Hibernation and planning

The Monobloco parade is over... my very last parade... and Carnaval is truly over, and I've gone into nearly completely hibernation. I'm overdue by at least three major blog posts (one each on Cubango, Monobloco and Banga), but I think I've spent at least three days asleep in recovery. Getting over my stubborn cold, catching up on sleep. It's the Ressaca do Carnaval, the Carnaval hangover.

The worst part of the ressaca for us foreigners is saying goodbye to all our friends, as one after another they leave town and flown back north - first Renata and Brian (well, actually, they flew west), then the Germans, then Philip and his American crew, Ben, then JP, and now even dear Xuxa has left me. And Wendy goes tomorrow.

And next will be ME. I have ten days in Bahia coming up - the end of my trip - which means I leave Rio next Thursday - which means today is the first day of my last week in Rio! argh!!!! That means that every time I see one of my Rio friends it might be for the last time. Dudu at Banga on Saturday, Freddy at Monobloco last Sunday, talking to me about killer whales (in what sort of crazy universe do I live in that my brilliant Monobloco caixa leader also turns out to have a degree in marine biology???) - Daniel and his extremely lovely wife at Xuxa's party decoding all sorts of Brazilian cultural mysteries for me - Chris, laughing and taking pictures and belting out "You Light Up My Life" at the top of her lungs (Chris is a Brazilian cultural mystery all by herself) - Denise, last night, dancing forro with me at Democratikos... will it be a year or more before I see any of them again??

I avoid the goodbyes by not saying goodbye, by just saying "See you soon". Which is true enough. Whether in this world or the next.

My main consolation is the wonderful dawning realization that since I won't be teaching next year in Portland, maybe I'll be able to come back to Rio next year! Except, of course, I won't have any money to pay for the plane ticket! Or the rent! Since I don't have a job! I'll be holed up in Jerry's place in Seattle, or Pat's house in Hood River, or living with benevolent family members ("Who's that in the back room making those strange noises?" "Oh, that's my crazy old aunt... she was never the same after she came back from Brazil...just sits in there banging on that weird little snare drum all day") Maybe playing pandeiro on the street for pennies, standing on street corners with one of those hand-scrawled cardboard signs: "WILL TEACH BIOLOGY OR SAMBA FOR FOOD". (All the neighbors will be saying, "man, we thought the crack addicts were bad enough... but then the homeless drummers showed up! hell!")

Got to earn some money. So I've actually spent a lot of time this week revising my CV and sending out job apps left and right. To textbook publishers, to odd teaching jobs here and there, to my fieldwork friends. A few short-term contract jobs have materialized pretty quickly (two textbook jobs that I'm working on right now, a summer bird job)... pretty good for a week's effort, I just need to get more! Got to get enough jobs to not only break even, and pay my health insurance (which IS MORE MY THAN MY RENT - why oh why do I live in such a messed up country!), but also put some savings into that special savings pot: The Carnaval savings account.

Next up: Cubango. Monobloco. Bangalafumenga.

Monobloco takes over the world

Just got back from a stunning Monobloco show last night, and am trying to prepare mentally for what is bound to be a boiling hot, can-I-survive-till-the-end, ultra-marathon type of life experience at the Monobloco parade tomorrow on the Rio Branco. The Rio Branco parades are getting completely out of control - the bloco Bola Preta's last three parades there drew half a million people, a million people, and (last week) a million and a half people. So how many will Monobloco draw?

Well, this happens to be is Monobloco's 10th anniversary, and they've put together a marvelous display of photos and memorabilia at the Fundicao, including some handy data on all their 9 parades so far since 2001:

2001 - 10,000 people attend the first Monobloco parade in Gávea.
2002 - 20,000 people attend. Parade moves to the Jardim Botanico.
2003 - 50,000 people. (Back to Gávea)
2004 - 50,000 (moves to Ipanema beach)
2005 - 80,000
2006 - 80,000
2007 - 100,000 (outgrows Ipanema, moves to Copacabana beach. This was my first parade with them)
2008 - 100,000
2009 - 400,000 (outgrows Copacabana, moves to the Rio Branco)

Here's the newspaper pic of the 2009 parade. Can you find the band?



Extending this trend into the future, we can confidently predict that Monobloco's parade in the year 2039 will be attended by the entire population of Earth. Well, we'll see what happens tomorrow!

Triumph of the Zona Sul escolas

The results for the lower Carnaval escola levels were just announced, and it has become clear that this is a big year for the Zona Sul escolas! The most famous samba escolas are all based in the north zone of Rio, Zona Norte, far from the famous beaches of Zona Sul. But there are plenty of samba escolas in Zona Sul too. This year, not one but THREE escolas of Zona Sul are champions or vice-champions of their respective leagues: Sao Clemente (representing Botafogo) won Grupo A, Alegria da Zona Sul (representing Copacabana/Ipanema) won Grupo 1 (the old "Grupo B"), and Unidos da Villa Rica (also based in Copacabana) came in 2nd place in Grupo 3 (= "Grupo D"). (In the lower divisions, the top 2 or 3 escolas all go up, so coming in 2nd is as good as winning - it earns you a promotion to the next group up.)

Interestingly, all these escolas are based in favelas that have recently been "pacified" by the UPP, which I gather is a division of police aimed at bringing some measure of peace to the favelas (Rio's famously crime-ridden hillside shantytowns). The UPP seems to go into favelas one at a time and occupies them permanently, trying to drive out the drug traffickers. I don't know much about it, so anyone who knows more about the UPP, please comment and tell us what it is all about!

I'm translating an O Globo article below. I especially wanted to put the word out about Alegria da Zona Sul, since I know several international sambistas who have run into Alegria while they were rehearsing along Copacabana beach, and were wondering who they were. Now you know! I played with them couple times and they were very friendly and welcoming. Their quadra is perched on top of the favela that is between Copacabana and Ipanema.


****
Carnaval of the UPPs is Champion in Zona Sul
from O Globo, Saturday 20 Feb 2010
by Rafael Galdo
(translated by KH. Link to original article here)

In the favelas of Zona Sul that have UPPs (Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora, or Pacification Police Units), this year's Carnaval was a champion Carnaval, literally. Practially all of the escolas-de-samba in these communities ended up winning and will go up one level in the lower groups of the Rio Carnaval. São Clemente, which is partly composed of members from Botafogo and its favelas, like the Dona Marta favela and the stretch of Tabajaras in the neighborhood, won Grupo de Acesso and will parade in Grupo Especial next year. Likewise, Alegria da Zona Sul, representing the neighborhoods of Pavão-Pavãozinho and Cantagalo [in Copacabana], won the title of the "Rio de Janeiro 1" group (old group B). Unidos da Villa Rica, from the Tabajaras hill in Copacabana, won 2nd place in "Rio de Janeiro III" (old group D).

These escolas now intend to take advantage of the moment, along with the peace and the visibility that have come to these communities with the arrival of the UPPs, to grow and gain more members. Roberto Gomes, director of São Clemente, remembers that in 2003, when the escola moved its rehearsals to its quadra in Centro [downtown Rio, far from Botafago], some members of Botafogo stopped coming. Today, most of its members come Centro and from Zona Norte. But their goal is to continue their recent project to reconnect with the communities of Zona Sul.

"This year, we had alas [parade sections] from Tabajaras and the Dona Marta favela (both "pacified"). The result was much stronger singing in the Avenida on parade day. Pretty soon, we're planning to bring several of our projects, like percussion classes and dance classes, to favelas like Tabajaras," he said.

In the case of Alegria da Zona Sul, the president, Marcus Vinícius de Almeida, pointed out that the benefits of UPP and the works of the "Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento" (PAC) [program for accelerating growth] in Pavão-Pavãozinho and Cantagalo need to also include escolas-de-samba, which are one of the principal leisure opportunities in those communities.

According to him, the escola has social projects which could be started or increased in partnership with these groups. In addition, the members of Alegria da Zona Sul hope for a renovation of their quadra [rehearsal hall], on the top of the Estrada do Cantagalo. A renovation has been promised by PAC.

"The ideal, however, would be to move it lower down the hill. This would facilitate access for "people of the asphalt" [richer people who live in the paved streets in the lower areas] as well as the residents of the hill," said Almeida. "However, the view of the community we have today is quite something. And we are here with open doors for all residents of Copacabana, Ipanema or of any other place."

Antonio Justino da Silva, 82 years old and a member of the "Old Guard" of Alegria, remembers that this union between "the hill and the asphalt" had already existed in the escola before UPP, with the rehearsals that the escola does down on the Avenida Atlantica [on the beach of Copacabana]. But he has noticed that, recently, more residents of the Zona Sul neighborhoods are coming to the escola, including the party to celebrate the title, the day before yesterday. And Armando Fernandes, composer for the escola says as well:

"I believe that these visits from "people of the asphalt" will increase even more soon, because they'll have less fear of coming to our quadra. In Grupo de Acesso, I think that Alegria will have greater visibility and will come into fashion."

The only escola of the "pacified communities" that was not a champion or vice-champion was Mocidade Unida de Santa Marta, which came in 6th place in Grupo Rio de Janeiro 3 (old group D).

Grupo A escolas "threaten rebellion"

Here's interestingly little news item in the paper today about Grupo A. The background: Last year (2009), organization of Grupo was turned over to a group called LESGA. The president of LESGA is also the president of the escola Inocentes de Belford Roxo. In the 2009 Carnaval, Inocentes finished near the bottom and should, according to the rules, have been sent down to Grupo B. Amazingly, no escola was sent down at all - quite contrary to the rules, and leaving Grupo A overflowing with 12 escolas instead of the usual 10.
The 2010 Carnaval results were so surprising they resulted in a near-riot at the Grupo A score announcement earlier this week. Many people have commented that Inocentes placed freakishly high for what was rather an unimpressive parade (Inocentes finished 2nd) and that Rocinha, Cubango and Unidos de Padre Miguel were all scored unfairly low. In another departure from normal protocol, the names of the judges this year were not announced till just before Carnaval.
It is typical for escolas to complain after low scores, but the situation in Grupo A right now seems especially heated.

From today's O Globo newspaper (Saturday 20 Feb 2010):

Escolas Threaten Rebellion in Grupo de Acesso
by Paulo Marqueiro, with Alice Fernandes
(translated by KH. Link to original version here)

Grupo de Acesso (Grupo A) is in an uproar. Just days after the announcement of the results of the parade, in which São Clemente was the winner, several escolas are threatening to "turn the baiana" [cause a loud public commotion] against the League of Escolas de Samba of Grupo de Acesso (LESGA). Directors of the escolas intend to meet in the coming days with the president of the Independent League of Escolas de Samba (LIESA), Jorge Castanheira, who coordenates the Carnaval of Grupo Especial, to ask that either LIESA take over the administration of the Grupo A parades, or that the city of Rio re-take control of the event.

