Someday it'll happen

My last day in Rio and for the very first time I'm on a fast reliable internet connection, so I'm posting a couple more quick stories now. This has been my first trip in years sans laptop... my first DAY sans laptop in at least five years running. quite a weird and lovely experience.

I have to go catch a cab to the airport in about half an hour. Am right now scarfing down my last Guarana, my last little ball of cheese bread, soaking in my last 90-degree heat and searing sun for months, and getting my last sunburn. I still have so much I want to write about, especially the terrifically stunning Bangalafumenga moments (the parade at the Botanical Garden, and their last show in Lapa last Saturday). But I just wanted to point out one thing about women being drummers, here in Rio. It's been stunning how rapidly it's changed, in the last five years. When I first got here in 2005, women drummers were still kind of rare, and Mangueira (that bastion of tradition) still did not allow women in the bateria at all. Now they're just all over the place! Mangueira was the last holdout, actually; they folded a few years back and started letting women play, and they now regularly recruit the best female percussionists in all of Rio. There's even a little show group of the Women of Mangueira. There are at least three all-female blocos that I know of (two in Rio and one in Niteroi). Quite a few of the more "modern" blocos, the ones that play a variety of rhythms and that play more than just samba, are more than 50% women now. (Banga, for one, is probably about 2/3 women).

In the escolas, women are extremely common in tamborim and chocalho - those are the traditional "women's instruments", to some extent - and have crept to a surprising degree onto caixa and surdo.

One of my Rio friends said she'd seen a little tiny girl at a Grupo Especial escola a few weeks before Carnaval, about seven years old or so. You frequently see little boys in the bateria, and playing damn well too, but only in the last couple years have I ever seen little girls. A new generation of girls is growing up inside the baterias. Most of the little girls just play at being passistas (the sexy dancers) but now at least they have a choice, and they know they can be in the bateria too if they want.

Anyway, this little girl was pretending to be one of the escola directors, the guys that give the cues. She was correctly giving all the start and stop hand cues, signalling the breaks correctly. And watching the mestre - the conductor/director of the whole bateria, the guy in charge of everything - like a hawk.

My friend (a woman percussionist herself) asked the girl, "Do you want to be in the bateria when you grow up?"

The girl said "No. I want to be mestre."

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.

Rio Carnaval results

Have finally clawed my way to an internet access point and am actually typing on a normal keyboard for the first time this trip. Good lord, it´s Thursday already...Ash Wednesday was yesterday, the Rei Momo has handed the key of the city back to the mayor, and Carnaval is actually finally over. And last night I slept for nearly 14 hours and woke up at two in the afternoon, since I´ve been up pretty much nonstop since Friday. I hadn´t gone to bed before dawn for the last five days running, and usually would snatch only 4 hours sleep or so, 8am to noon, and then run out to catch the 2pm blocos. Saturday night I never get any sleep at all, since I always have to run from the Grupo de Acesso parades (which end at 7am) straight to the Banga parade (which starts at 9am, clear across the city).

On Ash Wednesday is the Apuracao, the reading-of-the-scores of the escolas de samba. Even after seeing five Carnavals here, it´s extraordinary to me how intensely interested the entire city is in the results of the judging. (Note to new readers: the massive parades of the escolas-de-samba in Rio are judged. It is a competition.) People follow the apuracao as intently as if it were the World Cup or the Super Bowl. What´s really funny is that it´s just a guy reading numbers... for about an hour and a half. But somehow it´s simply fascinating, as this or that escola starts to pull ahead in its total score.

The actual event takes place in the Sambodromo itself, right under the famous arched statue at the end of the parade route. Each escola has a little team of key people - the president, the carnavalesco [parade designer], the mestre-sala and porta-bandeira [the flag couple], the puxador [lead singer], mestre of the bateria [director the drummers] and so on - all seated at a table under the arches. Plus a battery of die-hard fans waving flags from the bleachers.

On a higher table sit the LIESA officials who will read the scores. One by one they go through each of the ten judging categories, which are (let´s see if I can remember all ten...)

