Samba As An Element Of Rio Carnival

The samba and carnival in Rio de Janeiro are recognized to be the heart of the country with its extreme cultural life. Carnival samba is an urban population that existed alongside samba schools in Rio de Janeiro in the 20th century. During that century there was a man named Oswaldo Cruz, who was a sanitary engineer that wanted to stop the spread of disease from rats, which he recruited people to get the rats. At that time, there was a popular carnival song called “The Rat”. The most iconic figure in the history of Rio and samba is the malandro, who is a person with street knowledge, and who wants to make a living without any income. Also, who rejects hard labor which realizes that hard work doesn’t pay off. Even though he will never have much money to attain if he works hard enough. He has no tolerance for the lower middle-class cultures. He must live by his street knowledge, to get what he wants. He enjoys the good things in life.

Samba has famously gained national prominence because of the event of the carnival during the time of nationalism. The march of the carnival is the most important style to ever live alongside the samba. The president in Brazil during that time, Getulo Vargas made samba schools official carnival institutions. The city of Rio came to financially support the annual samba school parades. And the president demanded that civic and patriotic themes can be a part of the parades and put an end to malandragem. President Getulo Vargas, was known as “the workers’ ‘ president.

Carnival is a celebration that has creolized with African drumming and dancing traditions. Carnival is well-searched for having a national holiday. The country stops for 3 to 6 days prior to Ash Wednesday of full joy and that there is no end to the dancing, eating, singing, and drinking during those days. Some people’s perspective of the carnival experience says that it’s almost as a time out from society meaning that one can live up to his or her fantasy to do anything they want. The rich dress in old clothing and disappear in the crowd because of the appearance of being known for their wealth. The poor dress as royalty to be recognized and well respected. People wear masks to pretend to be another person for entertainment. Also, men and women dress as the opposite of their gender to test the people opinion of accepting the gay community.

The carnival was so popular that the church decided to make an impact by trying to end it. The catholic church saw these as nonsense celebrations as a hold of religious beliefs. The churches were able to set some days to celebrate the carnival by putting it in the context of Easter. What’s funny is that in the carnival they have songs that include Ash Wednesday as the saddest day in history. People who have experience in the carnival believe that it’s a good place for social experiment where you can interact with one another no matter the ages, race, and faith.

The samba school or the escolas de samba, was born in the morros of Rio de Janeiro in the 1920s. The main contribution for the Rio carnival was the samba. The only specific type they played of samba was named the samba enredo, commonly known as a marching themed song. During this time the lower class, which are the poor, didn’t have enough money to go to the city on the weekends, so they decided to dance and sing in front of their homes. Since the development of the music, the samba schools go against other morros for competition and create their own styles of drumming and dancing. These schools dress in cheap clothing and parade through paths of dirt of their neighborhood and go out there to perform. Some of the people who are elders are selected to be a judge to give a crown to whoever of the samba school that they saw or heard that they liked about. The most crown that ever received at the end of the day would be the samba school winner of the year. All members from the morros took part in preparing for the carnival by giving people duties such as the kids were sent to get materials such as shoes, glasses or shoes. The women would make new skirts, costumes, blouses, and new dances. The men would build the car parade floats and make new songs. The samba school’s competition is so well known to where they got invited to show their creativity on the main avenues of Rio de Janeiro. People refer to these parades with the dancing, singing, costumes, floats, and drumming as the set to music for singers and instrumentalists.

The sambodromo was built and made in Rio to make it as a permanent house of the samba school parades and competition. This building was designed by a famous architect well known as Oscar Niemeyer and is also named after a well-known anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro, who wrote “The Brazilian People”. In the year 1984, Liesa was created which was a league for the samba school competition in Rio, also required to preserve African roots of the samba school parades, which had African sections in the parade. They had about 4 sections of Africans on the parade; one was the Baianas, which were elders of the community who passed their African tradition to their descendants. Second was the Bateria, which was a drumline maintaining the original African rhythm’s into Brazilian music and is the most important African element of the samba school parade. Next, was the Passistas, which were dancers keeping the existing steps of the African dances. Lastly, it was the Puxadores, which were singers performing original oral traditions from their ancestors. Samba music will always be the key component for the carnival of Rio de Janeiro’s existence.