The escola heads had already been dissatisfied with LESGA before Saturday's parade, and the dissatisfaction only grew after the tumultuous reading of the scores last Tuesday. The president of Acadêmicos da Rocinha, Maurício Mattos, one of the most rebellious, questioned the result, which left his escola in 10th place at the edge of being sent down (to Grupo B). He said that the sambistas in Grupo A were only told who the judges would be on the Wednesday before Carnaval.

"In the list of judges, Fernando Bicudo was the only person we recognized. The rest were unknown," criticized Maurício Mattos. "I believe the objective was to make Rocinha descend to Grupo de Acesso B."

In an article published in GLOBO on Feb. 11, mayor Eduardo Paes said that the city government has no interest in re-assuming the administration of the Grupo de Acesso parade, but that they will not permit abuses. Paes was referring to the scores of the 2009 Carnaval, the first one coordinated by LESGA. Contrary to the rules, no escola descended to Grupo B that year, which left Grupo A with 12 escolas parading in just one night.

In the parade this year, Inocentes de Belford Roxo, the escola of the president of LESGA, Reginaldo Gomes, ended in 2nd place. Estácio was in third; Acadêmicos de Santa Cruz, fourth; Império da Tijuca, fifth; Império Serrano, sixth. In 11th place was Unidos de Padre Miguel, and in 12th Paraíso do Tuiuti, both sent down to Grupo de Acesso B.

The president of LESGA could not be reached to comment on the confusion in Grupo A.

Just 379 days to go!

Immediately after the great Unidos da Tijuca victory on Ash Wednesday, the great heat wave broke. The scalding sunny sky disappeared, the clouds closed in, the rain thundered down. I woke in the night with an extremely strange sensation... I was COLD. Actually, I was being rained on! A frigid wind was blowing icy raindrops all over me. I had to go close the window and even had to get one of those, what are they called, those covery-up things, a "blanket"! It was the most delicious sensation.. shivering, curling up under the blanket. Nothing makes you enjoy cold like three consecutive weeks of 100+ temperatures.

However, I woke up the next day sick, with a sore throat, splitting headache, nausea and absolute thundering exhaustion...the inevitable outcome of five days in a row of staying up all night (followed only by feverish quick naps from 8am to about 11am, when it got too hot to sleep anymore). My first thought was: wait a minute, this isn't fair - if I'm going to have hangover symptoms like this, I ought at least to have gotten to drink something the night before! But no, I was genuinely sick. Stayed in bed sleeping all day, woke up at 5pm and tottered out for some groceries. Slept most of today too... it seems like the whole city, not just me, the whole sky too, is in a kind of depression after Carnaval. Everything seems eerily sad and gray and quiet. A lot of the Lapa clubs are closed. (Actually we've still got a fun weekend coming up, the post-Carnaval weekend with the huge Monobloco parade. But the escola rehearsals are all done... sad...)

Then today I was poking around one of the samba websites and noticed a tiny counter in the upper right hand corner that read:
"379 dias para Carnaval 2011"

And simultaneously the page refreshed to reveal a new news item that Salgueiro has just announced its theme for the 2011 Carnaval (their theme will be Italy). And so it begins again...The great cycle of life, or the cycle of Carnaval, anyway. Nothing ever really ends. It's never really over. There's always another Carnaval to look forward to.

The full results

Complete list of Grupo Especial results. The most shocking thing is: Viradouro has fallen to grupo A! Equally shocking, Viradouro's fall also means that Uniao da Ilha has accomplished the near impossible - it has STAYED in Grupo Especial instead of falling right back to Grupo A, as the Grupo A winner normally does. Ilha is truly back in Especial! And now they won't have to parade first on Sunday night any more, so they're likely back in Especial to stay. They must be thrilled.

1. Unidos da Tijuca
2. Grande Rio
3. Beija-Flor
4. Vila Isabel
5. Salgueiro
6. Mangueira
The above escolas will be in the Parade of Champions on Saturday night.

7. Mocidade
8. Imperatriz
9. Portela
10. Porto da Pedra
11. Uniao da Ilha (last year's Grupo A winner)
12. Viradouro (falls to Grupo A)

UNIDOS DA TIJUCA!

I went to the Sambodromo for the apuracao, the formal reading of the Sambodromo results. The scores are read out one at a time by a deep-voiced announcer standing at the base of the arches of the Sambodromo. He definitely takes particular pleasure from dramatic pauses: "Unidos da Tijuca....." [pause] ".... DEZ!!!" (ten! the maximum score) The bigwigs, presidents of the escolas and such, were in 12 nicely shaded tables down on the ground level. The rest of us, the riffraff, the diehard fans, were gathered in the nearest bleachers of Setor 6 and 13. I went up into Setor 13 and found the fans had quite precisely sorted themselves into tidy contingents for each escola. Not all escolas had fans present - Portela seemed to be represented by 1 lone fellow with a Portela banner; only about 5 escolas had major contingents present. Setor 13 turned out to be inhabited primarily by a healthy contingent of Mocidade fans on my right, a rabid pack of Beija-Flor fans in the middle, Grande Rio fans on my left (relatively few of them but with an absolutely enormous flag that was bigger than anybody else's. Classic Grande Rio!). And up high above us, in the highest seats, were the Vila Isabel people. Whenever Vila Isabel got a 10, the Vila Isabel people would race back and forth along the empty seats of the upper bleachers waving their blue-and-white flags.

I'm pretty fond of Mocidade and Beija-Flor, but I have also always had a soft spot for Unidos da Tijuca and their parade really impressed me this year. So I was looking around for a Tijuca contingent and soon realized they were over in Setor 6, small but very vocal, and flanked by two huge Mangueira contingents on either side. They looked like they were about to be swallowed by Mangueira. I suddenly knew I had to be over there, so I ran all the way around the bottom of the Sambodromo and over to Setor 13 to the Tijuca pack.

That was a defining moment, for I'd cast my lot with Unidos da Tijuca. In fact I ended up standing in the battle zone right between Tijuca and Mangueira, which was definitely an interesting place to stand. The moment that you start screaming for Unidos da Tijuca when there are dozens of Mangueira fans on one side of you is an interesting moment. The moment that you start screaming because Mangueira got a bad score (thus helping Tijuca pull ahead) is an even more interesting moment.

It takes quite a while to read the results, since there are 10 categories, each with 5 judges, and 12 escolas. The sun was beating down and it was excruciatingly hot. Luckily the Rio city government had thought of this and had kindly stationed two fire engines, one at Setor 6 and one at Setor 13, and every now and then they'd spray us with FULL FORCE fire hoses. It was EXHILARATING. It was ICY COLD and COMPLETELY DRENCHING and we were ABSOLUTELY DRIPPING WET. It all added to the intensity of the moment as we were all being completely blasted by this fire hose, yelling TI-JU-CA! TI-JU-CA!

We'd gotten through several categories - Bateria, Conjunto and a few others - and it was clear Tijuca was doing very well. Lots of 10's (the maximum score). Tijuca had been tied for 2nd or 3rd for most of this, when suddenly, partway through the "Conjunto" category (this is a special category for overall effect of the entire parade), I noticed Tijuca had just pulled into the #1 spot on the big screen. I was actually the first Tijuca fan to notice this, because the others were all busy chanting something derogatory at the Mangueira fans, but a few seconds later a guy yelled "Olha a Tijuca! Olha a Tijuca!" pointing at the scoreboard and suddenly everybody realized we were ranked #1. Hot on our heels were Mangueira and Beija-Flor. You could feel an electic shock go through the Tijuca fans. The next category was Fantasias (costumes) and the one after that was Alegorias (floats). This was a critical moment, I thought; this is where we're going to find out if the judges really were won over by Paulo Barros' outrageous, funny, creative designs, or whether he was once again too unconventional for them, just too weird, too out there.

The first Fantasia judge's scores were read. At this point all that mattered to us were Unidos da Tijuca and Mangueira.
Unidos da Tijuca: 10.
Manguiera: 9.6.
The Mangueira fans actually gasped and the Mangueira girl on my right said in shock "Caramba!" (an expression of surprise).
I thought "Tijuca's going to win". I had no right to think this - there were still several categories to go, and we only had a lead maybe a tenth of a point, Mangueira was by no means out of the game (especially since the lowest score is automatically discarded, a new rule this year). And Beija-Flor was hot on our heels too. But suddenly I was sure. I ran straight out of the Sambodromo, ran 3 blocks to the first major street, flagged down a taxi and said "Take me to the quadra of Unidos de Tijuca!"

The taxi driver didn't say a word, just sped me out on the street toward the quadra, which fortunately is only about a 5 minute drive from the Sambodromo. His radio was already tuned to the Sambodromo announcements and we listened in silence as the scores for Floats were read out. Unidos da Tijuca... DEZ.

I got to the quadra. It was fairly quiet, just 2 beer vendors outside and a small trickle of fans heading inside. Inside were a rabid pack of maybe 100 Tijuca fans - not a ton of people, just the most dedicated. They were all clustered near the stage, sitting in rows of chairs that had been carefully set out in neat lines in front of a big-screen TV that was showing the live feed from the Sambodromo. By now we were in a tie with Beija-Flor. Result after result came in - DEZ, DEZ, DEZ, for Tijuca, but unfortunately it was also DEZ, DEZ, DEZ for Beija-Flor.

Then came the first 9.9 for Beija-Flor. Tijuca had gotten a DEZ.

Then another 9.9 for Beija-Flor. Tijuca had gotten a DEZ from that judge too.

Inch by inch, tenth by tenth, Beija-Flor fell a tenth behind, another tenth behind.... News photographers started showing up. First two, then four, then five of them. Nobody was in the chairs anymore; everybody was leaping and screaming. We alternated between singing bits of the Tijuca song, and chanting "O Paulo Barros voltou! O Paulo Barros voltou!" (Paulo Barros, Rio's most innovative carnaval designer, returned to Tijuca this year after a few years away. The entire Unidos da Tijuca parade had been designed by him.)

Another 9.9 for Beija-Flor. DEZ for Unidos da Tijuca. The big screen TV started having problems, flickering and going blurry, and we were all screaming so much we couldn't hear what the announcer was saying; so we were just peering at the flickery, blurry screen trying to make out whether it showed a "10" or not for Unidos da Tijuca. Sometimes an excited person on stage would veer in front of the big-screen projector, and the scores would end up shining somewhere on their body, wigglly and small, and we'd be peering at somebody's leg or chest trying to figure out if a certain wiggle was a "10" or a "9".

