The rio de Janeiro's carnival nowadays...

Let's introduce the aim of rio de janeiro's carnival, one of the most touristic carnival in the world.There is a competition between the different school of samba. Coming from african slaves, it's actually the most important dance during the carnival. Different school of samba have 90 minutes for their parade. They can show their work because they've prepared it during the whole year. A specific subject is chosen by each samba school. Both costumes and dances have a link with it. Lundu, polka and maxixe are also included in the dances...Morover, school have their own supporters coming to watch them and the feeling of being included in a group is really powerful.Costumes are wonderful. Some people save money all the year to buy a costume they will use only once. Traditionally, there is a wing of women with costumes coming from Bahia. Best-known are those flirting with nudity and with very big feathers. Dancers are over big floats, very colored. The first wing of each school begin with the traditional "comissão de frente", in reference to first carnivals. On friday, the mayor officialy give a giant key to king Momo, symbol of craziness, who will reign during 5 days, the tuesday being the pinacle of his reign. Least important samba's school begin, and the best schools have their representation on sunday and monday's night. Districts are proud to show themselves during those few days.

THE ORIGINS OF THE RIO CARNIVAL

The carnival is celebrated in Rio since the end of the XVIIth century from a variant of the entrudo (entered the Fast), a portuguese party which consisted in throwing each other buckets of waters or to send some mud, eggs, flour on the passers-by. This event, considered as violent and tasteless, was finally forbidden.

The Rio carnival such as it exists today was born in the XIXth century, after the abolition of the slavery in 1 888. It is only later that the music of African origin is going to make its entrance and would be going determining in its evolution.
However private balls of the good society are going to privilege the polka. Social cleavage is evident: Well-off classes dance in worldly lounges whereas common people stirs in streets over the sound of the percussion's sound.

Then the Carnival is going to take more and more scale and this enjoyment which show the blacks will be more and more shared by all the classes of society.


So everybody can participate in the carnival, and even those who are not cariocas (inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro) become them the time of the party.
Today the carnival is a popular entertainment collecting all the social classes and creating the unity of the Brazilian people