Rio Carnival

Rio Carnaval
A float at Rio Carnaval, 2014
Genre	Samba, Marchinhas, Pop, Rock, and others
Location(s)	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The Carnival in Rio de Janeiro (Portuguese: Carnaval) is a festival held before Lent every year and considered the biggest carnival in the world with two million people per day on the streets. The first festivals of Rio date back to 1723.

The typical Rio carnival parade is filled with revelers, floats, and adornments from numerous samba schools which are located in Rio (more than 200 approximately, divided into 5 leagues/ divisions). A samba school is composed of a collaboration of local neighbours that want to attend carnival together, with some kind of regional, geographical common background.

There is a special order that every school has to follow with their parade entries. Each school begins with the "comissão de frente" ("Front Commission" in English), that is the group of people from the school that appear first. Made of ten to fifteen people, the "comissão de frente" introduces the school and sets the mood and style of their presentation. These people have choreographed dances in fancy costumes that usually tell a short story. Following the "comissão de frente" is the first float of the samba school, called "abre-alas" ("Opening Wing" in English). These are followed by the Mestre-sala and Porta-Bandeira (Master of Ceremonies and Flag Bearer), with one to 4 pairs, one active and 3 reserve, to lead the dancers, which include the old guard veterans and the "ala das baianas", with the bateria at the rear and sometimes a brass section and guitars.

As the parade is taking place in the Sambadrome and the balls are being held in the Copacabana Palace and beach, many carnival participants are at other locations. Street festivals are very common during carnival and are highly populated by the locals. Elegance and extravagance are usually left behind, but music and dancing are still extremely common. Anyone is allowed to participate in the street festivals. Bandas and blocos are very familiar with the street carnival especially because it takes nothing to join in on the fun except to jump in. One of the most well known bandas of Rio is Banda de Ipanema. Banda de Ipanema was first created in 1965 and is known as Rio’s most irreverent street band.