Carnaval Step One: Dancing til Dawn

Posted Sunday, February 03, 2008, 3:11 PM by Lonely Planet

Shoppers enter the local supermarket barefoot. Water from the tap bears a jungle tang. After sunset, air from the sea settles into something milder than a breeze. Right now it's midnight and Rio de Janeiro has gone quiet, trying to get its last, solid night of shuteye before the epic party begins.

I hope to join the others soon in sleep, but after five nights of "preparing" for Carnaval - i.e drinking, dancing, talking until four, five, seven in the morning - my body's clock is out of joint.

On Saturday, neighbors in the next apartment took me to an escola de samba called Salgueiro. These escolas aren't, as the name implies, "schools" where gringos learn to samba, but rather a peculiar combination of dance hall, practice grounds, social club and benevolent society. Their highest function, though, is to mount their portion of the parade in the city's Sambodromo on Sunday and Monday of Carnaval.

Not everyone in Brazil likes samba, including my neighbor Anadeia. But neither does she want to miss the party. So she packs her MP3 player, hoping to drown out both the remarkable fifty-member-strong bateria (percussion section) as well as the half-dozen singers who, as a group, possess more enthusiasm than excellence, and who hold the microphone piercingly close to their mouths.

Outside Salgueiro, the streets are crowded with those who, tonight at least, cannot afford the entrance price (about US$17). Still they've come to drink beer, eat sausages from improvised grill, and catch the particular high of those lucky enough to be coming and going through the turnstiles.

Inside, Salgueiro's hall is immense. Built in a kind of Portuguese version of Victorian plain style, it's a single space ringed by arcaded boxes for the escola's complex hierarchy - and their wealthy patrons.

As soon as we enter, it's clear Anadeia's headphones are not up to their task. The music, relentlessly jubilant and inexorably amplified, colonizes the whole body. Earphones come off and soon our little posse merges with the hundreds, the thousands, on the vast dance floor.

- Robert Landon is co-author of Lonely Planet's Brazil guide.

Labels: Festivals and events, The Americas

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