A small bateria had assembled out of random players in the audience, at first just 2 surdos and a few tamborins, but more and more players were arriving and it was getting stronger and stronger. A very strange-looking Unidos da Tijuca flag showed up - at first I thought it had caught on fire, but later I realized it was the flag that was used in the "undersea secrets" section of the parade, that had been made to look as if it had been undersea - deliberately stained and covered with barnacles and seaweed. (apparently the "good" flag was over at the Sambodromo). There were now 12 news photographers on stage. The strange seaweed-covered flag was whirling around. Now we were on the last category - the TV was so blurry I couldn't read it what category it was - and our second-to-last score came up. DEZ. The lowest score is discarded, so it didn't matter any more what the last score was. No one could touch us. We'd won. CHAOS in the quadra.

- cue endless dancing and singing of the Tijuca song. Somehow I acquire a Tijuca t-shirt that flies into my hand unexpectedly when I'm waving my hand around in the air.

Outside at this point were 6 TV vans, a 7th arriving, lighting guys setting up banks of light, journalists clutching pads of notes and interview questions, a special electrical generator truck squeezing painfully through a too-small alleyway, a helicopter circling overhead, 3 mysterious limos with smoked windows jammed in the entryway to the tiny parking lot. And 12 more beer vendors, 2 hot dog stands and 3 popcorn carts all rolling up (those guys are quick!) And floods and floods and floods of people arriving. Members of choregraphed alas and the commisao de frente showed up and started doing their dances. Everybody was singing the song, the "secrets" song that had won them so many 10's.

It took a while to sink in. They've really won. The brilliant underdog escola that's always unjustly the runner-up and never the winner. UNIDOS DA TIJUCA HAS FINALLY WON!

And the crowd sings...

Check out this video from O Globo that shows the long bateria pause when the public sang alone. In case it's not clear from the video, that's really just the crowd singing, unamplified - the singers, band and bateria are all silent.

Sao Clemente wins Grupo A!

The results are in from the Grupo de Acesso parades, and São Clemente has won! I'm a little bummed Cubango didn't win, but São Clemente's also one of my favorites (I used to play with them, on my last trip) and it's great to see them win. They've been performing very strongly in recent years and are one of the "yo-yo" escolas that bounces up to Especial periodically.

I'm also bummed that both Imperio Serrano and Rocinha finished fairly low, since I thought they both did great parades.

This year, two escolas are being sent down from Grupo de Acesso back to Grupo B. And they are: Tuiuti and Unidos de Padre Miguel. Tuiuti lost a couple extra points because their rainha was entirely nude (her little jeweled gun holster belt slipped to the side during the parade, revealing a certain area that it wasn't supposed to) and full nudity is forbidden in the Carnaval parades. Tuiuti also had less than the minimum number of baianas, which also cost them some points. Unidos de Padre Miguel apparently had some technical difficulties, including, for example, their whole commisao de frente arriving late at the parade.

The results announcement ceremony ended bizarrely when both Cubango and Padre Miguel complained about the results, since scores for both escolas seemed sort of bizarre. The Cubango directors threw "pieces of wood" at the powers-that-be from Lesga (the union of the Grupo de Acesso escolas) and the Padre Miguel fans started jeering and cursing. The Lesga president had to be escorted away under heavy security.

Imperio's president didn't jeer or throw pieces of wood, but did say that the results seemed "predetermined." That is, bribed and rigged. So what else is new in the Rio Carnaval?

The complete results:
1. Sao Clemente (goes up to Grupo Especial)
2. Inocentes
3. Estacio
4. Santa Cruz
5. Imperio da Tijuca
6. Imperio Serrano
7. Caprichosos
8. Renascer
9. Cubango
10. Rocinha
11. Unidos de Padre Miguel (goes down to Grupo B)
12. Tuiuti (goes down to Grupo B)

Right now the Grupo B parades are starting - I can hear the fireworks right now, announcing the first escola, from my apartment. I'm heading over to Rio Scenarium for a bit first to hear Mulheres de Chico, then might check out Grupo B a bit later tonight. If I can possibly stay awake. I am really reeling with fatigue by this point, and fell asleep today while standing up in the subway!

Estandarte de Ouro results

Results are in from O Globo's prestigious "Estandarte de Ouro" awards. (These aren't the official LIESA results - it's just an unofficial set of prizes given independently of LIESA, but it's quite prestigious and is very much a big deal for the winner. It also includes some categories that LIESA does not judge, like best ala and best passista.)

Best Grupo Especial escola: Unidos da Tijuca! (yay!)
Best Grupo de Acesso escola: Estácio de Sá (interesting!)
Best enredo (theme): Vila Isabel (this was the Noel Rosa theme)
Best bateria: Portela! Whaddya know.
Best samba (song) of Grupo Especial: Imperatriz
Best samba of Grupo de Acesso: Império da Tijuca
Best baianas: Salgueiro
Best ala: "Bloco Faz Vergonha", of Vila Isabel. I don't know which bloco this was.
Best porta-bandeira: Ruth of Vila Isabel
Best mestre-sala: Julinho of Vila Isabel
Best singer: Ito Melodia, of União da Ilha
Best male passista (samba dancer): Fábio of Mangueira
Best female passista: Tina of Mocidade
Best commisão de frente (dance group): Unidos da Tijuca (this was the magician dancers who
kept magically changing clothes). O Globo's got a video of this dance online - select "O segredo da commisao de frente da Unidos da Tijuca" (I can't past the direct link in for some reason, sorry)
"Revelation" (most impressive debut): Daniel, second mestre-sala of Salgueiro
"Personality" (most charismatic/fascinating/beloved performer): Tia Nadir of Beija-Flor - she is 93 years old, the oldest baiana in the escola, and is one of the original founders of Beija-Flor.

Monday: Mangueira

6. The great escola Mangueira, oldest and most famous of the Rio samba escolas, was stunning. I think this is the best parade they have done in years. (They have a new president this year. I note he has also mended the rift with Beth Carvalho, who paraded with her beloved Mangueira for the first time in three years.) Their theme was the music of Brazil -a great theme lending itself to all kinds of costumes illustrating different genres of Brazilian music (manguebeat, samba-reggae, etc.) and famous songs and composers.
Their song was easily the catchiest of the whole Carnaval, and the public was singing it so strongly that Mangueira bateria, band and singers did something I have never heard of before - they fell dead silent for the ENTIRE refrain (eight long 4-count bars) and let the crowd sing the refrain. Then they came back in. I've never heard of a bateria falling so silent for so long and trusting the crowd to carry the song - a huge gamble since they had to rely on the crowd to keep the beat going for all the paraders. And boy did the crowd sing! It was like we all knew that the whole parade was depending on us. It was truly "de arrepiar", as they say - so stirring it gave me goosebumps.
Another goosebumps moment happened when the bateria came marching by IN PRISON - they were all dressed as prisoners (one several strong statements in the parade made about censorship of the arts. Brazil has had a history of censorship of musicians, in the years of the military dictatorship). The bateria guys were all enclosed in a gigantic moving jail. This was accomplished via a line of non-bateria prisoners just inside, holding the cage of the jail and walking it along, and also another line of people outside dressed as guards.

The overall effect was that it looked like the bateria prisoners were struggling to get out while the guards held them in:



...but if you look closely, notice the "guards" and "prisoners" are actually holding the fence up and carrying it along.

The bateria diretores were costumed as very authentically scary-looking guards. It was a stunning sight and somehow very chilling. Like I said, this sight literally gave me goosebumps.

At the end of the parade route, Mangueira did something that really impressed me: when every section of the parade crossed the finish line, they didn't stop parading, like the alas in every other escola. Instead they marched directly over to the furthest, cheapest seats and did a whole performance there, sometimes ten minutes or more of dancing, just for the people in the cheap seats. When they didn't have to (they're not judged after the finish line). Mangueira won my heart right there.
Mangueira got the strongest "E campiao!" shout of the night and the bateria kept playing and playing, after the parades were officially over. And playing and playing and playing... The Mangueira directors and singers and paraders were all leaping up and down, an especially big ball of maybe 50 directors right near us all jumping up and down with their arms around each other - relishing that thrilling moment when the long gate at the end of the runway is wheeled shut behind the last parader, the clock stops in perfect time (1:21 - the time limit is 1:22) and they finally know that their parade had gone PERFECTLY. The bateria kept playing and playing while the sky slowly lightened. They finally stopped...
And, at last, the thousands of disheveled, exhausted paraders, in huge crazy elaborate falling-apart costumes, drifted in all directions. All the costumes were dropping ribbons and feathers and gold filigree all over. Thousands and thousands of people drifting in all directions. "It's all over," said Bruno, a bit sadly. We jumped the fence onto the Sambodromo runway and walked slowly up the runway with all the other thousands of people, kicking aside great clumps of confetti, and litters of fallen rhinestones and miscellaneous costume pieces. Everybody going home. Till next year.

Monday: Vila Isabel

5. Vila Isabel had a marvelous musical theme based on the life of the famous Brazilian composer Noel Rosa. But they suffered from a terrific problem that was NOT their fault - the sound system failed on the Avenida! I've never heard this happen before! The weird thing was, it wasn't a total failure (I think the parade would have delayed if there were a total sound failure, which would have been better for Vila]. It sounded like most of the microphones around the bateria, and on the sound truck, lost power or were unplugged or something. At any rate, all we could hear was a strangely throbbing, muted first surdo, and the singer. That was IT. No cavaquinho! No second surdo! No caixas! No bateria! It was very bizarre. The surdo also kept changing in volume, swelling suddenly and then nearly disappearing (I wonder if the apparently lone functional bateria microphone was being hurriedly moved around - eventually it started picking up one 2nd surdo too, and, very distantly, a lone weak caixa.) It sounded really horrible. Bear in mind that this is what most of the Vila paraders were hearing, and it was awful for them - they could barely tell if they were singing in time with the singer.
Anyway, the sound problem lasted 24 minutes before it was finally fixed. It was so frustrating, and was affecting the parade so badly, and was so clearly NOT Vila's fault, that it reportedly brought the president of the escola to tears. Vila actually managed to pull off a very nice parade anyway, and the second half of the parade regained energy once the problem was fixed. But the Vila directors are furious and are lodging a complaint with LIESA so that they won't be penalized for problems that were related to the poor sound. (I can't see how this couldn't have affected quite a lot of the judged parade components, including the porta-bandeira's dance, the commissao de frente's dance, the bateria, and the singing of the paraders.)

