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Carnival blocks, carnaval blocos or blocos de rua are street bands that mobilize crowds on the streets and are the main popular expression of Brazilian Carnival. These parades fall under the term "street carnival", and happen during a period of about one month, beginning before and finishing after Carnival. Blocos usually perform Brazilian rhythms, such as marchinha, samba, frevo, maracatu, and axé.
Street carnival blocos have become a mainstay of Rio's Carnival, and today, there are several hundred blocos. Block parades start in January, and may last until the Sunday after Carnival. Carnaval Blocos are found throughout Rio de Janeiro. One of the largest and oldest blocos is Cordão do Bola Preta, based in downtown Rio. Other large groups include Banda de Ipanema and Monobloco.
In Recife, the carnival block Galo da Madrugada was registered in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest carnival parade in the world. In its 2013 parade, the crowd following the bloco was larger than 2,500,000 people [1] ).
Besides Galo da Madrugada, thousands of others carnival blocks with sizes ranging from few hundred to millions of people, perform in the streets of Recife and Olinda including As Virgens de Olinda, Eu Acho É Pouco, Batutas de São José, Lenhadores, Pitombeiras, Segura o Talo, Bloco da Saudade, Enquanto Isso Na Sala de Justiça and O Homem da Meia-Noite.
Blocks are the most traditional parading type in Minas Gerais. Zé Pereira dos Lacaios in Ouro Preto, founded in 1867, is the oldest block still active in Brazil. [2] [3]
Ouro Preto, formerly Vila Rica, is a Brazilian municipality located in the state of Minas Gerais. The city, a former colonial mining town located in the Serra do Espinhaço mountains, was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO due to its Baroque colonial architecture. Ouro Preto used to be the capital of Minas Gerais from 1720 until the foundation of Belo Horizonte in 1897.
The Carnival of Brazil is an annual festival held the Friday afternoon before Ash Wednesday at noon, which marks the beginning of Lent, the forty-day period before Easter. During Lent, Roman Catholics and some other Christians traditionally abstained from the consumption of meat and poultry, hence the term "carnival", from carnelevare, "to remove meat."
A samba school is a dancing, marching, and drumming club. They practice and often perform in a huge square-compounds and are devoted to practicing and exhibiting samba, an Afro-Brazilian dance and drumming style. Although the word "school" is in the name, samba schools do not offer instruction in a formal setting. Samba schools have a strong community basis and are traditionally associated with a particular neighborhood. They are often seen to affirm the cultural validity of the Afro-Brazilian heritage in contrast to the mainstream education system, and have evolved often in contrast to authoritarian development. The phrase "escola de samba" is popularly held to derive from the schoolyard location of the first group's early rehearsals. In Rio de Janeiro especially, they are mostly associated with poor neighborhoods ("favelas"). Samba and the samba school can be deeply interwoven with the daily lives of the shanty-town dwellers. Throughout the year the samba schools have various happenings and events, most important of which are rehearsals for the main event which is the yearly carnival parade. Each of the main schools spend many months each year designing the theme, holding a competition for their song, building the floats and rehearsing. It is overseen by a carnavalesco or carnival director. From 2005, some fourteen of the top samba schools in Rio have used a specially designed warehouse complex, the size of ten football pitches, called Samba City to build and house the elaborate floats. Each school's parade may consist of about 3,000 performers or more, and the preparations, especially producing the many different costumes, provide work for thousands of the poorest in Brazilian society. The resulting competition is a major economic and media event, with tens of thousands in the live audience and screened live to millions across South America.
Samba-enredo, also known as samba de enredo, is a sub-genre of modern samba made specifically by a samba school for the festivities of Brazilian Carnival. It is a samba style that consists of a lyric and a melody created from a summary of the theme chosen as the plot of a samba school.
The Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is a festival held every year before Lent; it is considered the biggest carnival in the world, with two million people per day on the streets. The first Carnival festival in Rio occurred in 1723.
Monobloco is a Brazilian bloco, or street band, that plays during Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro and is also a professional touring show. Unlike most of Rio's blocos, which tend play one type of music, Monobloco has become extremely popular among younger people because of its 'fresh' sound, playing a mix of various rhythms such as coco, ciranda, marchinha, xote, samba, contemporary R&B, and particularly samba-rock and funk. It continues to grow in popularity each year, and can be seen as a symbol of the resurging popularity in Carnaval blocos in Rio de Janeiro.
