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.