Monday: Grande Rio

4. Grande Rio: The theme was Carnaval itself, and many of the floats and costumes were recreations or references to famous floats and famous moments in previous Carnavals. Sort of a meta-Carnaval. Overall Grande Rio did a fabulous parade with huge, dramatic, gorgeous floats.
One scary moment: Grande Rio had planned to recreate the famous moment from a few years ago when a NASA astronaut flew in the Sambodromo with a jetpack. So, this year they'd arranged for another astronaut (Eric Scott) to do the same thing. But his nitrogen tank exploded during preparation. He was knocked out and an assistant was burned (not sure if it was bad) and the flight was cancelled.
In more minor accidents, an actress parading with the commisao de frente bumped into one of the malabaristas and caused him to drop his pandeiro, which might cost the parade a precious tenth of a point. And actress Susana Vieira managed to parade despite having broken a rib last night by falling out of the window of the Brahma camarote the night before (luckily it is on the first floor of the Sambodromo) while exuberantly waving to some cute famous guy who was in one of the parades. Grande Rio's also being penalized 2 points by LIESA for having their song featured in a TV commercial (a Brahma ad, coincidentally - is Brahma bad luck for Grande Rio?) - apparently that's against the rules. They've also got to pay a fine.
Part of the parade paid homage to all the people who are involved in producing the Carnaval parades, with alas dressed as carpenters, electricians and costume-makers. The entire bateria was dressed as the sweeper guys who sweep the Sambodromo after each parade! Funny. The bateria must have loved this outfit because it was so light and cool. And the rainha of the bateria was dressed as an extremely sexy security guard:



Grande Rio's bateria did a 45-second-long break that is now being called "the longest paradinha ever performed in the Avenida." Shouldn't that be called a paradão?

Monday: Portela

3. Portela's enredo this year was the internet. After watching the parade I decided this was a terrible theme for a parade. It just didn't lend itself to costumes that made any sense. Costume after costume went by, always something silvery with mysterious little silver balls or silver zigzags or silver somethings. Sure, they were pretty, in a baffling sort of way; I'd check my program and find that one costume was supposed to be illustrating "Downloads" and another was supposed to be illustrating "Control-Alt-Delete" and another was "The connectedness of the internet brings people together" -- but they just all looked like a lot of silver costumes with little silver balls and silver zigzaggy things.
The rumors were clearly true about Portela's floats - a couple of them were barely finished, barely decorated, almost as bad as Viradouro's last night. Luckily, given the computer theme, they seemed to have thought of tossing a lot of silver fabric onto the floats and gone for a sparse, sleek, modern look - and they almost pulled it off.
Portela's eagle was pretty cool, though. At first it just seemed to be a silver spaceship, and then it slowly started unfolding wings, lowering feet, and then its eagle head spun out of its belly and we all suddenly recognized what it was! To complete the transformation it screamed the unmistakeable scream of a... North American red-tailed hawk. (Always the bird of choice when artists want a dramatic sounding "eaglish" scream for a stage production. Because, unfortunately, actual eagles sound like kittens.) Oh well.
Strangest float of the night: A gigantic menacing-looking robot hovering over a pregnant woman, while dancers wearing translucent pregnant bellies, complete with fetuses, rolled around on medical exam tables. ???
Portela had the hottest bateria costume I have EVER seen - and I mean, unfortunately, hot as in "high temperature" and not hot as in "exciting". It was a completely sealed silver spacesuit and with the head partially enclosed in a plastic bubble. Yikes! A caixa player passed out right in front of me - just gently tipped right over like a felled tree, and hit the ground, WHOMP. A cluster of directors rushed over to him and a couple minutes later he was back up and blearily reeling toward the finish line. Later, after the bateria had passed by, a stray cuica player came staggering along about ten minutes later, having apparently passed out earlier in the parade. When will carnavalescos learn they should not put the bateria in hot outfits like that? The one ala that is essential for all the other alas to be able to march and sing, and the only ala that parades for the entire 122 minutes, and the only ala that is working out the entire time too, is the bateria. (Coolest bateria costumes of 2010 were Unidos Da Tijuca's "Mafia" bateria, Grande Rio's street-cleaner bateria, and Mangueira's prisoner bateria. Those are 3 smart carnavalescos.)

Monday: Porto da Pedra

2. Porto da Pedra had a wonderful enredo about fashion, an absolutely ideal theme for parade costumes! They progressed through the entire history of fashion, starting with Flintstones-type prehistoric men dressed in animal skins, through togas, the Renaissance, an entire ala of baianas dressed very convincingly as Queen Elizabeth, and so on into modern times - including a float at the end of a fashion show complete with actual professional models wearing actual current fashion pieces on actual catwalks.

The abre-alas made me laugh - Porto da Pedra's giant tiger had a giant baseball cap on backwards, and a pierced tongue! (and, I now notice in the papers, a pierced eyebrow on the other side from me:)



The paper this morning said the bateria had a problem entering into the 2nd recuo and caused a big hole in the parade flow...oops. I couldn't see this from my Setor 6 spot.

Grupo Especial, Monday: Mocidade

The sun is up, it's 7:30am, and I've been up past dawn for three nights in a row now! Here are my notes from the six parades of Carnaval Monday, compiled from O Globo and O Dia plus my own observations. Summary: Mangueira was the standout of the night - so I think it's a horse race between Unidos da Tijuca and Mangueira. (my vote goes to Tijuca just because of their unique creativity and playfulness.) The six Monday schools in order of parading were:

(I am splitting this post into 6 posts so that I can add some pix - those of you who are getting this emailed, sorry you're getting it twice!)

1. Mocidade. Their enredo (theme) this year was Paradises. They did a GREAT parade this year! I was so happy to see Mocidade do a beautiful parade! They really pulled it together this year, after an alarming slide over the last several years that culminated in a nail-biting 11th place last year, barely keeping them in Especial. One of their composers said afterwards "It's been years since I've seen Mocidade like this." The bateria sounded great, too. I'm so relieved! I was sitting with a crowd of Mocidade fans (plus we were rooting for our friend Bruno in the bateria, and his wife in one of the alas) and we were all thrilled.
Elza Soares, in a wheelchair, was godmother of the bateria. Soooo cool to see her.
On a personal note I was especially thrilled with the (slightly odd) section on "fiscal paradises" - this seems to be a Portuguese phrase for what we would call a tax haven. Just after a hilarious float illustrating money-laundering with washing machines that tossed fake money into the crowd, there were several alas representing the endangered species that are represented on Brazil's currency notes - including several species that I've had the good fortune to study, the golden lion tamarin, green sea turtle and jaguar! Plus the scarlet macaw and grouper. So cool to see Brazil's endangered species being featured. (I was equally thrilled last night by Beija-Flor's alas of the animals of the Cerrado, including giant anteaters and maned wolves. I was TORMENTED by two complete giant-anteater costumes that I found discarded on the ground later, because I could not figure out a way to get them home....)
Mocidade narrowly avoided disaster at the end of the parade route. Their abre-alas (opening float), which had functioned perfectly for the whole parade, abruptly lost power about 2 feet after it had cleared the finish line. (This was very close to my vantage point in Setor 6) At least it happened after the finish line, where it wouldn't affect the judging of that float, but the problem was, it was blocking the whole rest of the parade. Even the people in the alas just behind couldn't squeeze past. Mocidade directors came running from all over and managed to push it a few feet, enough so that the people in the alas could start squeezing past. But the 2nd float was approaching fast and there was no way it could get by. We all watched with bated breath as the 2nd float came bearing down and over dozens of men (the newspaper later said over 50 men) wrestled with the 1st float. (The risk was that Mocidade would suffer a dreaded time penalty if the 2nd float couldn't get off the runway in time) Finally they dragged the whole float backwards, and somehow that managed to uncouple its two pieces from each other and then the 50 guys zoomed the two pieces out of the way. As the paper said this morning, "The public in Sectors 6 and 13 watched the struggle with affliction, and vibrated when the problem was solved." I was indeed afflicted, and I did indeed vibrate, as did everybody around me.

Grupo Especial: Salgueiro & Beija-Flor

- Salgueiro came next. A fantastic parade all about books and literature. This was a great theme for a parade because it immediately produced so many great costumes ideas - classic characters from all sorts of literature past and present - Don Quixote (complete with windmill), Romeo and Juliet, the gorillas from 2001 (I did not know gorillas could do backflips like that) , Alice in Wonderland, Captain Nemo (complete with submarine) and so on.

- Beija-Flor had some trouble with their opening float, which failed to rotate like it was supposed to, stalled repeatedly and had to be pushed the whole way. As a result the whole rest of the parade crawled along at a snail's pace until the abre-alas was FINALLY off the runway. By then they were way behind time and the rest of the parade went roaring past at practically a sprint. It practically broke my heart, actually, to see the luxurious last three floats go zooming past so fast that we didn't have a chance to look at them. All that effort to build those beautiful floats and then we didn't get to enjoy them.

I'll post pix later. Got to run, Mocidade starts in half an hour!!!

Grupo Especial parade update: Viradouro

Next up for Sunday night: Viradouro. Poor Viradouro. The rumors I heard about Viradouro being broke must have been true, because their floats and costumes showed severe budget limitations. It's the kind of thing that makes you sorry for the designers - you could tell they were doing the best they could with no resources. The floats actually had very lovely statues and good ideas, but were almost completely lacking in any kind of detail or decoration. Some of them literally had just a sheet of fabric stretched over the sides, and here and there you could see that someone had thought "we HAVE to put some decoration on this" and had pasted on, say, a little drapery of fabric and pinned a flower to it. The kind of thing you do when you're a broke college student trying to brighten up a bleak dorm room.


See what I mean? It's not that it's ugly... it's just that swathing something in gold fabric is not going to keep you in Grupo Especial.


The newspaper today said it is the worst parade Viradouro has done in 20 years. It made me really feel sorry for them.

As for Viradouro's 7-year-old queen of the bateria, Julia Lira, she did a great job but I felt sorry for her. She was crying just before the parade started, frightened by the paparazzi swarming around her. She gathered her nerve together somehow, though, and managed to to do the parade, assisted ably by the bateria mestre's 9-year-old son, who danced by her side the whole way (what a sweetie). The two of them were quite adorable together, but the 7-year-old looked a bit nervous - though to be fair we were in Setor 3, right at the beginning when she probably was most nervous, and maybe she settled down later. Anyway, I was left feeling disturbed that this little 7-year-old had been forced to do something overwhelming that quite scared her. I'd heard originally that she'd "wanted" to do it, but I've since heard that she only "agreed" to do it when her parents asked her to, which is quite a different thing.

