Samba in Brasil

Another busy week has gone by and another one is about to begin. On Saturday I went to an area of the city called Zona Norte and saw one of the samba schools perform. They are already getting ready for carnaval can you believe that??!! Their are several samba schools but the one I saw was called Salgueiro.Basically you pay 6 dollars to go and dance and watch the group perform. It was amazing! The way the dancers move and how quickly. Whoa! I could not keep up but had fun trying. Samba is really difficult! but it was a lot of fun since we were all gringos and didn't really know what we were doing!! ha ha. For carnaval there are several samba schools and each group performs one song that talks about the history of Brazil. I am hoping to visit where they make the costumes and floats sometime in the next month. I think it would be interesting to see. It is a large community project that everyone takes part in. Right now they are just determining which song they will perform for the show so we heard about 16 songs and each time people come around and hand out pamplets with the lyrics to the song. I went with a group of about ten people from lots of different places... New York, California, Canada, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Brasil! Nice mix of people!

This is kind of what it was like. Maybe not quite as crowded but still pretty full. I can't imagine being here in their summer which I am told is packed so full with people you can barely move!!





These are just a couple of images from Sagueiro's performance last year in Carnaval 2009. I can't even imagine...



Earlier this evening I found this documentary about music in Brazil and wanted to share part of it with everyone. It is kind of lengthy but interesting if you have the time. Explained a lot to me about the origins of samba and is a great summary of the history of music. I learned a lot. The first video is probably most benifical to giving you a taste of samba. Their are some clips of dancers in full costume. Just watch how fast they move!