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Carnival: Brazilian Carnival
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The Carnival of French Guiana is a major aspect of the culture of that country. Although its roots are in the Creole culture, everyone participates — mainland French, Brazilians (Guiana has a frontier with Brazil) and Chinese as well as creoles.
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Rio's lavish carnival is one of the world's most famous. Scores of spectacular floats surrounded by thousands and thousands of dancers, singers, and drummers parade through the enormous Sambódromo Stadium dressed in elaborate costumes (or, quite often, with absolutely no costume.) It is an epic event televised around the world. The origin of Brazil's carnival goes back to a Portuguese pre-lent festivity called "entrudo", a chaotic event where participants threw mud, water, and food at each other in a street event that often led to riots (an event quite similar to today's Andean carnival - see Venezuelan section of this booklet). Rio's first masquerade carnival ball (set to polkas and waltzes) was in 1840. Carnival street parades followed a decade later with horse drawn floats and military bands. The sound closely associated with the Brazilian carnival, the samba, wasn't part of carnival until 1917.
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It's carnival time! Each February (and some years stretching into early March), Rio de Janeiro erupts in an ecstatic fiesta of pulsating music, swirling dancers, and radiant costumes. From all over the world, tens of thousands of people descend upon Rio for festivities lasting four days and four nights. Carnival is the Brazilian version of Mardi Gras, an exuberant holiday that comes before Lent, and it consumes the entire city.
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Brazilian citizens used to riot until the Carnival was accepted by the government as an expression of culture. That was because the Brazilian carnival had its origin in a Portuguese festivity called "entrudo".
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Brazilian Carnival