The Rio de Janeiro Carnival has always been one of those must see events.  We were not quite sure what to expect, having seen bit on TV and heard a few stories from friends who had been before, however nothing can quite describe before hand what it is like.  Essentially the whole City feels like its been turned into a festival site and there are literally impromptu parties cropping up everywhere.

We bought tickets to both days of the official samba parades in the Sambadrome.  Being complete novices, we plumped for designated seats in Block 9, which is where most of the visitors go, both foreign and Brazilian.  In hindsight given the size of the venue, the extensive time the event lasts for, and the fact that many people turn up late it would have been equally as easy and far cheaper to go for non designated seats in a different block.

Block 9 is just over half way in the Sambadrome, which consists of a 700 metre roadway with open steeply tiered stands on both sides.  Only Brazil could have a purpose built carnival parade ground.  Oscar Niemeyer designed and built it in 1983/84 on his return to Brazil after the end of the dictatorship.

Like the World Cup in 2014 and, I assume the 2016 Olympics, the Brazilian police were in full force around the Sambadrome and also the main areas where visitors to the Carnival go, so the whole event felt pretty safe, though there were constant stories in the Brazilian media about violence elsewhere.

The top thirteen Samba Schools, a bit like the Premier League of Samba Schools, compete over the two nights for the title of the Samba Champion as voted by the judges.  The bottom school effectively gets relegated and another school is promoted into the Special Group.

Each school has a theme, complemented with original music that they structure their parade around.  While to complete beginners to the process like us, its difficult to fully understand.  However, what I could work out is that each parade starts with a small group that highlight the theme of the parade with some intricate moves and some awesome choreography.  A pair of flag dancers that show off the school’s colours follows this.  The main parade then consists of around seven large floats separated out by normally four or five large groups of parades with costumes that symbolise the themes.  In between each group and the next float is usually a girl with massive feathers showing off her samba moves.  In the middle of the parade there is group of musicians followed by a van with the name of the Samba School.

Often each parade will have various Brazilian celebrities in one of their later floats.  The crowd’s reaction to seeing the celebrity is the clue for us novices when they appear. The Beija-Flor School, which was the last one to parade, had a theme based on prejudice and its star guest was the transgender Brazilian pop star Pabllo Vittar.  Indeed this parade was one of the easiest for us to understand the theme and how each of the floats represented prejudice and the violence it causes in Brazilian society.

There was one float of Frankenstein’s head which then came apart in ten or so discs each containing a word, which included Racismo, Homophobia, Genocido and Rancor.  Other floats included one with modern condominiums next to a favela with a jail underneath the condominium, and one with a gunman taking a classroom of school kids hostage.

The music is all constructed around the samba beat and is original each year.  The Portela School had a song that sounded pretty much like the Italian Volare song from the 1950s and commonly adapted on the football terraces.

Throughout the parade there were subtle and not so subtle references to corrupt politicians, businesses and general divisions in Brazilian society.  Notwithstanding all the social and political commentary the parades exuded all the colour and pageantry that the carnival represents.

Each parade lasts around 75 to 80 minutes, though the concept of time keeping is largely ignored.  Indeed the final parade on the first night by the Mocidade School, which had an Indian theme and how the sons of Ghandi today are Brazilians, was planned to start at 03:45 in the morning actually started at 06:00 and did not finish until after 07:15.  The costumes and floats were predominantly in in yellows and greens and during the parade the sun rose over the Corvocado creating purple hews in the sky.

The Paraíso do Tuiutí School was as impressive as the Beija-Flor school in that its theme was slavery and their opening number was a brilliant choreographed movements of slaves and their captors interchanging through a moving hut.  To add to the political imagery they also depicted the Brazilian President Michel Temer as a vampire.  This school also had a British girl as their principal samba queen for the first time ever.

Pretty much all the parades had a large number of references and images of death, for skulls, coffins, bones, the devil were all there reflecting the strong themes of death that we have already seen on this tour from the impressive cemeteries and the legends such as those in Iguaçu Falls that are prevalent in Latin American culture.

Overall the Samba Parades fully lived up to all the hype, and with all their commentary on contemporary Brazilian society, while still keeping all the colour, movements and spectacular floats and costumes, the whole event was fresh and relevant.

There were a number of cruise ship tours that attended the Sambadrome, though often only for the first two parades of the night before being whisked back to their ships.  Am sure they enjoyed themselves, but also could not begin to appreciate the full depth and meaning of the event.

Dates: 11/02/2018 & 12/02/2018