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Published: March 4th 2006
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Well, here I am back where I started a week ago in Sao Paulo. Rio was great. On Sunday night last week Daniel and I went to the Samba parade in Rio. For all the hoopla that you hear outside of Brazil, the parade is very organized and VERY safe. You have to go through 3 to 4 check points just to get into the stands and then once in the stands you must stay in your sections.
At 7:30PM last Sunday, Dan and I stopped a taxi on the street, bargained the price, and took off from Copacabana to the Sambodromo. Think of the Sambodromo as a 6 lane street that is 2 km long and running along the sides are concrete block stands, no seats, that raise some 6 stories into the air. Everyone must have their enterance pass hanging around their necks and once you make it through pretty tight security, then you are into the stadium. The stadium is divided into sections and you just follow the signs to your section. Our was section 5 which is fanatasic because it was about half way down the Sambodromo route. We were lucky to get their early and
find a decent place to sit. You should have seen the people who arrived at 9PM, the time printed on the tickets, trying to find a seat. Impossible.
In the highest division of Samba schools, you have 14 schools. These 14 schools, which change every year since the bottom two drop to a lower level of competition and two schools from a lower level bump up to the highest level, march some 4,000 participants from the school down the 2 km long samba route to the beat and the words of their Carnaval song. Each shanty town in Rio has a samba school which represents it in the carnaval celebrations. A school is not a place to learn, but is instead the name of the thousands of people that participate in the samba celebrations on their neighborhood. Every year each school must come up with a new theme for their parade and song to accompany the march of its school´s participants down the runway. They also are in change of all the planning and financing for their school´s parade. Recently each school has been spending around $2 million dollars on their parades, and this is without the price of
Conception
One of the float expressing the beauty of mircoscopic life. the customes which each participant must pay for him/herself.
The whole feat of marching some 4000 people down 2km of street, keeping them in tact with the music, not allow gaps to appear in the parade is something that is amazing. Basically, it seems to me as if it is similar to training an army. The customes are out of this world and very elaborate. In each school there are probably some 75 different customes which sometimes loom over the heads of their bearers some 5 feet in the air. Likewise the floats are very intricate and move to the beat of the music with lights, lazers, and, on one float the critized the materialistic push of world media, flat screen TV´s.
In the stands the people dance and dance and dance, rain, shine, whatever... Everybody gets a copy of the lyrics to the songs when they enter the stadium and an explanation of the different themes of each school so they can interprate the floats and sings along. The themes for this year where things like, money doesn´t equal happiness, Latin America as a brotherhood of countries with similiar history and culture, and the beauty and vitality
of life microscopic life that we take for grantite. As you can see, this is no child´s play as it may seem on the TV in America. Oh and I forgot to mention that with the introduction each new samba school you are treated to a fireworks display that last 5 minutes.
After having watched 11 hours of 7 samba schools parade, from 9PM to 8 AM, you are left tired, amazed, and ready to listen to something besides Samba. The one thing that this whole specticle does put into question is Brazil´s ability to organize and then deliver on time. Perhaps Brazil is no Germany, but when they find the drive Brazilians can get the job done and in stunning fashion. The other thing you realize is how much creativity and untapped potential there is in the world. At the Sambadromo you have the poorest of the poor creating a specticle beyond belief that the grand majority of Brazilian society participates in and foments. It makes you wonder how much more could be done in the world if we enabled the poor all around the world to participate contructively in the market and in culture. How many Piccaso´s have we lost to poverty and disease? Makes you realize their is so much knowledge and wealth that we are wasting.
¨The greatest show on earth.¨ Barnum & Bailey couldn´t have been more wrong. I am convinced I saw the greatest show on earth.
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Clarissa
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O melhor espetaculo do mundo
Mike, que bom saber que vc apreciou a nossa tradicao das escolas de samba do Rio de Janeiro, e como voce mesmo disse todo aquele glamour e feito por pessoas pobres e eles planejam a ideia, as fantasias, as estorias durante um ano todo, e um projeto grande e a maioria dos diretores das escolas sao "bicheiros" e os participantes sao moradores das favelas e os convidados artistas das grandes emissoras do Brasil. Fiquei sabendo que a vencedora desse ano foi a Vila Isabel. Qual vc mais gostou? Bom, um grande beijo e continua havinf fun!!!