Carnaval in Bahia | nat creole. online

+travel essay.brazil

carnaval in bahia
+brook stephenson
+photos copyright 2006, Brook Stephenson

It was crazy.

The weather was 90 degrees and it was the middle of summer. The city I stayed in was the old heart in cidade alta (upper city). Old Bahia mixed with the new, complete with cobblestone streets, wooden, stucco and concrete buildings, steep hills and winding narrow roads. That’s where I was staying in Brasil on the East side of South America off the Atlantic Ocean.

Most men wonder how the women look. Whatever you have heard, it’s true.

Are they as beautiful as they say? Y

Obrigado Brasil.

The average, homey, nerdish women are hot and the hot women are stunning. Maybe it’s the way the sun kisses them. Maybe it’s all the plastic surgery. I know a whole lot of it is genetics, African, Portuguese and native South American blood lines entwined with each others’ cultural contributions topping it off. One aspect of being African-American and going to another Afro seasoned country is you can peep real quick where the similarities and differences are. We each got our pros and cons with our national cultures but we got a whole lot in common.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The caramelized sun-toned population celebrates together with very few incidents of violence, if any altercations at all, and that observation resonated with me. Granted Brasil used to be a dictatorship until the 70’s and the military police are no, I repeat no, joke. Granted cats might just not show up to work that week and still have a job. “Hey, it’s Carnaval,” and a shrug is the response. But what else can I say when I spent a week in Bahia during Carnaval? I was swept up in it and living on the smaller one of the main parade routes. The parades started at 6pm and ran until 6am Thursday through Tuesday. My internal clock was all messed up. I knew when I was tired, when it was daytime and when it was night. But what time it actually was, I had no clue. I couldn’t even tell you and had to ask. No one brought a watch.

Que horas sao (what time is it)?

Carnaval time. Six nights of a well orchestrated mix of music, culture and religious celebration with blocos that travel on parade routes. A bloco is a trio of electricios (Semi trailers loaded with major electronics), one will be hooked up with a monster sound system, one with a bar, food and first aid, and another for dancers. Outside of the blocos but inside the blue rope (cordao), are those who purchase shirts (abadas) to participate in the bloco- because blocos are all inclusive and a whole lot can go down inside of one. Remember this festival is conducted to get out all the ill impulses you’ve had all year so you can start lent right. I saw a few blocos- Timbalada, Ghandys, Ile Aiye and Olodum plus a few I didn’t know, not Fat Boy Slims although he did have his own electricio.

ep. No joke, no lie dem femmes are incredible.

Obrigado Brasil.

Que horas sao (what time is it)?

They have two major and one minor bloco routes, the Campo Grande to Praça Castro Alves (Avenidas circuit), streets that ran through downtown, and from Barra to Ondina (Dodo circuit) near the beach. The minor and more recently added route is through Pelourinho (Batatinha) and it is for smaller bands. That’s where I was staying, Pelourinho. My hotel room sat bird’s eye off the Batatinha route. Bands would parade up the cobblestone hill with their dancers or performers in front and supporters and participants in the back. And they were loud but nowhere near as loud as those on the main circuits. Pelourinho is 100% Old Bahia architecture- narrow winding cobblestone streets and four story buildings. The sound resonance is nasty. But they are nothing compared to the blocos.

This is how it goes down. Thursday, the blocos start off slow. It’s the first crowd. People are dancing, drinking and groping in the street but it ain’t quite poppin yet. It’s real hype no doubt but poppin? No. We caught the Dodo circuit and sat up on the steep grassy hill with the Jesus statue fifty yards off the street and about one hundred and fifty yards up a steep incline. The statue of Jesus is a smaller version of the one in Rio that overlooks the city and most people associate with Brasil.

The side we were on faced inland. The other side showed what the Atlantic Ocean looked like crashing in. You could hear it under the blocos' clear full sound. One float was a good half-mile away blasting clear vocals, bass and treble to where we sat. It just crept along like an ant to where we were. After we got through watching, we went back through the Dodo and the Barra area back to Pelourinho and the old heart of the city in Upper Bahia.

Somehow I slept that first night in the heat the ceiling fan was doing nothing to keep in check. All it did was provide a weak breeze because all the festivities and drums below were wrecking the room wrestling with humidity.

Then it was morning.

Almost missed my first Brasilian breakfast. Two vats of fresh squeezed juice, wedges of other fruit, cakes, dry cereal, tea, coffee rolls, ham and provolone slices were a delicious way to start the day.

Breakfast was the part of the day where we just reviewed whatever happened last night, what we would be doing today and where we were going tonight. It was our small community time. It was my favorite time of day because of the view and the breeze. The group I went with was my boy Vince, his business partner Oshibi, Oshibi’s wife Toya, their boy Art who went to Florida A & M with them, this cat Will who manages a club in Tallahassee, Maconda from DC and four other people I think I saw only twice. I stopped wearing shoes to breakfast after the first day. It was nothing but t-shirts and pajama bottoms thereafter. It was the middle of summer and about 87 degrees everyday and 80 degrees every night.

The rest of the time it was shorts and a t-shirt and an occasional backpack but that was only for the beach. And you bet I went to the beach.