- Evolucao - roughly, parade flow)
- Harmonia - singing. Singing quality, enthusiasm, and whether all paraders know the words. When that judge looks at you, you´d better be singing, or at least faking really well! Or, in the immortal words of an Imperio Serrano director who ran screaming past me during my first parade as we approached the judges´ booth: "SING, DAMMIT! SING, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! SING, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! AND LOOK LIKE YOU´RE HAPPY!"
- Enredo - the theme of the parade. Each escola has a new enredo each year. (Enredos this year included Charles Darwin, hair, fear, a famous musician, a famous author of children´s books, the sea, etc.)
- Samba-enredo - the song. Each escola has a new song each year, written to match that year´s theme, and that one song is sung over and over in an endless loop during the parade. By the end of the hour-and-twenty-minute parade you either LOVE the song or you hate it with a passion. It´s always interesting, and mysteriously unpredictable, to see which songs grow on you and which don´t. (The escola with the best song this year, everyone seems to agree, was my own beloved Imperio Serrano. They won an Estandarte de Ouro for it).
- Comissao de frente - "comission of the front", this is the dance group that opens the whole parade. Typically it´s a very inventive, clever, choreographed show with amazing acrobats and dancers, illustrating some aspect of the enredo. (The comissao de frente that really got the crowd´s attention this year was Unidos da Tijuca - it was half dance and half magic show, involving the dancers´ bodies falling apart. The dancer´s heads seemed to fall off of their shoulders, and later the tops of their bodies somehow separated from the bottom halves.)
- Mestre-sala & porta-bandeira - the porta-bandeira is the woman who carries the escola flag, typically wearing a gown that is approximately the size of a pickup truck and covered with some ten million gems, and she whirls the flag around in an incredibly majestic sort of stately dance, while the mestre-sala [her consort] flies around her like a little satellite zooming around the sun. Each samba escola has its own unique flag; and each escola flag is so beloved, and is presented to the judges with such intense pride and respect by the porta-bandeira and mestre-sala, that it makes (say) right-wing Republicans´ reverence of the American flag seem kind of casual and ho-hum in comparison. Anyway, the mestre-sala and porta-bandeira have probably the heaviest burden of anybody in the parade, since those two people are responsible for a tenth of the escola´s total score, all by themselves. (The TV kept showing the porta-bandeira of Mangueira, who, during the reading of porta-bandeira scores, had her head down on the table for the entire time, her face hidden from view. She was gripping the mestre-sala´s hand so hard that both their hands were shaking. Thank god, they got 10´s, or I think she might have died on the spot)
- Bateria - the samba drummers. Usually there are between 250-400 drummers, all under the command of the mestre of the bateria and his crew of directors. This is, of course, the category that most fascinates us musicians.)(
- Alegorias & Aderecos - Floats and their decorations.
- Fantasias - Costumes.
- Conjunto - Overall effect (roughly).

So they go through each category one at a time. Ten categories. Five judges for each category (one in each of the five judges´ booths that are at different locations along the parade route. Nine escolas (this year. It´s usually 12). That´s a lot of scores to read! The top score is 10; and in Grupo Especial, the top league of samba escolas, the scores are supposed to be between 8 and 10. Typical Especial scores are clustered in the 9.8, 9.9, 10 range.

What that all adds up to is an hour and a half of the announcer saying things like "Evolucao. First judge. For the escola Mangueira....[dramatic pause]... NINE POINT NINE. For Unidos da Tijuca .... [dramatic pause]... TEN!"

But what´s always fascinating to me is how riveted the whole city is by this reading-of-the-scores. EVERY bar, and I mean EVERY bar in the entire city, is carrying the live TV feed of the reading-of-the-scores. EVERY escola has a big-screen TV set up in its rehearsal hall, with legions of fans waiting with bated breath for every number. If you take a taxi ride during the apuracao, the taxi radio will invariably be tuned into the radio broadcast, with the taxi driver muttering comments under his breath. And with every TEN (or, DEZ, in Portuguese) there´s a huge cheer from the fans from that escola, and moans of despair from fans of the other escolas.