Grupo Especial update: Unidos da Tijuca

OK, I have still haven't written about the Cubango parade, which was fantastic and exciting and exhausting. (I said a big thanks to Jonas afterwards and he said "Ano que vem!" i.e. come back next year! Which suddenly made me very glad I will not be locked into that teaching job after all.) Got to also give a huge thanks to Daniel for helping me navigate the mysteries of the Cubango bateria.

More about Cubango and the Grupo A parades later. Right now, the Grupo Especial update. I've been up allllll last night (and all the night before....) at the Grupo Especial Sunday parades, which were: Uniao da Ilha (last year's Grupo A winner), Imperatriz, Unidos da Tijuca, Viradouro, Salgueiro and Beija-Flor. I missed most of Uniao da Ilha and Imperatriz, so I won't comment on them myself - the papers today say Ilha did a great parade, while Imperatriz was a little lackluster. (though you have to bear in mind that in Grupo Especial, "a little lackluster" often just means "ever so slightly less jaw-droppingly amazing than the other parades") Here's my impressions of the other four:

- Unidos da Tijuca is clearly the front-runner. It was the only escola to receive the "E campião!" (you're the champion) chant from the crowd. It was one of those parades that absolutely captivates your attention from beginning to end. Where, instead of thinking 'Oh, look, 8 more alas with sort of similar feathery costumes" you're thinking "OH MY GOD! Those ala people are all clustering together and they're making a GIGANTIC CATERPLLAR! THAT'S SO COOL!" and a minute later "OH MY GOD! THERE'S HIDDEN DOLPHINS LEAPING AROUND IN THAT ALA!" and "OH MY GOD! The entire bateria is dressed as Mafia and there's a FULL-SIZE PACKARD DRIVING THROUGH THE BATERIA WITH A CHOREOGRAPHED MAFIA GUNFIGHT!" In the paper today, Tijuca's carnavalesco admitted it was extremely risky to put a choreograped skit literally in the middle of the bateria - the bateria split into two parts and the Packard drove right down the middle. (why oh why do event organizers always think it is a good idea to split a band into two parts????? That potentially cannot hear each other? And can easily get out of sync?) But they pulled it off flawlessly.

Here's the rainha dressed as a 1920s flapper-era Mafia girl:


Throughout the parade, Tijuca's theme, "It's a secret," gave them full license to do as many surprises as possible. Their commissao de frente (dance group at the front of the parade) was dressed a group of magicians who kept magically changing the costumes of their lovely assistants. This was really cleverly done - they had 6 costume changes, all done in a flash and all eliciting a huge scream from the crowd:





Two floats in particular wowed the crowd: A superhero float (because of their secret identities, don'tcha know) with a slanting wall made of some kind of rubbery material. First, several Spidermen climbed up it (big cheer from the crowd), and then, four guys dressed as Batman SKIED DOWN the slope, one at a time - yes, on skis - holding their arms out so their bat capes billowed out behind them. H-U-G-E cheer from the crowd. Batman on skis. Four Batmen on skis. One of those extremely odd Rio Carnaval sights that sticks in your memory for ever.



The other Tijuca float that really got the crowd's attention was an "Area 51" float that was a giant spaceship covered with aliens. A door at the front slowly opened and out slid... a huge alien egg! And suddenly it popped open and out hopped... MICHAEL JACKSON! (A dead-on impersonator, that Tijuca had flown in from Sao Paulo.) He did a whole Thriller-type dance, then climbed back in the egg and slid back into the alien spaceship.



Michael Jackson hatching out of an alien egg. It's so obvious - that's clearly where he came from. Why didn't I ever think of that before? (Madonna reportedly loved this float. She's down here in Rio with her Brazilian boyfriend, and she was watching from the mayor's camarote box. She even tried to join the Imperatriz parade, but was assaulted by so many hundreds of paparazzi when she tried to leave the camarote that she gave up.) (Paris Hilton is here too, and she reportedly drank so much at her Sambodromo camarote that she "fell over", why am I not surprised... )

All in all, Tijuca gave such a strong performance that I'll think I'll head over to their quadra on Wednesday to hear the announcement of the results. They're really a contender this year!! They've often been a runner-up - usually narrowly missing championships because their carnavalesco (the outrageously creatively Paulo Barras) often pushes the limits with floats that are too weird for some of the judges. This time I think he's hit the sweet spot, with several classically beautiful floats to keep all the judges happy, mixed with some of his funny and clever floats and his creative "live" floats. The "live" floats consist primarily of people who cluster together in acrobatic ways to form some kind of immense, amazing visual effect. The last float was like this - dozens of people that clustered together to form a peacock, Tijuca's symbol.)

Funniest costume in Tijuca: People wearing large silver triangles from which are suspended many colorful shorts. Bermuda shorts - yes, it was the Bermuda Triangle!

Escola updates

It's Saturday night and we're halfway through the Grupo A escola parades. Wow, they are BEAUTIFUL! I didn't realize how impressive these parades are. Fantastic, jaw-dropping costumes, beautiful floats... this must be the hidden secret of Rio: if you can't afford a Grupo Especial ticket, just go see Grupo A!

I've finished my Imperio Serrano parade, which was exhausting and tremendously fun and tremendously exciting. It's so intense to be on the runway, under all the bright lights, all the people in the stands dancing and waving Imperio flags... and it's so intense to see all the judges staring down at you impassively from the judges' booths. The sound cut out at one point and we couldn't hear the singer or bateria any more, and we were RIGHT under one of judges' booths, but luckily we are the ALA DOS DEVOTOS! The ala of the Devoted! and WE ALL KNOW THE SONG! And we sang our little hearts out. After about thirty seconds, the sound suddenly came back on and we were right in time! (this is harder to do than it sounds. Usually a group of singers will drift pretty far off time in thirty seconds if they can't hear the band.) There was a huge cheer from the crowd when the sound came back, and we were all so elated that we had kept the song going that everybody kind of simultaneously jumped a foot in the air and we all lifted up our little flags. It was pretty exciting, actually. I was proud of us.

I couldn't actually see much of the parade, of course, just my own little section of it, but I hear it was went great, and certainly those of us in my ala sang and danced around like complete maniacs. And waved our flags around with great vigor and accidentally hit each other on the head. (one guy was spinning around in an excess of enthusiasm, and the end of his flag pole came whipping around like a croquet mallet and knocked my big golden crown clean off! It went flying! But it was undamaged, and he helped me scoop it up from the ground and get it back on.) I was exhausted afterwards. It might not sound like a lot of work to walk about 4 blocks, but if you're jumping the whole time, and singing, it's actually pretty tiring.

I'm now at home regrouping for Cubango, and I've been watching Paraiso, Inocentes and Renascer on TV. Caprichosos is just about to go on. Honestly, they all look so beautiful I can't figure out who might win. Everything seems equivalently amazing.

A few other escola tidbits:
- The big rumor has been that the two Niteroi escolas, the great Viradouro (Grupo Especial) and the less famous Cubango (my escola, in Grupo de Aceso), might change places this year - i.e. Viradouro losing Grupo Especial and descending to Grupo de Aceso, and Cubango winning Grupo de Aceso and going up to Grupo Especial. I first heard about this when I was wearing my Cubango t-shirt and went into a little cafe in Largo do Machado, and the cafe owner immediately said "Cubango! You guys are going to switch with Viradouro!" I've since heard the rumor from several more people. Here's the scoop: Viradouro has for many years benefited from extra funding from the bicheiros - the extremely rich guys who run gambling in Rio and who have a rather endearing habit of patronizing certain escolas-de-samba. And a less endearing habit of using bribes and even assassinations to ensure that their escola wins. I'd thought the bicheiros were kind of on the way out, but apparently they are raking in the bucks again due to the new computerized gambling machines that are in lots of little bars. Anyway - the rumor is that the Viradouro president got into some kind of argument with the bicheiros who have been long-time supporters of Viradouro. Must have been a pretty bad argument, because the bicheiros tried to assassinate him twice (but failed), and have left Viradouro and switched their allegiance to Cubango. So suddenly Viradouro's broke and Cubango's relatively rich (for a Grupo A escola). As to whether the bicheiros have pulled their fabled behind-the-scenes strings to affect the outcome of the voting - who knows???

- oh my god - I have to interrupt myself to say that the tv's showing the Caprichosas bateria and they have a whole section of SQUARE PANDEIROS. That's the very old-fashioned kind of pandeiro. I've never seen them in a bateria before! Cool! (Here I have to mention that I've also seen escolas this year with section of timbals, and tan-tans, and shekeres. They're experimenting with all kinds of things. Seems like almost every escola now has a section of some unusual instrument.)

- The other big piece of Viradouro news is that the Viradouro president has selected his 7-year-old daughter to be queen of the bateria. This is usually a very sexy job - the idea is that the Queen wears an extremely sexy outfit and dances around doing very sexy moves in order to "inspire" the guys in the bateria. However, Rio has a lot of laws about child exploitation and Viradouro immediately was put under investigation for this. They had to make a case before a judge that the girl is not being exploited, that she wants to be there, that she won't be put into a sexy outfit or made to do sexy things, etc. etc. They got approval a few days ago. (The judge cited several cases of young teenagers and elderly ladies being queens of baterias, as evidence that the position of queen of the bateria does not always have a sexual element.)

- The big rumor at the Cidade de Samba has been that Portela is running frighteningly far behind on finishing their floats. Apparently, just a week ago their floats were still only half-built, in such an unfinished state that people were starting to say "there's no way they'll finish the floats in time". (I don't know why they have had such delays.) Then I heard that a few days ago, if you went to the Cidade de Samba, you could see guys from practically all 12 escolas swarming over Portela's floats. Mangueira guys, Beija-Flor guys - they were all over at the Portela warehouse, helping out on the Portela floats. (I suppose that also means that the Mangueira floats and Beija-Flor floats are all finished.) Portela parades on Monday night; they have about forty-eight hours left and the rumor is that they are working round the clock. We'll see how the floats look come Monday night.

The Carnaval bus

I tried to go get my Sambodromo Monday ticket today from Bruno's apartment in Botafogo. I had this stupid idea that I could get from Lapa to Botafogo and back in three hours, in time to go to the Sambodromo for my Imperio Serrano parade. BAD IDEA. I forgot that it's Carnaval and that, in terms of traffic, the city is a snake pit of bloco parades.

The bus I hopped on in Lapa was immediately accosted by a huge, rowdy crowd that had just finished the massive Bola Preta parade. Dozens of laughing, singing people in ridiculous outfits crammed onto the bus till it was completely, completely jammed. The bus wasn't even able to move at first, there were so many people still milling around in the street, but finally the bus driver tentatively inched the bus out into the crowd and nosed through it. A guy with a bullhorn in the middle of the bus announced dramatically "O ONIBUS ESTA PARTINDO!!!!! PELO AMOR DE DEUS, SEGURE A MAO!!!!!" (The bus is leaving! For the love of God, hang on!) and everybody screamed with excitement and made dramatic motions to grab for something to hold onto.

