Street Carnival on the rise in São Paulo
São Paulo - The Afro Ilu Obá street party brought together a number of excited revelers at the República Square downtown
Over the last two years, the number of Carnival parties parading the streets of São Paulo grew some 40 percent, according to data from the city hall. Free from ropes, fences or abadás (special T-shirts worn by paying party-goers), Carnival festivities have fired up the city, and are expected to raise the number of revelers on official Carnival days this year. Authorities expect around 2 million to take part in the celebrations from January 29 to February 14. Last weekend alone saw over 400 thousand parading across the capital.
Geographer Alessandro Dozena, author of A geografia do samba na cidade de São Paulo ("The Geography of Samba in the City of São Paulo," in a literal translation), notes that the revelry has been part of the city's history for decades, originally marked by opulent bodies in display, rich families parading on carriages, the Carnival cordões—as the traditional groups of revelers are known, with their bass drums—, the extravagance of samba schools, and, more recently, the street parties known as blocos. In his view, the blocos have gathered momentum as the people of São Paulo felt the need for moments specially dedicated to “expressing social ties.”
Agência Brasil held an interview with the scholar in an attempt to bring São Paulo's current Carnival scene under debate. In his opinion, the festivities are an act of resistance which contributes to the increase in the diversity of ways citizens and visitors can experience the city.
“Street Carnival is marked by improvisation, and the resistance to the rules and whatever brings discipline. In it, we find the logic of improvisation, in which the urban environment is appropriated and the artificial is offset by the spontaneous in everyday reality,” he argues.
Dozena further explains that the show put on by the Carnival parades bolster the welfare in impoverished areas by improving the infrastructure for cultural activities and leisure. “Such expressions were crucial to giving vent to people's everyday sorrows through a collective experience key to the establishment of cultural values of a particular social group. In former days, the police would come and poke holes in the leather [of participants' musical instruments] and hit people. But they couldn't put an end to the music and merrymaking, which are spontaneous in their essence,” he says.
The researcher believes that street Carnival promotes bonding among revelers as public spaces are appropriated. “We see certain social practices in which life is temporarily reinvented, following the logic of the slow festive time, where new discourses are created through the subversion of order, the resistance to powers which institute and claim territories of power, discipline, administration, and bureaucracy,” he concludes.
Translated by Fabrício Ferreira
Fonte: Street Carnival on the rise in São Paulo
