Rio de Janeiro, simply Rio, is the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the second-most-populous city in Brazil and the sixth-most-populous city in the Americas.
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."
Tijuca is a neighbourhood of the Northern Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It comprises the region of Saens Peña and Afonso Pena squares. According to the 2000 Census, the district has close to 150,000 inhabitants. It borders with Praça da Bandeira, Maracanã, Vila Isabel, Andaraí, Grajaú and Alto da Boa Vista neighbourhoods.
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.
Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Acadêmicos do Salgueiro, popularly known simply as Salgueiro is a popular samba school from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was established on March 5, 1953 from the merger of Morro do Salgueiro's two samba schools called Azul e Branco do Salgueiro and Depois Eu Digo, which then merged again with Unidos do Salgueiro. It first paraded in 1954 with the Romaria à Bahia samba. The school's motto is "Not better, nor worse, just a different school".
Miguel Falabella is a Brazilian actor, presenter, screen writer, voice actor, film maker, theater actor, producer, writer and director. He is known, among many other works, for playing Caco Antibes in the sitcom Sai de Baixo and for presenting Video Show for over 15 years. He was a carnival performer for the Império da Tijuca and Rocinha samba schools. His family has Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Austrian, German and Swiss ancestry. He is father of two sons, Cassiano and Theo.
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.
Jessé Gomes da Silva Filho, known professionally as Zeca Pagodinho, is a Brazilian singer-songwriter working in the genres of samba and pagode.
The National Historical Museum of Brazil was created in 1922, and possesses over 287,000 items, including the largest numismatic collection of Latin America. The architectural complex that houses the museum was built in 1603 as the St. James of Mercy Fort; earlier structures date back to 1567, erected by order of King Sebastian I of Portugal. In 1693, the Calaboose Prison, for slaves, was built. In 1762, the Casa do Trem was added as a depot of weapons and ammunition. The last additions are the War Arsenal (1764) and the Barracks (1835).
Liga Independente das Escolas de Samba do Rio de Janeiro, commonly known by the acronym LIESA, is the principal association that organizes the Carnival of the city of Rio de Janeiro.
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.
Teodoro Fernandes Sampaio was an Afro-Brazilian polymath and public intellectual who worked as an engineer, geographer, politician, and historian.
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.
Gracyanne Jacobina Barbosa Vieira is a Brazilian fitness model and Carnaval dancer.
The Liga das Escolas de Samba do Rio de Janeiro is the leading association that organizes the Série A Group in the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro.
Andrea de Andrade is a Brazilian Carnival Queen. She began performing in samba parades in 2006 with Mocidade, a samba school in Rio de Janeiro. In 2010 she won the "Rainha da bateria" of Mocidade and in 2011 led the parade of this school at the Rio de Janeiro carnival.
The Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Unidos da Tijuca is a samba school of the city of Rio de Janeiro. It was founded on 31 December 1931 from the fusion of existing blocks in Morro do Borel. Among its founders are Leandro Chagas, João de Almeida, Pacific Vasconcelos, Tatão, Alfredo Gomes, Marina Silva, Orlando da Costa Godinho, Zeneida Oliveira, and Regina Vasconcelos.
The Museu da Imagem e do Som do Rio de Janeiro was inaugurated on September 3, 1965, as part of celebrations of the fourth centenary of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The MIS is a museum of the Secretary of Culture of the state of Rio de Janeiro dedicated to carioca culture.
Rio de Janeiro is on the far western part of a strip of Brazil's Atlantic coast, close to the Tropic of Capricorn, where the shoreline is oriented east–west. Facing largely south, the city was founded on an inlet of this stretch of the coast, Guanabara Bay, and its entrance is marked by a point of land called Sugar Loaf – a "calling card" of the city.