The bus wheeled out into the road heading south and the bullhorn guy started singing a drinking song about cachaça, Brazil's sugar cane rum. The entire bus starts singing along. Literally everybody is belting out the song at the top of their lungs. It turns out to be a very helpful instructional song: (you've got to imagine a guy with a bullhorn singing this kind of drunkenly at very high volume)

VOCE PENSA QUE CACHAÇA E AGUA...
MAS CACHAÇA NAO E AGUA NAO...
CACHAÇA VEM DE ALAMBIQUE...
... AQUA VEM DE RIBEIRAO."
(You think cachaça is water... but cachaça is not water, no...cachaça comes from a still... water comes from a river.)

They sing it several times through and by the third time I've got it and I'm singing along too, though I have no idea what an "alambique" is and have to look it up later. Thanks for the little lesson about cachaça! That was very informative! That song ends and we segue naturally into the top 2 crowd favorite escola songs, Salgueiro's "Explode coração" and União de Ilha's "E Hoje", which we sing ALL THE WAY THROUGH, EVERY SINGLE WORD - yes, the entire crowd knows both these two immensely long escola songs absolutely rock solid. Even though they're drunk.

Our singing bus is proceeding happily southward through Rio's avenues when the crowd spots another bloco and shrieks with joy. The bullhorn guy yells through his bullhorn: "BUS DRIVER! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE STOP THE BUS AND LET US OFF! WE HAVE TO GO TO THAT BLOCO! IT IS A VERY GOOD BLOCO!" and the bus stops, and all the partiers pile out.

Five minutes later the bus gets stuck in another bloco, this time trapped in an actively parading bloco. We're trapped for an hour. No hope of getting to Bruno's house now. I hop on the metro and try to head back to Lapa.

OK. Forget about the Sambodromo ticket, I'll get it later. I'm just trying to get home now and pick up my Imperio Serrano outfit. The subway arrives at the Cinelandia station, my stop. My first clue that something is going on at Cinelandia comes when the subway car doors open. Picture the scene: You're in a subway car, by the doors, waiting for the doors to open; the subway car glides into your station, the doors open, and ten feet in front of you you see a solid wall of THIRTY HUGE FAT GUYS dressed in MATCHING WHITE TUTUS, SHINY HOT-PINK WIGS AND HOLDING PINK HULA-HOOPS, and they all look at you and say (this is a direct quote):

"RAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And they all literally RUN at the open door of the subway car at TOP SPEED. (They're each trying to be the first person on the subway car.) They do not notice the 1 person (you) who is trying to exit.

It kind of reminded me of those battle scenes from Lord of the Rings, or possibly the Battle of Agincourt from Henry V. It was truly an epic charge. (Perhaps if the French had had those thirty guys in tutus, they would have won the Battle of Agincourt.)

I did the only thing I could do - crouched down, put my fists in front of me, bent forward and ran full tilt at a small 3" gap between two of the guys. I hit them hard, kind of punching them both in the stomach and forcing them a bit farther apart from each other, and just barely managed to burst through.

I made my way through a crazed crowd in the subway station up to opens into what is normally a serene plaza facing the opera house. It was INSANITY out there. The entire subway station was walled off with chainlink fences and security guards, with another chainlink fence funneling several hundred singing, chattering people to the ticket booth. As I exited the station and made my way outside the fence, I saw the need for the fences. There are HUNDREDS of thousands of people in the plaza. HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS. Jammed elbow to elbow, dancing and singing. They're not violent at all - it's just that there's so many of them. I can't believe the chaos. I'd forgotten that the Cinelandia station, and its plaza, are the end of the Rio Branco bloco parade route - apparently this idea of closing off the Rio Branco for bloco parades has been, oh, a wee bit popular! There are hundreds and hundreds of beer vendors too, whole bars have appeared that did not exist before - entire buildings seem to have been constructed. People are miling around in all kind of crazy outfits. Most shockingly, part of the beautiful old sculpture in front of the subway station has tumbled to the ground, most likely knocked down when a few hundred thousand people climbed up on top of it to dance.

The great thing about this crowd is that they're not aggressive, they're not angry, and they're not even really that drunk. Despite having accidentally broken the statue, it's not a mean crowd. After all, they weren't trying to knock the statue down - they were just trying to dance. Everybody's in a great mood. Because it's Carnaval!!!

However, it takes me 45 minutes to squirm and push through the crowd to get back home. I'm almost late for the Sambodromo! I put on my bizarrely lovely Imperio Serrano newspaper costume, which (oddly, for a newspaper costume) includes a two-foot-high golden crown covered with colored streamers, and set out on the fifteen-minute walk to the Sambodromo.

Everybody I pass, and I mean everybody, from truck drivers to homeless men to little girls, says to me as I pass:
"A Rainha!! E a Rainha!"
(The Queen! It's the Queen!)
I love this city so much.

Carmelitas

Friday of Carnaval: Carmelitas in the afternoon, then the kids' parades in the Sambodromo (so cool!), then Monobloco at midnight (also so cool!).

Carmelitas is my first bloco parade of Real Carnaval. I've come with a couple of friends, Ben and Dandarra, and we've walked all the way up the long, hot, sunny hill (past several enterprising guys offering mototaxi rides up the hill, calling out "Carmelitas moto! Carmelitas moto!") up to the tiny winding cobblestone streets up in the hills of old Santa Teresa, one of Rio's oldest neighborhoods. There are dozens and dozens of players milling around getting drums. The whole bateria is dressed as nuns (because the parade starts from the old Carmelite convent, the reason for the bloco's name), and floods of people arriving from all directions.

There have been bloco parades running already for weeks, but today is the first day of the real, true Carnaval and there is a definitely different mood now. What happens during Carnaval, stays in Carnaval. Carnaval is when the natural order of the world is turned upside down and people become things that they are not. Beggars become kings; kings become beggars; men become women; anybody can turn into anything. What this translates to, in the Rio Carnaval, is an insanely free spirit and a joyful, wild exuberance that has got to be seen and experienced to be believed. A touch of wildness and insanity and craziness. The crowds are huger, the dancing is wilder, more people are in costume, and there's just an air of crazy abandon that was not there last week.

And there's always that tinge of escaping from some kind of sadness, escaping from reality - and knowing that it's just a temporary escape. Brazilians all seem to agree that the true crazy joy of Carnaval only happens when people need to escape from sorrow. There's a lot of songs on this theme, like the famous song from Black Orpheus that goes "Tristeza nao tem fim, felicidade sim" - Sadness has no end, but happiness does. Songs that emphasize how brief happiness is, how short Carnaval is, and how, sooner or later, you have to return to real life. (I used to be puzzled by how many Brazilian songs mention "Wednesday" in a puzzling context of sadness and gray reality, till I realized it was a reference to Ash Wednesday, the end of Carnaval and the return to everyday life.)

Carnaval fulfills a Halloween role for Brazilians - an opportunity to put on a silly costume. The very minimum is a goofy hat or some other silly element on your head (huge weird sunglasses, a clown nose). Street vendors are selling silly little wigs and hats for just 5 reais: glittery rainbow wigs, neon-pink Afros, jester hats, hats that look like parrots or traffic cones, and lots of little headbands with goofy things on top: bunches of curled pipecleaners, an elegant spray of green feathers, a Carmen Miranda cluster of plastic fruit, and, my favorite, a pair of little bouncing plastic penises on springs. And then a few people really go all out and have put together a fantastic outfit. A surprising number of men are in drag - during Carnaval, straight men often go in drag (it's normal to do this during Carnaval, because Carnaval is when you become something you're not, right?)

The bateria starts. It's THUNDEROUS. It's immediately clear that a lot of the caixa and surdo guys are from the escolas. The tamborims are another story - there's some horrible players in there who can't even hit their triplots - but on the whole, it's a beautiful sound. The bateria does a wonderful warmup, runs through a bunch of classic bossas (including, I notice, what the Lions cal the "Sergio Mendes" bossas, since most Americans know them from the Sergio Mendes "Brasileiro" cd, though of course Carmelitas plays the bossas in a totally different order. The "Sergio" bossas is really just a subset of about 20 standard bossas that are very widespread in Rio, and that any given bateria, on any given day, might play in any order.)

I ran up and down a high wall for an hour, tracking the Carmelitas bateria's slow progression down the street. I saw...
... a very manic-looking man wearing nothing but a green Speedo, completely covered in green glitter and confetti, bouncing sideways through the entire bateria screaming and laughing...
... a fellow in an upstairs window with a fishing pole, dangling a beer can over people's heads and seeing if he can get them to jump for it...
... an immensely obese woman in a glittery bikini...
... a gray-haired guy, probably in his 60's, dressed in a tiny pink tutu ...
... a burly fellow dressed as a big baby, with a pacifier the size of a basketball...
... three girls dressed as cute bumblebees, several as black cats, and one as a devil, all marching firmly behind the bateria, the devil girl waving her red trident in time.
... the entire street packed end-to-end, wall-to-wall, JAMMED with people. They're jammed so tight that they can't really dance; all they can do is bounce up and down, pretty much in unison. Beer vendors snaking through the crowd. Men with trays of caipirinhas on the heads. The sun bright and hot. The parade goes on and on and on.

Eventually I get hungry and retreat back down to Lapa, where I find another bloco snaking through the streets there. I plow through that bloco and am almost home when I run into a mini-bloco of some kind, a crowd of 300 people bouncing through the streets. I can't seem to detect a band, though. Looking closer I spot 1 tamborim in the center of the crowd, and eventually I discern 1 caixa player and 1 guy with a tom from a drum kit that he is playing as a surdo. That's it. One caixa, one surdo and one tamborim. Also, they're REALLY BAD. But they've attracted this crowd of 300 people who are all bouncing around in the middle of the street, and more people are arriving at every second, scurrying eagerly in from nearby streets, completely blocking traffic - this is an unofficial guerilla parade and traffic was not rerouted for it, and a good 75 cabs and buses are completely blocked. Wow. People will really take any excuse for a parade and just run with it. I bet that the 3 drummers could quietly sneak out of the crowd and the crowd would just keep going on its own.

I get to my apartment and make lunch when I realize - I can still hear Carmelitas! They're over a mile away, in the hills of Santa Teresa, but I can hear them clearly. They're still going, and going, and going, a bloco of Energizer bunnies.... they keep playing for hours, slowly progressing across the distant hills of Santa Teresa, until I have to finally leave and run to the Sambodromo for the next stop on my Carnaval Friday.

