Carnival Blog

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When I was told back in September I would be going to Carnival I couldn’t believe it, carnival is suppose to be the number one festival and this year I would be a part of it…wow. As time went by I didn’t think too much about it until we went to Brazil, for the first time I experienced their traditional music called Samba in Sao Paulo, and it was love at first sound. Samba is a type of music, played in Portuguese, by 5-20 people performing in a band and they all play together while the whole crowd sing along. When I saw this for the first time I was amazed, however it made me think that if Samba had such a deep influence on its people, then what did Axe music (Axe music is the type of music played in Salvador) have for the 1.3 million people celebrating carnival together in Bahia?

On the first day of carnival we were greeted by the Smirnoff team, who looked after us during our stay in Salvador. Now, as you may or may not know carnival is said not to be the safest place in the world, however, I beg to differ, because at no place or time did I feel uncomfortable. Then again I did have a team of bodyguards and well-experienced people to accompany me from start to finish. We were briefed on what our five-day forecast would be like and every now and then people would just start clapping, smiling, high-fiving each other, and making sounds of extreme joy. Not only were we to be at carnival but we also had the best team in the world looking after us - Smirnoff. Smirnoff was one of the major carnival sponsors, and everywhere I looked people where enjoying its purity with a mix of tropical fruits.

One of the things I loved about carnival was the T-shirts we were given, every day was another colour with a different design. Luckily for us, Smirnoff had a room with five local designers to customize our t-shirts for us. So if your T was a bit too big, or you wanted it to have a little more action to it all you needed to do was go to the 6th floor and you had a room of people ready to make your ideas into a reality. There are shirts for every Camarote and every Trio. A Camarote is a club, which over looks the carnival on both sides of the street, and a Trio is a band playing music on top of a massive truck with people dancing inside a rope barrier following the truck. So you have to picture thousands of people wearing different colours in trios or in a Camarote all dancing to the same song. You also have all the other people celebrating carnival in the streets around the entire city. While I was experiencing this I had this sense of overwhelming joy that I have never experienced in my 24 years of existence. Unfortunately I really believe that nothing I will ever experience in my life after this festival will add up to its expectations the same way carnival did. And if anyone were to ask me what was the best of the best parties I have experienced while travelling the world? I would undoubtedly have to say ‘carnival 2008.’

Carnival is a massive festival on a global scale, but what makes is that much better is that it goes on for five days. You know that feeling when something is over and you wish it were just the beginning? Well carnival left me with that feeling, but at least I felt like I really got to experience it because it seemed to go on forever. Every night was a different party with different people singing until the very ends of the night. I don’t think my experience or words can justify the feeling of being at carnival it’s just one of those things you have to be there to experience.

One night, Smirnoff gave Kung (Thai Ben) the opportunity to play his famous drum and base set at a Camarote called Espresso 2222 for an hour. Now it might not seem to be a long time but playing at one of the best Camarote’s in all of Bahia during the biggest festival known to man is a big deal! He played his heart out, and the crowd loved him so much that they talking about his performance for the next couple of days. For them it was a really good performance but for me it was something more than just that. This was a good friend of mine from the Smirnoff 10 playing in front of a massive crowd of people from all over the world… and I have to say I was proud of him. ‘That’s my boy’ I said…’that’s my boy’.

A couple weeks prior to carnival I started doing a little research of my own and tried to find some famous axe players to listen to before carnival, so that way I could sing along with the people. When I was back in Sao Paulo I was so jealous watching everyone in the clubs singing with the samba players so I promised myself that I would at least try to memorize something for carnival. So I login on to my youtube account and started looking, unknowingly I came across the famous axe band Chiclete com banana and immediately I fell in love. Now you try memorizing a song in Portuguese because I did and its not that easy, but if you play the song enough and learn what it means in your language then it starts to all sink in.

When the Smirnoff team told us we where going to be in the best trio carnival had to offer I was curious to find out who it was. But when they said it would be Chiclete com banana I was in complete shock. The band I had been listening to for the past month trying to memorize their songs was going to be playing with me for four hours while I danced my way across the carnival avenue. This is the part where I look in my Canadian thesaurus for words to describe inexplicable joy. Joy: thrill, joyfulness, elation, bliss, enjoyment, pleasure, happiness and delight. 1.feelings of great happiness or pleasure, especially of an elevated or spiritual kind. 2. A pleasurable aspect of something, or something that is seen as a source of happiness. I hope that helps you better understand how I felt during my time in the trio…because it was complete happiness. It is one thing to watch the trio and it is another thing to be inside of one. Four hours of walking and dancing down the carnival avenue watching everyone inside and out side the ropes dancing is an amazing experience. There I was in the best of festivals looking up to the sky dancing as hard as my body would let me with a feeling that left me completely satisfied, nevertheless wanting it to last forever.

We had a lot of media converge during the carnival. A photographer was with us every night, a journalist followed us everywhere we went and for some of us MTV South Africa filmed our adventures with their team not forgetting internationally known rapper HHP. One night at Camarote Do Nana the local media along side Smirnoff Ice asked us to sing a song for them on television, so I tried my best to memorize the song and I think I did a pretty good job. But when Takashi had to sing he repeated the word beleza over and over which was quite funny. Kung on the other hand made a song of his own called…” beleza…obrigado… denada…”. Everyone and I mean everyone started to crack up in laughter including myself, so Kung I give this one to you. Well done.


Alongside carnival we had daily activities. One day we went to a place about 2 hours outside of Salvador called Pojeto Tamar that is an organization dedicated to preserving the population of sea turtles. It was really nice to see a city built around this preservation that really cared about the future of sea turtles. It is now a major tourist attraction for the general public. Another day we went to my favourite restaurant called Boi Preto Grill with almost everyone from our hotel where we talked about our lives and our experience in the carnival.

All in all carnival was so much more than just a festival, it was the people at Smirnoff looking after us like we were their own, it was the South African team who where extremely entertaining, Harry from Ghana whose most famous slogan was “ more fire” if you’re reading this Harry you are the man, and you made that carnival that much more enjoyable, the Smirnoff Ten who I know everyone loved, the street people, the camarote, the trio, the daily, activities the media and most importantly all that music we heard over and over and over… Gosh now that I think about it, it was quite the experience… Carnival you have captivated my heart and left me with a feeling that I hope this blog can describe. Special thanks goes out to everyone who made this possible.

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