Sambando... (wow!!!)

Finally i got to see what the whole fuzz about Samba was about... and it is indeed something worth experiencing. As most of you may know Carnaval occurs every year all over Brazil and it has different characteristics but it is always something to celebrate. Well, here in São Paulo, it works like this.

There are different schools that compete every year to be the best Samba School of that year's Carnaval so there is a parade in the Sambodromo and there are judges that look at the steps, the music, the different blocos (sections) of the school and evaluate them. At the end, the one with the highest points is the winner and in a city of 17+ million people, winning this is kind of a big deal...

Given that this is so important to them, they come up with new songs, new costumes, new steps every year. In order for people to learn these steps, songs, etc. the schools practice every week (normally on Sundays) and they play the same song over and over again. Lucky for us, we went to one of these schools, and not just any school but 'Mocidade Alegre' which was champion in 2007 and 2nd place in 2008.

We went there as a group in this bus and at first i didn't know what to expect. I didn't know how to Samba (and still don't) so i was wondering if it was actually going to be that good for people that didn't know a step of samba. We were given two 'spaces' on the top platforms and we had this great view of the whole room, the people playing the instruments, the stage and it was also fresher than the ground floor.

Anyways, we got there a little after 7 and we came back at 11 at night. they played music the whole night and it was the same song over and over and over and over again... i know it sounds tiring but it's actually not because one is learning the steps and the lyrics so it's actually very cool... we also tried on the fantasias (costumes) from the previous years. We did this while being very sweaty, after ±1 hour of dancing, but they seemed to be fine with it (which made me wonder how many other sweaty people wore them before us...) --> see pictures...

It's very hard to describe the experience but i hope the pictures help. If i were to attempt to sum it up i would probably use some of the following words:
energy, samba, people, sweat!!!, music, rhythm, fast, colors, more sweat, closeness, tight, quase-eternal, more sweat, brazilian, fun, refreshing, vibrant, hot (therefore sweaty), and a little more than that...

p.s.>
and now... enjoy me with a Fro! not something you'd see everyday, but thanks to photography and internet blogs, you can have as much of "RUDY's AFRO" as you wish!