The true spirit of Carnaval

A little background first. I'm a biologist. I got my Ph.D. studying birds on the far northern Alaskan tundra for six years, and later got a job studying endangered species of all kinds - the glamour animals like elephants, whales, and grizzly bears, and also the less famous ones like Malayan sun bears and tree kangaroos. However, the whole time I was in grad school, I was playing music on the side, and I needed it - for sanity, for balance. I played 3-string Hungarian bowed bass, Turkish zurna, American cowboy tunes, Macedonian tambura. I attempted to learn Turkish, Hungarian and Bulgarian (failed at all three, though I can still say "A mouse ran up your ass!" in Hungarian.)

Slowly the biology job got dull. I was stuck in the lab all by myself with no one to talk to. I was stuck in the lab all by myself with no one to talk to. I was stuck in the lab all by myself for seven years with no one to talk to. Am I repeating myself? Suddenly one day I found samba - literally, one day, I heard drums.... That was that. Not too soon after I decided to quit my biology job and go to Brazil to study music for a while. I'd just seen my sister almost die, and recover, and then almost die again, and the entire time she was going through all that, I'd been stuck in the lab by myself with no one to talk to. Enough with the lab work. You only live once.

There's a term for what I did: Leaving Science. I was Leaving Science, and once you step off the science train, you can never get back on.

You have to understand here that I was good. I was really good at what I did. (Think of it like, it wasn't just any old Ph.D., it was a really shiny, glittery, sparkly Ph.D. It was a Grupo Especial Ph.D.) So to walk away was pretty dumb.

Two years later I'd had the most extraordinary adventure of my life and I found my way back to the United States. I found a stunning band that I wanted to play with: the Lions of Batucada, based in Portland, Oregon. I came to Portland for a summer, and then a spring, and then another summer, and stayed, and stayed. So, Portland turns out to be a hopping town! Next thing I knew I was in 5 fantastic bands and surrounded by excellent musicians and living in a series of lovely, happy houses full of musicians and painters and velvety-furred dogs.

To my surprise I landed a job teaching biology at a local university. I hadn't thought I'd be competitive again for a biology job, but apparently they didn't mind the rather odd-looking two-year gap on my CV. Apparently they didn't mind that I was also a musician! Cool! Maybe there is a chance for me yet! I got the job, and it went STUNNINGLY well. Turned out I LOVE science, it was just the nonstop lab work that had been killing me. Turned out I LOVE teaching. Turned out I am really good at it. Turned out teaching is a HORRIFIC amount of work, too, so horrific it kind of killed me. But I love it and love my students.

This fall I had to make a tricky decision. My school was about to advertise for a permanent position, a tenure-track job. Should I apply? Do I want to turn this into a permanent thing? I could stay in Portland then. Maybe I could even buy a house. Settle down. Really be there for my students, and my bands, and my fellow faculty; really stay in Portland year-round and dig in and be part of it, instead of constantly zipping around. (which has been getting rather tiring just btw). My colleagues at the department were strongly urging me to apply, telling me they wanted me to stay... students coming into my office constantly asking if I would please apply for the job and please stay. Everyone saying, stay, stay, stay, please apply! Pleeeeeeez!

The only negative was... If I applied, and if I got the job, I'd likely have to stop doing these musical trips. The school's academic schedule clashes with all four of the major annual musical events that are part of my life: Carnaval, Bloco X (Germany), California Brazil Camp and Notting Hill (London).

The economic collapse, or the "world crisis" as the Brazilians call it, changed the playing field. Colleges and universities across the country saw their endowments lose half their value... and with it, half their operating budget. Across the nation most colleges instituted strict hiring freezes and pay cuts. Desperation penny-pinching measures right down to counting the pencils and removing half the light bulbs from every office. It was clearly now or never; either apply for this job while it was available, get on the science train and STAY on it this time, or risk not getting a job at all. Flitting around the world is fun and all while the money lasts; but eventually you need to put food on the table.

I decided to apply, but I knew I needed one last visit to Brazil. To wrap things up; to say goodbye to my friends; maybe to parade with an escola, at last. So I decided to end my temporary job by the act of taking spring semester off, so that I could come to Brazil one last time.

I left the temporary job and applied for the permanent one. I was selected as one of the top 3 candidates (out of over 50, I forget the exact number) to interview. I slaved over the research and teaching statements, slammed through the sun bear and elephant manuscripts to beef up my CV, did days upon days of interviews (WITH SWINE FLU! DURING FINALS! It was an epic week), talked with the dean and provost, did a great job talk (if I do say so myself!). It all went beautifully. Want to see my job talk? It is so lovely! It is all about sea turtles and whales! It is great! I knew I had done well. But I also knew it wasn't a sure thing. In this job market, nothing is a sure thing, because, no matter how awesome you might be, the other candidates might be even awesomer, right? And in academia, when they're hiring people for a permanent tenure-track position, it's not just your general level of awesomeness that matters but also little tiny specifics, how well you "fit" with the other faculty and the culture and the extremely specific needs of the department. Maybe the school needs someone who can teach botany, but you only know animals. Maybe they want someone who doesn't need a very expensive lab, but your research requires an expensive genetic sequencer. Maybe it's a Catholic school... and you're not Catholic... which is not supposed to matter, technically, but, you know how things are. Maybe they want a nice young post-doc fresh out of grad school who will just stay put on campus, doin' that campus thing, just staying put and doing their job, trusty and steady, for 40 years... not a middle-aged crazy lady with only a few good years left in her, and a proven habit of flitting off to Brazil one out of every six semesters (one out of six semesters is practically like zero semesters, right? If you round down) And, uh, missing all the pre-semester faculty meetings to go to California Brazil Camp, and, um, la la la, missing graduation to go to Bloco X. These are just purely hypothetical examples, of course.

Anyway, I applied for the job, ended my temporary position, cleared out my office in December, put my stuff in storage, and headed off to my last trip to Brazil, waiting to hear whether I had the job in the fall or not.

So anyway, it was the eve of Carnaval, Thursday night, and I'm reading the email, which is actually a totally sweet, very kind and nice email, and I'm realizing: Oops, I didn't get the job after all... nope, it went to somebody else (as you have gathered by now) a much younger person who was that elusive "better fit" with 40 years of service ahead of her. and only then did I realize how much I'd been assuming that I'd get it. And then it hit me: Whoa! I am homeless and jobless! In the worst economy in a century! In the worst job market for biology teachers in at least fifty years.

And then a second thing hit me: I am probably going to have to leave Portland. And the Lions, and Rio Con Brio, and Samba Gata, and Axe Dide. All my Portland friends. Pauline and Jay and Brian and Tanya and Christina and Hans, and, and, I couldn't even think of the correct names, I was getting so upset to think of leaving them all. My whole Portland life. The big blue room in the big house that I was going to move into. The little garden I was going to plant. Dammit, I am sick of being a nomad... Apparently I was really, secretly, deep in my heart, really looking forward to putting down roots because I was suddenly BUMMED about having to move again. Other tragic losses kept flitting into my mind - oh my god, the elephants!! I'll have to leave my elephants at the Oregon Zoo! And oh my god my STUDENTS that I had such plans for working with next year. My uber-cool students; I'll never get to see what they do next. They won't coming running into my office with elaborately color-coded spreadsheets of data and post-its flying all over. And the beautiful classes that I'd taken such trouble designing and that were just..about... perfect, now to be shelved and likely never used again.

And then a more urgent concern hit me: I have NO JOB. I am SCREWED.

I was supposed to go out to Lapa with a friend - with Brian actually - but (ironically) was so upset at the thought of leaving him all my other Portland buddies that I did not actually get around to going out to see him. See? It's already started!!!

I finally fell asleep.

The next morning, Friday morning, the key to the city of Rio de Janeiro was ceremonially handed over to the Rei Momo, aka King Momo - really the old greek god Momus, the masked god of satire. He takes over the world for the weekend of Carnaval and turns everything upsidedown. Chaos reigns, till Ash Wednesday when he has to give the key back.

I woke up a few hours later thinking: I have NO JOB. I am FREE. I am not screwed, I am FREE.

Something will work out. I'll cobble something together. I'll study birds in Alaska again, I'll teach bird anatomy at the Audubon Society, I'll do international consulting, I'll go straight to Thailand and study elephants there, I'll FINALLY WRITE MY SAMBA BOOK... I'll be broke, I'll be nomadic, but I've got a couple of great safety nets (in Seattle and Boston, respectively), and I'll be free. Eventually I will cobble something together, and I will be able to return to Brazil again... maybe I will work with sea turtles, or teach English (hey, I have always wanted to do that!), apply for a Fulbright...hey, maybe the Max Planck Institute! and Bloco X, and California Brazil Camp, and Notting Hill. And Brazil.

I got out of bed. Ben showed up asking "Carmelitas?" Yeah, Carmelitas! The grand old bloco of Santa Teresa! Parading today at 2pm, one of hundreds of Carnaval blocos parading this weekend, the weekend of Carnaval. I put on my tiara and Ben put on his silly cape made out of a Brazilian flag (we decided he was "Super-Cara") Dandara showed up. Andre was coming too. Andrezza sent me a text inviting me to a different bloco ("Concentra mas Nao Sai" - "it gathers but it doesn't go" - this is the bloco that never quite gets around to actually parading anywhere). I will play with Monobloco tonight. Tomorrow the escolas start and I will parade with Imperio Serrano and Cubango. All of the entire last year has rolled to this one point, this weekend, this day: the day of the escola parades. Think of all of that work and effort and hoping and dreaming, an entire year's work, for one little day, one moment. Then you just toss it all away, you toss it and you just walk away. That's Carnaval. I adjusted my tiara and we headed out the door.

Fantasia!!!!

I got a Cubango bateria fantasia!!!! (the Carnaval costume). I got a fantasia, I got a fantasia, I got a fantasia!!!! That means I will get to play in the Cubango bateria in the big parade in the Sambodromo!!! YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. It's for real now, it's really going to happen! It's right here in my apartment. I tried it on and the shoes even fit.

I am also definitely going to die of heat stroke. But it will be a happy death.

I called one Rio friend immediately after and she immediately said: "This is a historic moment. Whenever a person gets a bateria fantasia for the first time - no matter who - no matter what escola - it is a truly historic moment. Congratulations."

