One of the most attractive people’s festivities in the world shows up its bright every year. The samba and the Carnival of Rio de Janeiro, are two basic elements of this country’s culture.

There is no carnival without the samba. And it is very difficult to imagine a samba dancer out of the festive context that every year drags thousands of people, both Brazilians and foreigners, to Rio’s Plaza Once. The samba and the carnival merge together and complement each other as a unique cultural expression. Each of them, however, appeared in different times and places, but met in the City of the Cristo Redentor and the Pao de Azucar, two tourist images of the 20th century. The Samba: Brazilian Soul More than a musical genre, the samba turned into the very identity of the Brazilian nation. The samba, recognized together with the “marcha” as authentically Carioca, emerged to meet the need of a rhythm for the disorderly carnival of the early years of the century. The music sung at those festivities a hundred years ago was either the old African songs brought by the Bahian immigrants in Rio de Janeiro, or polkas and even waltzes imported from European ball rooms. Originally brought from Portugal, the carnival favored those games played in the streets, rather than the pleasure generated from dancing and music. In 1870, 270 years after their first arrival in Brazil, the Portuguese started to feel that their carnival, very limited if compared to what was to come later, began to be enlarged as it started to include the poorest sectors of the population. For blacks and browns, as well as for poor whites, there was just the sound of the batuques, gatherings of African blacks and also the name of a drum, that inherited the dancing rounds that came along with slavery. Musicologists consider that the batuque rounds identified as African “sembas” came to be called “sambas”. Bahians Bring the Samba to Rio de Janeiro The frantic rhythm born in the northeast started to spread thanks to the migratory movement of Bahian women towards Rio de Janeiro. Among these women, respectfully called “aunts”, were Aunt Ciata, a famous baker and party fan; Aunt Amelia, mother of Donga, a famous samba composer; and Aunt Prisciliana, mother of Joao de Bahiana. The Bahian community chose to live in the neighborhoods closest to the center of Rio, like A Saude and Cidade Nova, and planted there the seeds of the music that would become one of the greatest pleasures of the poor population and, later, the nation’s cultural emblem. It was at Aunt Ciata’s, at 117 on Vizconde de Itauna Street, where a group of almost illiterate composers came up with a musical arrangement with themes originated in the most rustic areas, and also in the cities. That music called “Pelo telefone” (On the phone), composed exclusively for the 1917 carnival by Ernesto do Santos and Mauro de Almeida, became the definitive rhythm of the Carioca festival. The fact that this musical composition was registered and classified as “a samba” and its later diffusion nationwide through records made the rhythm definitively official. As a result of the influence the radio and other mass media exerted on it, the samba underwent several changes. For more than 60 years Brazil imported fashions of various origins that flowed into the samba. But the endless capacity of this rhythm to be easily renewed inspired composer Nelson Sargento to coin the phrase: “The samba agonizes, but it does not die”. The Carnival, the Samba and the Schools Ten years after the registration of “Pelo telefone”, the first samba to have ever been recognized as such, the samba schools born in Rio de Janeiro contributed to the explosion of the pomposity and annual homage Rio de Janeiro pays to the creators of this rhythm. The schools that emerged in an uncomfortable position of parades tolerated by State institutions are, in 1997, recognized as the greatest and most pompous attraction of the Carioca carnival. One of the wings of the schools pays homage to the Bahian women that brought along the African batuque. The samba is one thing, but the schools of the samba are something else. The natural habitat of the samba were the houses of the Bahian aunts, where the black community of Rio gathered together. It was precisely in the Carioca pebbles and on the outskirts of the city that the samba grew up and opened a path to the parades of the schools. Though there is vagueness in reference to some data on the origin of the schools, the scholars that have studied this issue agree that the first of these schools, called “Deixa falar” (Let us talk), was founded in 1928, in the pebble of Estacio. The parade of the samba schools was first accepted by the State in 1935, under the title of “Recreational Society”. The school of Portela was the most innovative of these groups, as it introduced allegories, the samba-tangle (a samba dedicated to a central theme that presides the school), and the front commission, that would prevent the entrance of those alien to the Portelan community. The rest of the schools later incorporated these transformations which are still used today. The link of the samba schools with the plastic arts gave splendor to these musical organizations, a union that gave birth to what has been named “carnavalesco”, a figure that originated in 1959, and is already considered indispensable in the struggle to win the samba championship. The carnavalesco has its own supporting staff: manual workers, musicians, dancers, who put into practice their artistic idealizations, characterized by abundance of imagination and audacity.