The Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is a festival held every year before Lent; it is considered the

The Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is a festival held every year before Lent; it is considered the biggest carnival in the world, with two million people per day on the streets. The first Carnival festival in Rio occurred in 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 five leagues/divisions). A samba school is composed of a collaboration of local neighbours that want to attend the carnival together, with some kind of regional, geographical and 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" (meaning "Front Commission"), 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 elaborate 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"). These are followed by the Mestre-sala and Porta-Bandeira ("Master of Ceremonies and Flag Bearer"), with one to four pairs, one active and three reserve, to lead the dancers, which include the old guard veterans and the "ala das baianas", with the drum line battery at the rear and sometimes a brass section and guitars.

HISTORY
The Rio Carnival celebration dates back to the 1650s. During that time, elaborate feasts were organized to give honor to the Greek wine gods. The Romans used to worship Bacchus, the god of the grape-harvest. The festival ‘Entrudo’ was introduced by the Portuguese and this inspired the birth of the Carnival in Brazil. In 1840, the very first Rio masquerade took place, and polka and waltz took center stage. Africans subsequently influenced the Carnival with the introduction of Samba music in 1917, which is now considered a traditional Brazilian form.

There was no carnival in 1915 to 18 or 1940–45. Once more it was canceled with strict warnings against clandestine celebrations in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil and was postponed in 2022 for similar reasons. It returned in 2023.

SAMBA SCHOOL PARADE
The first Samba school parades were held in Praça Onze region, now the neighborhood of Cidade Nova, also known as “Big Africa”, the birthplace of the Carioca Carnival parade as it is known today, where a huge number of Afro-Brazilians had have a presence since the 1890s and the beginning of the Republic. The pre-existing traditions of ranches and Cordão carnavalesco that dated from the Empire among the free African communities, which would be combined into carnival blocks by the 1920s, would evolve into their ultimate form - the Rio samba school.

Future Estácio de Sá, together with Portela and Estação Primeira de Mangueira paraded for the first time in the city in 1929. All three were former carnival blocks which transformed into schools with professional staffing and city support. In 1930, seven schools were already active in the city. With the works of in Avenida Presidente Vargas, the parade moved there, and from 1942 to 1945 the parade was held in São Januário. From 1952 temporary stands for the public were annually assembled, and in 1961 paid tickets made their debut to take advantage of the rising international and national interest and the increasing tourist arrivals. In 1974, due to the works of the subway, the parade was held on Avenida Presidente Antônio Carlos, from where it was also broadcast for the first time in color television. In 1978, the parade was transferred to the Marquês de Sapucaí Avenue, where it remains up to this day. In 1983, the then...

LINK TO ARTICLE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Carnival

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