Pre-Carnaval in Salvador

One of the main reasons we stopped in Salvador was to celebrate carnival (or carnaval in the Portuguese Brazilian spelling), which officially started on the 12^th of February and would last for five days. While the carnival celebrations in Rio are world famous, Salvadoreans are very quick to point out that that their carnival is both larger, more varied and allows one to participate more readily and more closely in the activities.

Neither of us had much, if any, experience with carnival celebrations but we figured that if we were going to be in Brazil at the right time then it was only appropriate that we give carnival our full attention.

Carnaval and its terminology

With both of us being carnival novices, we first paid a visit to the Casa do Carnaval da Bahia (i.e., the Bahian Carnival Museum) to get a baseline understanding of the history of these festivities in Salvador. Unfortunately for us, all the text and voice-overs were in Portuguese and half the museum was closed for renovations, but what was abundantly clear was that these were not just celebrations but celebrations on steroids.

Apparently carnival in Salvador was initially primarily influenced by European carnival traditions and was largely a European activity with plenty of debauchery and general misconduct being the order of the day(s). Once the previously enslaved negro population began to be allowed to have their own celebrations and eventually participate in the general celebrations, Carnaval in Salvador gained a whole new African stream and flavour. More recently the arrival of amplified music revolutionised the volume, if not the nature, of the celebrations.

Carnival in Salvador comes with its own confusing terminology: ‘trio eléctrico’, ‘foliões’ ‘abadá’, ‘pipoca’, and ‘camarote’ describe things associated with Carnaval festivities; ‘Dodô’, ‘Osmar’, and ‘Batatinha’ describe the various ‘circuits’ along which the festivities travel each night. We consulted Frederieke’s former PhD student from Brazil, Marina Santana, as to what we should see and do and she highly recommended that we check out ‘the bloco-Afro Olodum’. Hmm…bloco? bloco-Afro? Olodum? Huh?

Help at hand

Luckily, Ramon (from the Harbour Master’s office) and Dominique (the Marina manager) came to our assistance and explained that in Salvador there are modern ways of parading, and there are traditional ways of parading, and that the three different circuits offered different amounts of each of these. But first an explanation of the carnival terminology.

Trio-electrico

A ‘trio electrico’ is a semi-trailer truck, up to 45m long, that houses a giant sound system, with some producing up to 500,000 W of sound. This kind of power requires that they carry multiple generators. Perched up above this sound system is a live band, almost all of whom are super-stars of the Brazilian and Latin American pop music scenes.

Bloco

A ‘bloco’ consists of a band, either a drum and brass band or a trio-electrico, surrounded by a mobile roped-off area for paying participants (‘foliões’) that parades along the circuit pumping out music as loudly as they can. They make one passage along the circuit each night and this usually takes several hours.

If one wants to join a bloco as a foliõe, then one has to purchase an ‘abadá’ which is a t-shirt or costume that functions as your ticket for accessing the inside of the bloco’s rope perimeter (and the refreshements truck that follows at the bloco’s end if your bloco has a trio-electico).

Camarote

A ‘camarote’ is a type of club where paying customers can go upstairs to watch the procession of different ‘trio-electricos’ and their associated ‘blocos’ from on high. In the sinecure of the camarote one can get drinks and food, a massage, a haircut, dance to the music (from the camarote or from a passing bloco) or simply enjoy the view of the hundreds of thousands of people milling around in the street below.

The advantage of paying for a camarote rather than a bloco is that one gets to experience all of the blocos rather than following just the one. An abadá must also be purchased if one wishes to access a camarote.

Pipocas

‘Pipocas’ (or ‘popcorn’ in English) are the people who aren’t silly enough to pay for an abadá for either a bloco or a camarote and instead dance, bouncing up and down like popcorn in the street as the blocos pass by.

Circuito

And this stuff all happens along the three different carnival circuits. The 4.5km long Dodô circuit runs along the ritzy ocean promenade in Barra and being a modern setting is dominated by modern influences, namely massive trio-electricos and massive crowds.

The 1.5km long Batatinha circuit winds its way through the narrow streets of Pelourinho in the old city and with no room for big modern trio-electricos is dominated by small and traditional blocos, mostly drum and brass bands. Meanwhile, the 4 km long Osmar circuit in Campo Grande is where tradition meets modernity with a bit of everything going on in the city’s commercial centre.

Olodum

And ‘Olodum’ is an Afro-Brazilian percussion band from Salvador, apparently world-famous for having played with Paul Simon and Michael Jackson in the 1990s, that has one of the most popular bloco-Afros of carnaval.

In addition to the parades, stages were being set up all over the city where bands would play late into the night, often in competition with the parades. We decided to start small and work our way up to the larger events, but also to get a ticket for a camarote to see the Barra to Ondina blocos from higher up.

Birthday

However, first-things-first, we had another event to celebrate and that was Frederieke’s 59^th birthday on the 5^th. Having just finished a five-day crossing, and not being sure whether we would arrive in time, we had nothing organised. But thank goodness, there was Dominique who took David under his wing, told him about various celebratory options and subsequently organised birthday dinner reservations at Cuco Bistrô in Pelourinho.

A very lovely dinner, preceded by caipirinhas and a surprise appearance by a small contingent of Olodum musicians on the plaza outside (not especially for my birthday, but hey, I’ll claim it anyway), made for a special Brazilian birthday evening.

Pre-carnival celebrations

While Carnaval de Salvador officially lasts five days, this does not stop celebrations from starting way (months?) earlier. And so, the weekend before the start of carnival we found ourselves accidently and happily caught up in various small blocos parading in Pelourinho.

These were decidedly gay events, in all meanings of the word, making them very colourful and exuberant affairs. Here, we also learned that wearing earplugs during carnival would be a very good idea if we did not want to sustain lasting damage to our already quite senior hearing.

Another pre-carnival event we joined was the Olodum general rehersal in Pelourinho, which started on the street outside their headquarters ‘Escola Olodum’ with a long warm-up of ear-shattering drumming. Once warmed up, the drummers started meandering through the small streets of the neighbourhood followed by throngs of happy people (including us) dancing and singing along.

The group then stopped at the ‘Michael Jackson’ plaza, the relaxed atmosphere disappeared a bit with young men started moshing in front of us, and the drumming and singing got somewhat repetitive (for us at least). So, we called it quits and went back to Yuma.

Dancing?

During these pre-carnival parties we also first observed the ‘dancing’ in these blocos, although one could hardly call it such.

Frederieke had been expecting sensuous merengue, salsa and other sorts of Latin dancing, based on her limited carnival experience in the Dutch Antilles, but this was a repetitive swaying from left-to-right-to-left-to-right, sometimes in pairs one behind the other, but mostly alone.

Perhaps we were missing minute detail in this swaying that conveyed important messages to those in the know, but it all looked (and felt) rather boring.

Nevertheless, we got into the swing of things and swayed happily along on the wicked drumbeats of whatever percussion group we were following, in preparations for the real thing!