Its Carnival time!

Mar 9, 2011 by Capoeirasa    No Comments    Posted under: Featured Article, Newsroom, Uncategorized

In March CDC would like to celebrate Brazil’s most famous Holiday. From the 4th to the 8th of March this year Brazil ground to a halt as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets with feasts and fanfare and samba parades with a little bit of Capoeira thrown in for good measure.

Carnival is held 46 days before Easter, as a run up to the Catholic celebration of Lent, a massive party before the traditional abstinence from the consumption of meat and poultry, hence the term carnival, from carnelevare which roughly translated means “to remove meat.”

This month’s Roda will center around Carnival, so get your Samba shoes on and break out you feather headdress because Casa Da Capoeira is going large in celebration of one of Brazil’s most iconic parties. One of our newest students Chris Bicourt is well versed in the ways of Brazilian Carnival, having taken part in several during his days as a South American tour guide. He’s written a series of articles in a lead up to our month-end celebration and be giving a live demonstration of Brazilian Carnival samba so make sure you join us for what promises to be one of the biggest and most interesting parties on the CDC calendar. Here is the first in this four part series of posts:

Samba Part 1

Samba tells a story, of the origins and daily lives of a people. It is myth. It is legend. It is a way of life. Samba is beauty. Samba is sadness. Samba is suffering. Samba is hope. Samba is history…

Samba is the sound of the slaves. Of their torment on board the great Portuguese galleons crossing the Atlantic and their first footfall on Terra Brasilis. Of their song of freedom, of their homeland. Samba is the candomblé they brought with them and hid behind the Catholic religion of their masters. Samba is the shout of rebellion in a small town called Inconfidentes, of the runaway-slave quilombo of Palmares, of Zumbi, of Maculele, and of finally breaking free from the coffee and sugar plantations of Bahia. Samba is Rio de Janeiro, in the Bay of Guanabara, at the end of the 19th Century, a city ridden with violence and Yellow Fever. Samba is hungry and poor, hanging out in the bars and gafieira dance halls of ‘Little Africa’ with the Maxixe, half-African like itself. Samba is the bad boys, the malandros, stealing your girlfriend and picking your pocket with a wink and a smile. Samba is the Bahianas selling their sweet tapioca cake, coconut quindim and the sacred acarajé all the way up to the great Praça Onze de Julho. And Samba is these same women by night, priestesses of Candomblé.

Samba is the afro-brazilian families that live crammed together in the huge, colonial houses abandoned by rich white families (for the more fashionable Zona Sul part of the city). Samba is in the kitchen of Aunt Ciata, Aunt Amelia and the other Bahiana tias who run these communities. Samba is in the Candomblé ceremonies that take place out back. Then one day, in Aunt Ciata’s house, mixed with the cooking, and the marchinhas and choros being played in the front room, a new sound is born; and Pelo Telefone becomes the first official Samba.

This section tells how the journey of the slaves from West Africa to Bahia brought with it rhythms, songs and dances which, tempered by oppression and struggle, arrived in post-slavery urban Rio and mixing with popular rhythms like marchinhas and choro, and urban dances like the maxixe, evolved to become known as ‘samba’. It highlights how important the Bahian ‘tias’ were in this journey, and introduces the idea of the malandro – a quintessential part of samba culture.

Got anything to say? Go ahead and leave a comment!

Subscribe to receive new blogposts