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.