Party time starts as Brazil enjoys carnival

After a 20 minute rain delay, the Sao Clemente samba group exploded into the Sambadrome in a hail of fireworks to kick off this year’s Rio carnival parade.

To the riveting beat of a 300 piece drum section, thousands of elaborately sequined and feathered dancers charged into the stadium singing a samba whose irreverent refrain: “Sao Clemente makes us believe that in Brazil what is serious is carnival,” set the evening’s tone.

“I want to see everybody naked,” the group’s lead singer Anderson Paes shouted to more than 70,000 people packed into the stadium which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

For two nights, the massive concrete stadium is hosting a showdown between Rio’s 14 top-tier samba groups, each battling for the right to be declared this year’s champion.

The distinction brings little more than bragging rights, but one could easily miss that, given the intensity carnival groups devote to their parades.

The most awaited group of the night, Grande Rio paraded early yesterday morning. Their samba, Let’s Wear the Little Shirt, My Love, slang for wearing a condom, has upset the Church and prosecutors who made the school cover parts of their sexually explicit floats.

“We don’t want to offend the Church, but rather we want to bring the world the message of safe sex,” explained parade designer Joaosinho Trinta.

In the upscale Ipanema district, the popular samba band Affinity is Almost Love, attracted tens of thousands of revellers to the beach front as the sun set yesterday, holding up traffic for miles around.

The Sambadrome performances, televised live across the nation of 175 million people, featured groups presenting parades, each with up to 4,000 lavishly costumed dancers and drummers.

The groups, mainly from poor communities – have spent the year preparing for their moment of glory.

On the city’s poor north side, entire apartments are turned into costume workshops for months before the parade.

Children covered in glitter banged away on tambourines while mothers sat at sewing machines assembling the elaborate sequin-and-feather costumes that dancers will wear for a single night.

In the huge sweltering warehouses lining the city’s port districts, workers were still busy adding last-minute touches to the enormous floats depicting everything from giant teddy bears – for a parade honouring the kiddie show hostess Xuxa – to scenes from the Kama Sutra, the ancient Indian book of sexual wisdom.

Tickets for the Sambadrome celebration, the highlight of carnival, are too pricey for many Brazilians.

Each group has 80 minutes to parade dancers, singers and drummers down the 766-yard-long stadium in an effort to win over the crowd and judges.

The groups are judged on criteria that include music, costumes, originality, float designs, percussion and even enthusiasm.

The carnavalescos, or parade designers, draw upon everything from Greek mythology to Amazon Indian legends for the themes of their extravaganzas.

Many complain that the strict judging stifles innovation and that the festival has become a moribund spectacle.

Such criticism may seem especially apt this year, since carnival organisers have encouraged groups to revive past hits for this year’s parade.

But only four groups have done so, mostly because of the difficulty in attracting lucrative sponsorships with old songs.

Advertising is strictly prohibited on parade floats and costumes, but because the two-day parade is broadcast live, sponsors are willing to pay large sums to determine what the groups sing about.