- The sending-down of Imperio Serrano might not have been fair, but the escola did do a poor parade.

- Porto da Pedra was judged generously; it deserved last place but ended up ahead of Estacio, Imperio and Mocidade.

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[KH again] There were another 25 comments posted in response to this, and I was interested that many of them wanted to speak about Imperatriz and Grande Rio. They all agreed that Grande Rio has become a widely disliked escola, and many of them said "Grande Rio is taking Imperatriz's place." Apparently Imperatriz used to be widely disliked too, but has since improved to the point of being simply ignored.

In Grande Rio's favor, however, many readers said it does, in fact, do good parades, and its local community still supports it (which was apparently not the case with Imperatriz). But apparently Grande Rio's results in recent years have caused many cariocas to start to distrust the escola.

For my own part, I have visited Grande Rio quite a lot since I have a friend in the bateria and I have taken lessons from the mestre, Odilon Costa. Odilon is excellent, one of Rio's very best mestres, and Grande Rio's bateria is top-notch. But I did notice that the overall ambience seemed not as joyful as in other escolas. Out of the bateria and down on the floor, there was sort of a dispirited and disengaged feel. Few people were dancing. Some of you may remember that Grande Rio is the same escola that was insulted by the Viradouro fans, at one of the last Sambodromo technical rehearsals. The insult was that the crowd sang the Viradouro song while Grande Rio was still parading, which, in Sambodromo terms, is quite an insult. At the time I thought this was an indication of rudeness on the part of the Viradouro community, but maybe it reflects a more widespread dislike for Grande Rio.