Salvador de Bahia O Carnaval!

A blinding whirlwind kaleidoscope of bright colours lights and sound. The city’s streets teeter groaning under the weight of several hundred thousand feet (whoever said that there were 12,000 people on the streets was making a serious underestimate!) Four days into carnival the ruas seem to be spinning ever faster, the colours and sounds merge until the samba rhythms are seeped into our very skin, vibrating the very ground upon which we walk. Everywhere you look there is dancing, noise, flashes of extravagance, more dancing, drinking, laugher and general revelry.

For six long days o Salvador puts its best face on for the world, reflected in the carefully prepared costumes, beautifully decorated blocos electronicos (big floats) and a veritable sea of upturned smiling faces. The city council (!) does its best to keep up appearances too, overnight…or should I say in the early morning…. as if by magic the torrent of squashed beer cans, plastic cups, straws, ripped camisas and general discardment are swept up by an army of blood red uniformed street sweepers.

There is, however, a darker side to carnival too. Troops of army camo bullet proof vested and helmeted military police patrol the streets in groups of five, their riot gear cutting wide paths through the seemingly jam packed crowds who melt away at their alligator formation approach. The police thankfully don´t carry guns but they do carry almost meter long jet black truncheons as thick as my wrist. Just the other night I witnessed several of them beating a young boy of about 14 about the neck; they had mistakenly thought he had been fighting. A woman, who I presumed to be his mother, rushed up to try and pull them off as she shouted an explanation. They then did so, but by this point the boy was lying on the floor quite motionless his hands still up in surrender. 

This, unfortunately, is not a rare occurrence. Mercifully he did then get up and seemed to be ok physically, although obviously very shaken. All the scuffles and fights I have witnessed seem to be between boys aged 12-18. I have also only seen boys of around that age being searched by the police. The ones who are stopped and searched are nearly all black.

I will try to explain to you the sheer size and scope of Salvadorian carnival. Imagine a wide dual carriage way completely rammed with people as far as the eye can see in every direction. This endless moving mass of humanity stenches on for literally miles, winding its way through different paths through the city, only interrupted by the enormous bloco tucks and their immense sound systems – a lot of which have speakers along each side as big as Odeon cinema screens. If one is walking at the side of a float the sheer noise coming out of them is enough to almost make you step back. The noise is like a living physical thing blasting out so forcibly you can feel the sound waves smashing into you, the base reverberating the ground under your feet. Preceding each bloco are the dance troops in various costumes and of course the requisite samba bands. Surrounding them are people in the bloco´s t-shirts, who have paid to join the bloco for the day, and of course, the rest of the crowd. There are also the occasional group of capoirestas who start a roda whenever the procession pauses – which is quite often due to the utter volume of people.

On Saturday I was lucky enough to be able to join a friend’s bloco for free as they were playing in the samba band. I arrived at 7:30 having been told to arrive at 6 ish and I still arrived 15 mins before my friends (Brazilian time is even worse than Cuban!) we arrived at the bloco and were given camisas (T-shirts) that distinguish each bloco from the next. The name of ours was Ouro Negro (Black Gold). It took me about half an hour why so many people where staring at me - I was the only white person there. And in fact on the entire street. It´s funny I hadn´t even noticed…but then it´s easy for me to say that isn´t it – I'm white.

Soon, well after about three hours of milling about chatting, the samba band started up and so, in turn, did the capoeira. The regional style is more upright and some say more aggressive than in other regions. This style certainly looks much more like a martial art as opposed to a dance form. The blur of whirling synchronized limbs is almost hypnotic and I find myself having to remember to blink. I was then asked would I like to go up on top of the float, I was like errr is that a serious question:!! So there I was on top of a bloco electronico along with the musicians, a professional dancer in trad African costume (I won´t hazard a guess as to which country she was representing), about seven other Brazilians and myself all sambaing away as the float began to steadily move forwards – furious at myself for not bringing my camera!

Seeing carnival from such a vantage point was really quite something. The samba, the dancers, the capoeirstas, fellow bloco members and general crowd filled every square inch of road, fading out into a blur in every direction. An ocean of vaguely coordinated colour reaching out into the distance. Think Nottinghill but 10 times as big, 3 times as loud and lot more exuberant! The energy that the Brazilians possess is quite simply phenomenal. Yesterday carnival started at midday in the blazing relentless sun and 30C heat and went on until about 4,5 am! The news showed literal acres of ceaseless waving arms and dancing feet. The Rio carnival started last night and the family and myself watched quite a bit on TV after we´d finished off a big family lunch. Even though the costumes are mind boggling beautiful and intricate, the parades dazzling to the eye, one has much more of a passive ´carnival´ experience as to watch the floats in Rio you´re just sitting high up on raised seats. In Salvador, you can do this too, but most people tend to choose to be on the streets – in the thick of the action. That is certainly much more my idea of carnival.