Mangueira's 9 was for "second surdo"??

So, in the midst of the Libya crisis and the Tokyo nuclear reactors overheating and the ghastly tsunami videos and everything, somehow the fact that the Rio escola-de-samba Mangueira got a 9 for bateria from one Sambodromo judge has just been fascinating me, and is just about the only news story I'm following right now. (Possibly because it helps me avoid all the other horrible news).

In a statement to the press that utterly mystified me, the judge who gave the Mangueira bateria an unheard-of 9.0 (that's very low) says it was not because of the "paradona" (the silent 20-second break). (That had been the dominant theory circulating, including among the bateria players.) The judge said the silent break was fine. He says the 9 was because Mangueira was using a second surdo, and that Mangueira is supposed to have only a first surdo, and he thought the second surdo messed up the pure tone of the first surdo. He said, it's fine for escolas to innovate but you shouldn't mess with tradition.

OK so.... First off. WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT? I've got a video of the bateria entering the Sambodromo and I've stared at that video about twenty times, in slow motion, backward and forward, and I can't see a second surdo anywhere! My video's not exactly definitive - it's shaky (hey, they were far away, and I was excited, and did not know I was going to need to be scrutinizing every damn surdo later) and for some idiotic reason I didn't pan all the way to the back of the bateria. But I can see quite a few of the surdos and they are... well, first off, they are STUNNING. That unbelievable power and confidence of Mangueira is all there.... even with the sound turned off, just the sight of those surdo guys, pounding, pounding, pounding that 2 in perfect synchrony, perfect power, perfectly relaxed... everybody singing, everybody dancing, BOUNCING even... so relentless.... so Mangueira. (and hey! Mangueira's got a woman on surdo!)
Anyway, all I see are first surdos and Mangueira's distinctive little third-surdos (called surdo mo'.) Playing the all time classic Mangueira surdo pattern. They did not mess with tradition.
I do think I might maybe possibly see two different SIZES of first surdo (though the size is hard to judge). Perhaps that's what the judge is talking about - maybe he is calling the smaller size a "second surdo"? Which is a pretty lame excuse for giving them a 9...
My other theory is that the judge thought the surdo mo' was a second surdo ... which would be embarrassingly ignorant if that were the case.

Second. Suppose Mangueira had indeed added a second surdo. So what? What on earth does it mean to say "It's fine to innovate, but don't mess with tradition"... let's see... giving them a 9 would therefore mean it is NOT fine to innovate, wouldn't it?

Third. A NINE? Even if Mangueira'd added a weird new surdo part, even if they'd broken with tradition, even if this is a judge who likes tradition, even if you want to penalize them for breaking with tradition - ok, give 'em a 9.8, sure! But a NINE? An entire point off? Many Carnaval championships are decided by less than a point, so that's potentially a death blow to the entire escola. A nine should mean they could barely play! That they couldn't hold tempo, that they fell apart! You don't give a 9 to a bateria that's playing better than almost every other bateria in Grupo Especial!

I'm not the only one who was confused by the judge's statement. The Mangueira mestre himself (a new mestre this year btw, Ailton Nunes) misunderstood this statement to mean that the judge was penalizing Mangueira for NOT having a second surdo, which actually is the opposite of what the judge said. Ailton made an appropriately baffled statement to the press about it.

Anyway, the judges all have to post the explanations of their scores a few weeks after Carnaval, but those have not been posted yet. Stay tuned... You may now return to your regular news of war, death, destruction.