Bahian Carnival is the annual carnival festival celebrated in the Brazilian state of Bahia, mainly in its capital, Salvador. The event officially lasts for six days, beginning on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday and concluding on Ash Wednesday at noon. The term may also be used to comprise related events that happen immediately before or after, extending the duration for up to twelve days.
Ilê Aiyê is a carnival block from Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. It is located in the Curuzu/Liberdade neighborhood, the largest afro-descendent population area of Salvador. The name stems from the Yoruba language: Ilé - home; Ayé - life; which can be loosely translated as 'earth'. It was founded in 1974 by Antônio Carlos “Vovô” and Apolônio de Jesus, making it the oldest Afro-Brazilian block.
Galo da Madrugada is a carnival block from Recife, Brazil. The block was created in 1978 by Enéias Freire. Galos parades every Saturday of carnival at São José (Recife) neighborhood. The main rhythm is the frevo, but other rhythms are also played.
The Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Portela or Portela for short, is a traditional samba school ,founded in 1923, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The school has the highest number of wins in the top-tier Rio parade, with 22 titles in total, including the 2017 Carnival parade.
The Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Beija-Flor is a Samba school headquartered in the municipality of Nilópolis, Baixada Fluminense, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Estação Primeira de Mangueira, or simply Mangueira, is a samba school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The school was founded on April 28, 1928, by Carlos Cachaça, Cartola, Zé Espinguela, among others. It is located at the Mangueira neighborhood, near the region of Maracanã.
The Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba União da Ilha do Governador was founded on March 7, 1953 by the friends Maurício Gazelle, and Quincas Orphylo, who were in Cacuia, the main site of the carnival parade of the Ilha do Governador, watching the presentation of small schools of samba and blocks of various districts of the island. It was then decided that the neighborhood of Cacuia should be represented by a samba school. Currently, the school is based in Estrada do Galeão in the neighborhood of Cacuia.
Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Unidos de Vila Isabel is a samba school in Rio de Janeiro. It was thrice champion of the Special Group and is currently headquartered in Boulevard 28 de Setembro in Vila Isabel.
Marchinha is one of several genres of music typical of Brazilian Carnival in Rio de Janeiro and Southeast Region of Brazil. The other main carnival genres are: samba-enredo, frevo, maracatu and Axé music.
República Independente da Banda Mole, or simply Banda Mole ), is a pre-carnival block from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The name is a pun of bunda mole. It was created in the Lagoinha neighborhood in 1975. The block's main tradition is the gender swap: men parades dressed with women's clothes, and women the other way round.
Cordão da Bola Preta, shortly Bola Preta, is a carnival block that parades every carnival Saturday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Bola Preta was founded in 1918. The main rhythm is marchinha, but several other rhythms are also played.
O Homem da Meia-Noite is a carnival block in Olinda, Brazil. The block was created in 1931 by Luciano Anacleto de Queiroz, Sebastião da Silva, Cosme José dos Santos, Heliodoro Pereira da Silva, and shoemaker Manoel Joaquim dos Santos. It parades on carnival Saturday midnight at Olinda's historical center, being the first block to perform. frevo is the main played rhythm, but others are also played, such as samba and marchinhas.
Bacalhau do Batata is a carnival block from Olinda. It parades on Ash Wednesdays at noon, precisely at the after the official carnival end. The block was in 1962 founded by the waiter Isaias "Batata" Ferreira da Silva, whom worked in the regular carnival days since, and therefore could not enjoy the festivities. The block's symbol is a dried cod ornamented with potatoes, carrots, paprikas, and other vegetables. "The Batata Cod was founded in 1962. We, who could not play because they worked on holidays, joined in the joke. I was part of the foundation," recalled one of the directors of the block, Antonio Lucena, 69, while it held the official banner of the association, made with vegetables and pieces of natural cod.
Zé Pereira dos Lacaios is a carnival block from Ouro Preto, Brazil. Founded in 1867, it is one of the oldest carnival block in the country which is still active.