Today I read an interview with the score announcer. He said, quite seriously, "You can´t just read the scores. You have to interpret them," as if the reading of the score is an Oscar-worthy performance. He said he gives great thought to how long a pause he uses before saying each number. The newspapers all commented on his especially dramatic five-second pause before Beija-Flor´s final score of the day. (which was a ten, when he finally got around to reading it)

And everybody´s got an opinion, about EVERY score. Me, I was invited to an Apuracao Party at the house of some Brazilian friends. It was a crowd of maybe 15 or 20 people, all of whom had watched all the escola parades all weekend. Everybody´d brought their little kids, and even newborn babies, and there was an endless flow of beer and a huge spread of sandwiches and cashews and little chocolate treats (and that rarest and finest of Brazilian delicacies, imported Pringles potato chips). And with every score, people were FULL of opinions. The afternoon unfolded like this:

Announcer: "Comissao de frente. Escola Beija-Flor.... TEN!"
Woman next to me: "WHAT? Are you KIDDING me? A TEN? OK, I could not make head or tail of that dance. There was the little boy and that giant box, and then these people in blue all spring out of the box and then run back into the box and suddenly the box falls apart and the people in blue are all holding up this woman dressed in white, right? WHAT WAS IT SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT?"
Man: "It was perfectly clear! The box was a radio! The people in blue were music! Didn´t you see the musical notes on their costumes? And the woman in white represented voice, the power of the singing voice, and the little boy was a young Roberto Carlos, which was the theme, right? So the whole dance was about how Roberto Carlos was inspired as a young boy by the music and singing that he heard on the radio. IT WAS OBVIOUS."
Woman: "All I can say is, IT DIDN´T MAKE ANY SENSE TO ME. I couldn´t see those little notes on the blue costumes. It should make more sense if it gets a score of ten."

Announcer: "Fantasias. Escola of Salgueiro... TEN."
Woman seated next to me: "Yes, that´s exactly right, they really had lovely costumes this year, don´t you agree?" [Long discussion ensues about this or that costume:] "Personally I really liked the hoop skirts, they were so charming this year, just adorable," "Yes, but why would such-and-such escola be scored lower? They only got a nine point eight, but I really think that they were every bit as good as Salgueiro´s..." "No no no, Salgueiro´s had more attention to detail and were much more creative..." "But didn´t use see so-and-so´s headdresses?" "But without Ilha being judged we just can´t make sense of these scores! Didn´t you all see Ilha´s kangaroo costumes?!" "But Tijuca´s Velociraptors had the same idea -" "But BOTH the kangaroos and the velociraptors were really inspired by Beija-Flor´s elephant and giraffe costumes from four years ago, don´t you remember those?) [Long discussion ensues about Ilha´s kangaroo costumes vs. Tijuca´s velociraptors vs. Beija-Flor´s giraffes]

Announcer: "Floats and decorations. Porta da Pedra... NINE POINT EIGHT. Imperatriz... NINE POINT EIGHT. Mocidade... NINE POINT SIX. Beija-Flor...TEN!"
Crowd around me responds to this with: "VAI MORRER! VAI MORRER! VAI MORRER!" (You´re gonna die!) - This judge´s scores seemed so clearly skewed toward Beija-Flor that the crowd instantly assumed the judge had been bought. The "you´re gonna die" chant was in jest, but in fact, the escola competition is so fierce and bloodthirsty, and the politics of Rio´s crime-ridden escola neighborhoods so dangerous, that people have indeed been assassinated over matters of escola politics.

Announcer: "Bateria. Escola of Mangueira..... NINE."
We´re all waiting for the announcer to add "...point nine" but he doesn´t. Slowly we realize it´s just NINE, as in nine point zero, as in 9. Just nine. Mangueira is one of the very best baterias of all of Rio and they´ve just gotten the worst bateria score we´ve seen in years.
Everybody talking simultaneously: "WHAT? WHAT IS THAT? NINE? REALLY? NO WAY! THAT´S CRAZY!" One of my musician friends, who plays in the Portela bateria himself, says: "Where do they FIND these judges? Do they just grab random people off the street to be judges? They must just drive around and find someone and say, Hey, you, you there by the bus stop! You look like you don´t know anything - would you like to be a bateria judge in the Sambodromo this year? I mean, come on, this is just unbelievable!"

[The rumor on the net later was that the 9 was because Mangueira happened to hit their long 20-second break exactly when they passed the last judge´s box. That is... they were NOT PLAYING AT ALL when they walked past that judge! In which case he really should have given them an 8, the lowest score possible. However, one of my most knowledgable sambista friends has since passed me a little clue from a media interview in which the 5th judge commented that "another surdo" was messing up the clarity of Mangueira´s traditional one-surdo sound. This is utterly baffling to me, because if he´s talking about the 3rd surdo, he´s out of his mind - Mangueira´s always had a third surdo.)

