Carnival is an annual six-day Brazilian festival held, technically, only the Tuesday afternoon before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. During Lent, that forty-day period before Easter, many Christians, especially Roman Catholics, abstain from the consumption of meat and poultry. Those perishables would not survive through the end of Lent, so Carnival in Brazil or Mardi Gras in Louisiana or Fat Tuesday to many, began as a means of consuming perishables to prevent such wasteful spoilage, hence the term "carnival" evolved from carnelevare, "to remove meat." The Brazilian version of the festival is a celebration of music, dance and song whose rhythm, participation, and costumes vary from one region of Brazil to another. These rhythms were mainly developed by Afro-Brazlians and Pardos, incorporating and adapting many cultural influences, from the percussion beats of Africa to the
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