As people filed into the giant hall, they looked around for their friends, lined up for rumlike caipirinhas and ice-cold Skol beer and got down to the business of mingling and flirting. Soon there would be dancing and singing, with their favorite singers leading the revelry until dawn.
It was undoubtedly a night of celebration, but important work lay ahead too. This night, Imperatriz supporters - roughly everyone gathered inside the hall - would choose their samba de enredo (theme song) for Rio's signature celebration, Carnaval.
Though Carnaval 2008 isn't until February, Imperatriz and other samba schools all across Rio have been fine-tuning their performance and making feverish preparations for the big parade. During the past few months, they've been auditioning singers for the role of puxador (the lead singer of a school), choosing a queen and her core passistas (the best dancers of the school), making costumes and building the dazzling carros alegoricos, or giant mechanized floats, atop which the school's notoriously underdressed dancers will show off their samba skills.
All of this work is just a small cost of participating in one of the world's biggest parties, an event that happens annually in Brazil on the days leading up to Ash Wednesday. In 2008, Carnaval officially begins Friday, Feb. 1, when the mayor gives the keys to the city to King Momo, the portly pleasure-seeker who ushers in the bacchanalia. The next four days are marked by neighborhood parties, lavish masked balls and impromptu fests all over town.
The culmination of Carnaval, at least for Imperatriz and the members of Rio's samba schools, takes place in the Oscar Niemeyer-designed Sambadrome, when Rio's 14 best samba schools have their 75 minutes to dazzle audiences and judges for top honors.
Although the origins of Carnaval are shrouded in mystery, some believe the fest began as a pagan celebration of spring's arrival sometime during the Middle Ages. The Portuguese brought the celebration to Brazil in the 1500s, but it took on a decidedly local flavor by adopting Indian costumes and African rhythms. The word itself probably derives from the Latin "carne vale," or "goodbye meat," a reference to the Catholic tradition of giving up meat (and other fleshly temptations) during Lent.
Rio's first festivals were called entrudos, with locals dancing through the streets in colorful costumes and throwing mud, flour and suspicious-smelling liquids on one another. In the 19th century, Carnaval meant attending a lavish masked ball or participating in the orderly and rather vapid European-style parade. Rio's poor citizens, bored by the finery but eager to celebrate, began holding their own parades, dancing through the streets to African-based rhythms.
In the 1920s, the new sound of samba emerged in Rio. It was the music full of African flavors, brought to the city by former slaves and their poor descendents. It was a sound that would forever more be associated with Carnaval.
Since then, Carnaval has grown in leaps and bounds, with elaborate parades in Rio and other parts of Brazil. It's also become a huge enterprise, with the city spending in excess of $50 million to throw the party each year. For some, the event has grown too commercial, and they prefer to flee the city during all the mayhem. Beach destinations like Buzios and Florianopolis are packed with Cariocas escaping Rio's huge influx of merrymakers.
But many Cariocas couldn't imagine spending Carnaval away from their hometown. Carnaval is a chance to reconnect with old traditions and forget about life's hardships for a while. Donning a costume and dancing through the streets in one of Rio's neighborhood bandas (block parties) seems to be about the best way to celebrate what's good.
http://www.sltrib.com/travel/ci_7883824
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