And so it goes.

As the scores start piling up it becomes clear that:
- Beija-Flor is winning by a landslide. Beija-Flor is a truly formidable escola - they´ve already won three championships in recent years. They´re generally one of my favorite escolas: hard-working, dedicated, traditional. And I love the silky swing of their bateria, with its beautiful frigideira section. But their parade left me cold this year (I´m not really familiar with Roberto Carlos, their theme this year; and definitely not a fan of gigantic weepy-looking Jesus statues - their last float. Ilha´s kickass Charles Darwin parade was much more my style) Anyway, it´s a bit peculiar how big the landslide is, since regardless of what you think of Roberto Carlos or Gigantic Jesus, the Beija-Flor parade had some technical flaws that seem to have been overlooked by the judges. They did have a really good parade - nobody´s disputing that - but they shouldn´t be winning by such a huge margin.
- Unidos da Tijuca´s clever, fantastic parade has received some oddly low scores. Perhaps it´s just not a traditional enough parade for the judges? However, their magic-show comissao de frente did receive five perfect 10´s.
- Salgueiro´s terrific bad luck with float breakdowns will bump them from 3rd to 5th, but has neither cost them the championship nor kept them out of the Parade of Champions. They went horribly over the allowed time - a shocking ten minutes over - leaving the Salgueiro paraders literally in tears at the end of the parade route. But in the end they pulled through ok.
- Everybody´s increasingly frustrated that Portela, Grande Rio and Uniao da Ilha were excluded from judging this year. This was because of the devastating fire at the escola warehouses some three weeks ago, which destroyed all of Grande Rio´s floats and costumes, and half of Portela´s and Ilha´s costumes too. (That´s over two thousand costumes destroyed for both Portela and Ilha, over four thousand for Grande Rio. That´s a lot of costumes to make in three weeks). At the time it seemed like a kind thing to exclude those three escolas from judging, but now it´s suddenly apparent that we are all just dying to see what the judges thought of those elements that were not affected by fire: the wonderful Portela bateria, for example, and the porta-bandeira, the singing, the parade flow, the song, the theme.

What´s more, Ilha did such a phenomenal job reconstructing their entire parade that people are now saying they might have actually won!

And in fact, Ilha did win the prestigious Estandarte de Ouro award for best escola. This is an unofficial award, given annually by the O Globo newspaper, but it´s quite prestigious. Kudos to Ilha for pulling this off; they really showed a lot of guts and creativity in being able to reconstruct more than two thousand costumes, and a giant float of a walking spider, in three weeks, and in the end put on such a great parade. (By the way, they also won best parade theme - for the Charles Darwin theme. Go Darwin go!)

So three escolas have parties tonight: Beija-Flor of course, because they won; Salgueiro, because they were so relieved that they still managed to get into the Parade of Champions (the top 6 escolas) despite their appalling string of float breakdowns; and Ilha, because they won the Estandarte de Ouro despite the horrific fire.

Final results:

Grupo Especial: (top group of samba escolas)
1. Beija-Flor
2. Unidos da Tijuca
3. Mangueira
4. Vila Isabel
5. Salgueiro
6. Imperatriz
7. Mocidade
8. Porta da Pedra
9. Sao Clemente

Excluded from judging due to fire: Grande Rio, Uniao da Ilha, and Portela. Grande Rio, which was worst affected by the fire, had to parade under a torrential downpour that lasted exactly, precisely, the duration of their parade. How ironic.

Due to the fire, no escola will be demoted from Grupo Especial this year, but as usual 1 escola will be promoted from Grupo de Acesso. (The winner was Renascer de Jacarepagua. See below) This means Grupo Especial will have 13 escolas next year (instead of 12); so next year 2 escolas will be sent down.

Mangueira won best bateria in both the newspaper-based awards (Estandarte de Ouro and Tamborim de Ouro).

