Brazil's carnival attraction grows


People dance to the beat of carnival group Olodum in Salvador.

Salvador, Brazil's African capital, will attract millions of people with elaborate festivities beginning on Feb. 15.



Michael Astor
The Associated Press

Salvador, Brazil — Rhythm is king in this seaside city long known as the capital of Afro-Brazilian culture, or more simply as the Black Rome — and not only at carnival.

Drums thunder from behind the colorful walls of colonial houses that line the winding cobblestone streets of the historic Pelourinho district. Passengers on passing buses thump out intricate poly-rhythms on the seat backs, floors and windows.

Even the city's reputed 365 Catholic Churches — one for each day of the year — percolate with the popcorn of rhythm, with samba groups often standing in for the choir to celebrate the saints' days.

But when the throbbing rhythm gets under your skin and the rumbling won't leave you in peace, it can only mean one thing: Carnival is coming to Salvador da Bahia.

"Carnival is actually just the culmination of a series of festivals that make up our summer season, beginning in December," said Valter Oliveira Leite, president of the municipal carnival council.

The uninitiated could easily mistake the seemingly endless series of shows and festivals in the run-up to carnival for the actual event. But carnival itself is unmistakable — with some 2.5 million people clogging the city's main avenues and dancing behind more than 200 bands that ply the city's streets on top of enormous sound trucks, night and day.

It's very different from Rio's more famous made-for-TV parade, with fans in grandstands evaluating the elaborate floats and costumes. But many Brazilians feel the real street carnival is the full contact sport of Salvador, some 750 miles northeast of Rio.

Salvador's carnival officially begins this year on Feb. 15, a day earlier than Rio's bash, and runs a day later. Feb. 20 is the date known in New Orleans as Mardi Gras; here, many bands turn out for a last gasp the next day, Ash Wednesday, as well, despite protests from the Catholic Church.

In recent years, Salvador's carnival also has become a haven for black American tourists in search of their African roots in Brazil.

Salvador was Brazil's first capital and major stop for slave ships coming from Africa to the New World. Today the city is more than 70 percent black and is a center of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble — similar to Santeria and Voodoo. It also is a nucleus of the martial art-dance form known as capoeira — as well as the birthplace of samba.

"It's all just religiously, spiritually inspired. It reminds me of New Orleans and some parts of South Carolina where I grew up," said George H. Smith, a 63-year-old black American printmaker from Washington, D.C., who was on his second visit to Brazil.

This year, U.S. producer Quincy Jones is expected to attend carnival as a guest of Culture Minister and pop star Gilberto Gil, with an eye toward making a Buena Vista Social Club-style documentary about the proceedings. Plans to bring Janet Jackson and Oprah Winfrey, however, have fallen through, according to Gil's spokeswomen Gilda Matoso.

Anthropologists say in many ways slavery-era African culture is better preserved in Salvador than it is in Africa.

"We worry more about our African roots than they do in Africa. In Africa, they don't want to remember the past. Here we want to hold on to what we were torn away from," said Vera Lacerda, a retired history professor who now runs one of Salvador's most popular carnival groups, Ara Ketu.

The biggest attraction of Salvador's carnival are the "trios eletricos," huge bands that play a calypso-inflected samba known as "Axe (ah-SHAY) Music" from the top of the sound trucks.

About 18,000 policemen and 3,000 firefighters are employed to provide security.

Still, Aragao admits that robberies and purse snatching are frequent. But she argues that it's all but inevitable in the crush of bodies where millions of hands can be found groping in search of intimate body contact or cash.

With romance in the air, the federal government hands out millions of free condoms each year during carnival, as well as tips on how to avoid the spread of AIDS.

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Oprah is really getting into African related affairs. I wonder what she has in store.

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Anthropologists say in many ways slavery-era African culture is better preserved in Salvador than it is in Africa.

"We worry more about our African roots than they do in Africa. In Africa, they don't want to remember the past. Here we want to hold on to what we were torn away from," said Vera Lacerda, a retired history professor who now runs one of Salvador's most popular carnival groups, Ara Ketu.

Anybody know of Vera Lacerda? If he is black and/or African descent. I have not heard such.

Even from Chavez led Venezuela who have ongoing dialogue and visits to and from Africa (West) with its own cultural appointed minister of African affairs never mention this case about Africans, don't want to remember the past and worrying and holding to 'their' African roots.

I am sure there are cases but the whole continent? Will Brazil be declared the center of all of 'true' African ways to the world by the world?

But Brazil seems to 'preserve' not only African but German and Japanese cultural tendencies of the past as was the case with visits from prime ministers of each respective country.