Samba is a name or prefix used for several rhythmic variants, such as samba urbano carioca, samba de roda, amongst many other forms of samba, mostly originated in the Rio de Janeiro and Bahia states.
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.
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 Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Mocidade Independente de Padre Miguel is a samba school of the city of Rio de Janeiro, being located on Rua Coronel Tamarindo, in the neighborhood of Padre Miguel.
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.
Oswaldo Cruz is a neighborhood of the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro, of middle-class and lower middle-class situated near the neighborhoods of Madureira (east), Bento Ribeiro (west), Vila Valqueire (south), and Turiaçu (north). It is known nationally for being the birthplace of Portela, the great champion of the Carioca Carnival.
The Grêmio Recreativo Escola de Samba Império Serrano is a samba school of the city of Rio de Janeiro, that was created on March 23 of 1947 after a disagreement of the extinct samba school Prazer da Serrinha. It was nine times champion of the Carnaval and can be considered one of the most traditional schools of the samba of the city. One of the principal vainglories of its members is the open democracy of the school, established in the school's foundation. Its history is normally confused with the history of the Morro da Serrinha, despite its headquarters being in Avenida Ministro Edgard Romero near the Estação Mercadão de Madureira, but in the same neighborhood: Madureira.
Dermeval Miranda Maciel, best known as Roberto Ribeiro. was a Brazilian samba singer.
Yvonne Lara da Costa OMC, better known as Dona Ivone Lara, was a Brazilian singer and composer. Known as the Queen of Samba and Great Lady of Samba, she was the first woman to sign a samba-enredo and take part in a wing of composers in the school, Império Serrano.
Rosa Lúcia Benedetti Magalhães was a Brazilian professor and artist. She is best known as the most successful carnival designer in Rio de Janeiro, with six championships won since 1984, when the Sambadrome Marquês de Sapucaí was built. Designing carnival parades since 1971, Magalhães liked telling historic events in her designs, such as the discovery of Brazil (2000), the life and creations of Hans Christian Andersen (2005), Don Quixote (2010), and the corruption scandal that led to the construction of the Versailles Palace in France (2017).
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.
Elvira Olivieri Cozzolino, better known by her stage name Elvira Pagã, was a Brazilian vedette and actress, singer, writer and painter. She was the first Rio Carnival Queen, the first woman to wear a bikini in public, and one of the first women to have cosmetic surgery in Brazil. Talented and controversial, she broke the status quo and faced the reigning "machismo" with fearless audacity during the Brazilian military dictatorship and the revolutionary 1960s, where she lived with determination and courage. Pagã retired from public life, wrote and painted in her later years, dying a recluse.
Heitor dos Prazeres was a Brazilian composer, singer and painter. He was a pioneer samba composer and participated in the first samba schools in Brazil. Later in life he became known by his paintings.
Teresa Cristina Macedo Gomes is a Brazilian singer born in Rio de Janeiro. Her musical style is MPB and Samba.
Jece Valadão, pseudonym of Gecy Valadão, was a Brazilian actor, director and producer. He became known by his cafajeste roles in films such as Rio 40 graus (1955) and Os Cafajestes (1962).
Neuma Gonçalves da Silva was a Brazilian samba dancer. She began dancing samba in a small group at age seven and was president of the Mangueira samba school for multiple terms, establishing the institution's children's and female's wings. Neuma housed several temporarily homeless people, and took some students to her home to learn to read and write through a literacy programme featuring local swear words invented by her. She was a member of the Superior Council of the Samba Schools throughout the 1960s and performed on four albums. A 2001 song about Neuma was written by the composer Arlindo Cruz and an overpass and school were named after her.
Maria das Dores Alves Rodrigues, better known as Dodô da Portela, was a famous flag bearer for the Portela samba school, the most successful school in the annual Rio de Janeiro Carnival in Brazil.
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