What a fantastic day. Half a day spent hanging out with the Cubango guys waiting for the costume (which turned out to mean, half a day spent laughing nonstop... wow, what a cool, fun bunch of guys!) and then THE FANTASIA at last, and I finally learned what the mysterious Cubango song is all about, and then I've spent all night bar-hopping in Lapa, saw countless pagode bands and a really cool maracatu troupe complete with most excellent dancers. Details soon.... what a day. DID I MENTION I HAVE A CUBANGO BATERIA FANTASIA?

Cubango and the Juggernaut

It's 6:30 am but I just can't get to sleep. It took an unusually long time to get home from Niteroi tonight. I volunteered to be taxi-translator to get some new, non-Portuguese-speaking friends safely home, to Ipanema, i.e. pretty much entirely in the wrong direction for me; and afterwards it took over an hour to reverse my steps and get back up to Lapa where my apartment is. The bus to Lapa took for-EVER to show up!! at least a half hour wait, and then a 45 min bus ride, and then bus driver was kind of crazy and I ended up with a big ol' bruise to show for it, but that's a whole nother story. ANYway, I didn't get home till well past 2am and after all that I was so wired I haven't been able to fall asleep at all...in fact, hm, the sun appears to be rising as I write this. Guess this is the first official all-nighter. So, a brief blog update.

Things are rolling crazily toward Carnaval, which is (unbelievably) this weekend. The Juggernaut approaches. Which makes this the Last Week Before Carnaval. Which means it's when suddenly everybody has their frantic, intense last rehearsals and complicated last-minute changes in the complicated plans. And when all the costumes need to be picked up (each costume necessitating a bewilderingly long multi-hour journey, consuming a large part of a day, and an expensive cab ride somewhere along the way.) Simultaneously all the Sambodromo tickets have to be hunted down and paid for (since this is the week when the physical tickets are actually picked up.) All of which requires a lot of handing over of large amounts of cash. I started to feel today like I was involved in several elaborate and secretive drug deals, but it was really just Sambodromo tickets that I was after. Really.

I've also been spending all the last two weeks running around between Banga, Monobloco and Cubango. I've been trying to find the time to write updates about all three of them (if I can ever find the time!) - suffice to say, Banga and Monobloco have been regularly blowing my mind. Everyone knows about Monobloco's famous Friday shows, and rightfully so, but if you're in Rio and you haven't yet been to a Banga show, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? But that will have to wait for another post. Right now I want to talk about Cubango.

Cubango is my Grupo A escola over in Niteroi, remember. Cubango has been SUPER INTENSE. I've been going to 3 rehearsals a week for the last couple weeks - street rehearsals every Sunday, tech rehearsal on Tuesday and of course the "general" (= party) rehearsal on Friday. These are long, long events. Complicated journeys involving ferries and multiple buses; and hours of waiting and chatting and uncertainty; followed by long, intense, slightly scary, very exhilarating rehearsals; followed by long, difficult, confusing, complicated and expensive rides home.
It's not remotely like Banga or Monobloco. It's a whole different energy, very wild and half-tamed and thunderous. For some reason it even seems wilder than my escolas from last time, Mocidade and Sao Clemente.
The Sunday street rehearsals have been blazingly exciting. There's just something about the moment when the whole bateria wheels out onto the wide-open avenue. Right in downtown Niteroi....the whole long line of sight of the grand avenue opening before you, the canyon of the high buildings wheeling into view... the bateria so huge that there are little subtribes that you drift in and out of: a crazy pack of Viradouro players in one corner, a nest of shockingly strong third surdos in another... directors racing up and down wildly gesticulating... The tamborins and chocalhos are only distantly glimpsed, like foreign tribes from distant countries that have been summoned for a huge battle against a common enemy. A flicker of silver on the horizon when the chocalhos all toss their instruments in the air. Or a far distant "kak!" barely audible in a tamborim break.
And even farther ahead, glimpses of flags whirling, of the tops of feather headdresses, hundreds of arms waving. And farther still, the wide open sky above the ferry terminal, slowly darkening as the sun sets.
Maybe a quick glimpse back at the hulking sound truck packing along behind you like a dinosaur....
Through it all the wild ride of the bateria.
An hour into it. Starting to get badly tired. Then Jonas comes leaping through the bateria with a wild crazy open-mouthed smile on his face. Bounding around like a giant puppy. Arms waving. LEAPING around, leaping a foot in the air with every bound. With that HUGE smile. Dancing and jumping. Weaving through all the players. He gets everybody charged up again.

The Tuesday tech rehearsals have been more about taking care of business, ironing out problems. Tuesday is when Jonas really has a chance to drill the bateria.
Last week's Tuesday rehearsal was pretty deadly serious, Jonas really taking everybody to task over the breaks. He made an fascinating speech that was along the lines of: "Enough with the excuses. Enough with 'I'm a member of the community, so I don't have to come to rehearsals.' Enough with 'I'm a musician, so I don't have to come to rehearsals.' Enough with the excuses. It is ONE WEEK TILL CARNAVAL. ENOUGH. IT IS ONE WEEK TILL CARNAVAL."
He then made us play the breaks over and over - with no signals at all and no song and no cavaquinho. That is, with none of the usual helpful cues. He'd count off the break, then stand there DEAD STILL, and with a completely blank expression on his face (which was so un-Jonas-like that we were all kind of thrown off balance). He was trying not to give us any cues at all, not even unintentional body-language or facial-expression cues. And so we'd play the break entirely on our own. I thought the breaks were suddenly sounding pretty good, but the first several times through each break, some poor chocalho or tamborim (or whatever) would do one "shk" or "kak" (or whatever) too many ... into what was supposed to be a silent spot... and Jonas would spring to life suddenly and leap up, yelling "MORREEEUUUU!" ("it died", i.e., you just singlehandedly killed the entire break. Or possibly "you died"... yep, it could definitely also mean "you just died, sucka!")
Over and over, "MORRREEEEEUUUU!"
Until suddenly it was perfect - no more morreu's - the breaks were flawless.
Another favorite Jonas technique: later on, he was dancing away as the bateria was grooving along, through the samba, through various breaks, if somebody screwed up, suddenly he'd FREEZE in place. Completely stop dancing. And STARE at whoever had messed up. Not move a muscle - and not frown - and, interestingly, not yell. Just STARE and STARE and STARE and STARE. The more serious the mistake, the more still and silent he would get, and the longer the stare would last. This stare seemed to be reserved for certain players and seemed to mean something like "You really should know better by now. But you've been skipping rehearsals, haven't you? Haven't you? You KNOW how badly you've screwed up, DON"T YOU?"
Luckily I was never the subject of the Deadly Stare (I was air-playing all the breaks anyway, just to be on the safe side while I learned them).

It did the trick: the breaks tightened up amazingly. Nearly to perfection. ("Nearly" because there is STILL this one measure in this one bossa where 90% of the caixas are silent when I am sure they are supposed to be playing.... hmm.....However, it actually sounds kind of cool the way it's coming out, so maybe he's decided to not to mess with it at the last minute. )

Then tonight was the final Tuesday rehearsal. This was our last rehearsal of all, and it was a crazy long intense street rehearsal... us all marching down a long, long, long sloping hill in the dark, while scattered rain showers blew by, lightning flashed and storm gusts swirled past and dark clouds rolled overhead. Very dramatic.
I happened to end up in a position that I absolutely hated: dead center front row of the caixas. Where (I now know) you cannot hear the repique calls clearly, cannot hear any third surdos at all, and can only very distantly hear the firsts and seconds. (and plus you have one of the more scary directors in your face the whole time.... oh dear.) My closest surdo was 4 drums away and it was tremendously difficult to hear even him - I had to keep looking over at him to be sure of my place. And so.... I messed up one break RIGHT in front of that scary director. Dammit!! Because I couldn't hear the repique call, and I went with the singer, when of course the singer was leaning way ahead of the beat (the way these singers often do) and I realy should have stayed with the Imaginary Repique In My Mind. Result: Big ol' flam. I wasn't the only one who did the flam - several players behind me also did the same thing - so at least I was not alone in not being able to hear the repique, but the scary director thought it was all just me and concluded that I didn't know that break.
Dang! Now I'm all worried about whether I'll get to parade or not!
There are also a LOT of gringoes playing, too many really, so I'm not sure they'll let us all play. In most cases, with most baterias, I think actually they shouldn't let lots of gringoes play. Not if it's going to mean that some kid from the community is not going to get to parade. But in Cubango's case, since it is a newish and smallish bateria, I think the gringoes are mostly an asset (i.e. we are playing pretty well, and we are not locking out local players who would otherwise get to play).
But it still just feels weird to have that many gringoes there. I know that if I were a resident layer, I'd feel like the bateria had been suddenly invaded by barbarian hordes.
Who knows. For my part I am more and more impressed with Cubango, and have been thrilled to be a part of it so far. I've memorized the song, written out all the breaks, and am very grateful to be there .... and even get a glimpse of the wild untamed animal that is an escola-de-samba.

So anyway, in an attempt to shield myself in advance against the crushing disappointment if I don't get to parade in Cubango, I have also just realized that not-parading might save me from death. Because:
(1) I could die of heat stroke. I just looked at the Grupo A schedule for the parades on Saturday night, and realized that there are so many Grupo A escolas, all going on the same night, that Cubango's dead-last position means we'll probably be parading at 7 or 8 in the morning. In full sun. When it is well over 90 degrees. In a full-coverage costume with full sleeves, legs, boots and a heavy hat. Of polyester. (I'm not making this up - heat stroke is a real danger in these costumes. People pass out all the time, literally keeling over in dead faints, and are simply dragged off the parade route.)
(2) I could die of exhaustion. OK, so Banga just announced its parade schedule and I suddenly realized that this is my schedule for Saturday night:
Imperio Serrano parade at approximately 8pm in the Sambodromo. The last time I paraded with Imperio, it was the most exhausting thing I'd ever done and I went home and slept for 12 hours. But this time it'll be just the beginning:
10pm ish. Finish Imperio parade. Run back home and change out of Imperio costume. Into Banga t-shirt. Run to Lapa.
Midnight-3am. Play Banga show.
4am ish - Run back home, change out of Banga clothes, into Cubango costume. Run back to Sambodromo.
5am ish. Meet up with Cubango.
7am ish. Parade with Cubango.
8:30am ish. Run back home, change out of Cubango costume, back into Banga.
9:30am ish - race to Jardim Botanico to play the Banga parade from 10am-noon.
- retreat to apartment for feverish hot nap -
At 7pm the Grupo Especial parades start. And go till maybe 4am. Same the next night too...

That's all assuming the escolas go on time, which they won't. Hoo-ee, this is going to be NASTY! So that's what I mean about Carnaval approaching like a relentless juggernaut.... never mind "will I get to parade", the question is really, will I survive??? (If I don't, you'll know I died happy.)