Grupo de Acesso results:(second group of samba escolas)
1. Renascer de Jacarepagua
2. Viradouro
3. Estacio de Sa
4. Cubango (This is the escola I played with last year. Their parade was great; a lot of people thought they´d win.)
5. Santa Cruz
6. Imperio Serrano (who I have paraded with 3 times.)
7. Imperio da Tijuca
8. Innocentes de Belford Roxo
9 Rocinha
10. Caprichosos (demoted to Grupo B). Caprichosos´floats were unfinished. One of my Cubango friends said "When I walked past the floats just before the parade, the Caprichosos guys were still actually painting their floats! And some floats were still just the iron framework! I thought maybe their theme this year was about iron."
11. Alegria da Zona Sul (demoted to Grupo B). This is the friendly little escola that tourists often run into along Copacabana beach. They´re usually in Grupo B, and back they go to Grupo B again - they´re just a bit too disorganized to stay in the upper leagues.

And that´s the results.
Till next year.
Today, Thursday, just hours after their celebration party, Beija-Flor announced its likely theme for next year. And so it begins again...

Grupo Especial Sunday night

Well, it's 4pm and I just woke up - spent all night at Grupo Especial. Dawn was breaking as the Mangueira bateria came thundering past us. It had started to rain too, but nearly the whole crowd stayed till the very end, drenched and exhausted, to see Mangueira. (the oldest escola of Rio, the most famous, the most powerful, and also with the most unique samba rhythm.) 

What a day. The Banga parade that morning, was, I thought, the best Banga parade ever. Crowd estimate was 50,000 people. It had been dumping rain nonstop for the whole carnaval weekend, but, not only did it not rain on Banga, but by the end of the parade the clouds had broken and sun was streaming down as we played our last ciranda. An INTENSELY happy, joyful crowd; tremendously wonderful music. Rodrigo Maranhao said to the crowd "In 14 years it has never rained on a Banga parade. Never."

A few hours later, the sun disappeared again, and by Mangueira it was raining.

Ok, I had this plan of giving the grupo especial report today, but I just got a text from my Cubango buddies (the escola that I played caixa with - in the sambodromo parade - last year) who say they are all going to the Sargento Pimenta bloco's street parade in a few minutes and do I want to come along?

Sargento Pimenta... Sergeant...Pepper? Looking it up I discover it's a new bloco that plays only Beatles songs... with a samba bateria (several hundred drummers playing Brazilian samba). Because, Sambista Commandment Number One: Everything Is Better With A Samba Bateria.

And it's four blocks from my house. As soon as my stupid camera finishes uploading all its Grupo Especial videos I am out of here. But the quick report is: Unidos da Tijuca totally kicked ass and clearly the crowd favorite. The jawdropping baterias last night were Portela (beautiful silky swing and very cool breaks), Imperatriz (now featuring timbal and berimbau!), Unidos da Tijuca (stunning as always), and of course thundering unstoppable Mangueira. 

BTW Mangueira's apparently taken to heart the comment of the judge (friend of a friend of mine in fact) who docked them a tenth of a point recently for lack of innovation - because Mangueira's now got some elaborate breaks, AND a couple of timbals who are dramatically featured in the breaks. (Take that, Imperatriz!) 

And Portela did an amazing job reconstructing its thousand of burned costumes in just three weeks! Some floats were unfinished; I guess maybe they decided to prioritize getting costumes done so all their community members could parade, instead of finishing floats. Good call.

Tonight is the second and final night of Grupo Especial. Me & a Danish saxophone player that I met in Banga are going to try to get done cheap tix from scalpers halfway through the night.

Camera's done. Oh! I can hear Sargento Pimenta approaching outside! Gotta run!

Right! So! I think it posted! For technical reasons I cannot back up and proofreader, nor view the actual blog, so damn the autocorrect glitches and full speed ahead. I'm sitting here pecking away on my iPhone because I got here two and a half hours early to save seats for a bunch of friends, including two who are playing in the bateria (400-person drum band) of Portela. (These two are Dudu Fuentes, one of the brilliant musicians of the band, and Carnaval parade group Banga, and his wife Olivia, a dear friend who for many years has been one of my most helpful and informative samba contacts). They've just shown up, and all their friends, a chattering horde of friendly Brazilians. Helicopters are hovering overhead - a robotic camera is zooming along an elevated track above the parade route - the lights are blazing. The sound system abruptly roars to life with the Brazilian anthem, and then the Rio city anthem. Everyone's singing along enthusiastically - despite the reputation of Grupo Especial as being too overpriced for local Brazilians to afford any more, in fact the crowd around me in Sector 7 is mostly Brazilian. Mostly middle class, true, but heart-and-soul cariocas nonetheless. Most have saved up all year to buy a ticket for just 1 of the parade nights - the night when their favorite samba escola, the "escola of their heart", is parading.

BTW, this year's fire resulted in Portela and Mocidade swapping nights - Portela was switched to Sunday and Mocidade to Monday - causing tremendous chaos among Portela and Mocidade fans who'd already spent a month's rent on a ticket for the other night. The directors of both escolas arranged a meeting where Portela and Mocidade fans could exchange tickets. Dudu and Olivia also caught in this net - they'd known they would parade on Monday with the Portela bateria, and bought Sunday tickets to watch the other parades. Then Portela was switched to Sunday! So their huge bags of costume pieces are sitting all around us; they'll have to miss half of tonight's show because of having to dash out to play in the Portela bateria (of course, then they'll be IN the show, but that's a different thing.

The first escola of the night, Sao Clemente, is lined up at the end of the runway; I can just see their first float. I can hear a distant, faint thumping that must be the bateria, already playing (the sound system's not on yet).

Now the sound system comes back on - the singer hollering " SAI CLEMENTEEEE!!!", the cavaquinho and guitar blitzing away. The song starts! My god, the whole crowd around me is all singing along. The fireworks go off - Sao Clemente is officially starting. The huge clocks along the Sambodromo all set to zero and begin timing the parade (god save any escola that goes over it's allotted time.)

THE BATERIA STARTS. (This time they're miked). Drums! Fireworks! Here comes the parade! Eighty thousand people on their feet singing along. I have to go now.

iPhone report from the Sambodromo

Well, I've been in Rio since Wed but have been unable to post anything because I'm staying with a friend who has no Internet (oh, the horror!) - and I'm also not in a tourist area so have no Internet cafes nearby. And, of course, Carnaval. When you're racing at 6am from the Sambodromo parades to the early-morning meeting of your next bloco parade, or wandering through the million-person kegger that is Lapa, or maybe just hanging out in Ipanema at one of the beach kiosks trying to make the terrifically hard decision about what fruit to have in your caipirinha (tangerine? passionfruit? mango?) ... getting on the net suddenly seems not very important!

However, this year I brought my iPhone, and sprung for an international data plan that should give me just enough mb to post a few carnaval updates.

So. Short rundown. Took practically of Thurs & Fri to get my cell phone and arrange tonight's Sambodromo ticket. Carnaval officially started Friday, with the ceremonial handing of the key to the city (an actual huge glittery gold key) from the mayor of Rio to the Rei Momo, the "King of Fools"/"King of Mischief"/etc, who rules the city till Ash Wednesday. Immediately began the Carnaval chaos... which for me has been: INTENSELY AWESOME Monobloco show till 4am Friday night, street parades all Sat, the magnificent Grupo de Acesso (second rank) escola parades on Sat night till 3 (well, actually, they go till 7am but I had to leave early). Then today I hauled my butt back out of bed after 3 hrs sleep, booked it over to the Botanical Garden to play repique in the three-hour Banga parade. Then ran into another bloco... and now I'm at the Sambodromo again.

So I'm writing this sitting in the bleachers of Sector 7 of the Sambodromo (Rio's samba-parade stadium - I know some readers are new to this blog so I'll be giving a little more explanation than usual.) Tonight is the first night of the Grupo Especial Parades, the top-ranked parade groups, the multi-million-dollar competition that will determine the champion escola of the Rio Carnaval, which is the biggest show on earth. It's 7:50pm, parades don't start till 9 (and will run all night). My ticket cost three hundred dollars... and that's for the cheap seats! (The really good seats run $1500 and higher.) So I'm perched up in the crowded, uncomfortable concrete bleachers - all open seating - jammed in with 80,000 other people (mostly Rio natives right around me... I seem to be in a clump of Mangueira fans cause they're all belting out the Mangueira song). The crowd is so giddy they're giving huge cheers to anyone who walks along the parade runway. HUGE ovation for the little street-cleaning machines that just rolled by, the four guys driving them waving and bowing like royalty. OK, I'm going to see if all this text can actually post before I write any more... here goes nothing...