Barra (pronounced baha) is the beach neighborhood along the Dodo circuit. During the day, they would sound check electricios while people ate at restaurants, drank at bars, used Internet cafes and went to the beach. The curved coastline made beautiful beached coves. The beach is walled with wide ledges and stairways stretching down to the sand from the street. On the beach, there are a number of beach chairs and umbrellas that you can rent for a small fee. Vendors push earrings, prawns on a stick and cheese on a stick. The beach chair vendors also hustle cold beers and mixed drinks. I went to the beach four days out of seven. I had a lot of beer, did a lot of swimming and got really dark.

First, get up for breakfast, socialize and plan the day, then go back to the room and take a nap. Second, go out to the square, to lower Bahia, to the beach and to another neighborhood to get the t-shirts for the camarote. Wait. I didn’t tell you what that is yet. It’s bloco related. There is a two-part participation in the blocos. First is the abada so you can be in the parade itself and second is the abada for the camarote so you can go to the bandstand and watch your bloco when it comes thru. Today we linked up with a gallery owner and local connector Carlos. Carlos knows everybody. We linked up with him through my home girl KC. KC is the type of person who might show up anywhere anytime globally. This time she showed up to Brasil two months ago and has been the hook up ever since. We walked down the hill, flagged a cab and followed Carlos’ car to the Abridade ( Liberty) neighborhood. It’s one of the lower class areas and home to the only publicly funded school run by one of the African blocos and one of the oldest and most respected music groups, Ile Aiye. They do not allow white people into their bloco or perform with them.

Think about that for a second. Now think about anyone in the states doing the same thing. Now think about why I’m going back.

We went there and when we got out in the middle of the hood I was sho’ hoping the few Portuguese phrases I knew were going to help me out. We stood out. One, we were rolling through two cars deep and two, we speak English. Granted we look just like everybody else but we were strangers and the neighbors outside being social could easily tell. I saw two cats working on a car down the way, up from them on the opposite side of the street, a woman is chit chatting with her neighbor, while walking up a hill were two junior high school looking girls. Across from the school, a few folks huddled in the shade of the awning from the bodega.

A few of us hit the bodega for some refreshments. I grabbed a bottle of water from a fridge and asked the cat behind the counter, “Quanto custa?” with a damn good bit of Brasilian diction, paid him the one reahas it cost and thanked him, “obrigado”. Even KC was like, ‘Damn Brook, you said that really well.’

I have been studying the language the whole time I been here. It’s bad when you just have no idea what people are saying. But more than that, I was scrutinizing their cadences. That’s where I grabbed the heartbeat of their diction. It’s cool that I can say it somewhat with a local’s tongue but I still don’t have a vocabulary. Nothing hurts or hinders more than that.

The building was huge. What you see from the street is more like the middle level where the common school area and stage sit. The building is built on a hill so it stretches back, up and down with various levels. We bought our shirts and went back to the hotel. This was Friday. Friday night, we hit more of the Dodo circuit again in Barra.

We went to the beach in Barra for the first time today. To get there we would go downstairs and drop the room key off in the lobby and hike up the cobblestone hill to the Elevador Lacerda that takes you to Lower Bahia where you can catch the public bus to where ever you are going. They are exactly like the buses Knockout Ned was working on in City of God. The beaches there were thick with people, massage tables and vendors. Women and men were tanning, flirting and drinking. The children mostly played in the water or dived off the edge of a ledge into deeper waters. I just swam, drank and took a few photos mostly. We went from there back to the hotel because Saturday night was our first night in the camarote and I really wanted to see the bloco.

It was almost the best night. We almost missed the bloco when it came five hours earlier than expected. I would have been pissed but it’s Carnaval, things happen. Some times we were on time, sometimes we weren’t.

This time though, we didn’t miss Ile Aiye but they didn’t get there until sometime after 2:30pm. I was tired. I could hear they were tired. Their bloco rolled slow. First, the dancer electricios followed by the mega system electricios with the singers and horns on top. Ile Aiye’s forty-drum battery walked behind that and then the adamas. Everybody was tired at that point. The Camarote, that was thick earlier, was sprinkled with people like lint along the fringes of the curves of the space.

The damn drums never stop. Every night I try to get a nap in before heading out but then the drums come again and again, resounding and pounding in the window. After that, the horns blow in to intensify the fever pitch. I know the syncopation like I know my heartbeat now. I love it, breathe it and Brownian move to it. Eventually, I sleep through it. Daytime was slow- mall, eat, check email, beach, and eat again. The camarote on this night was the one. We walked past a few crowds up the hill, past the square down to Campo Grande. The sea of people that were off da chain last night are humming! This party isn’t over at all! Back in the camarote it’s business as usual- hit the ticket counter for a couple of strong drinks then up the stairs to the viewing area with people in the back, front, at the ledge, squatting on the steps or lounging on the sofas. Now the entire time I have been here I noticed one thing and I can’t talk about the camarote with out saying it. Carnaval is a family/community event. In the Camarote and out on the street are kids under ten, teenagers, young adults, adults, middle age adults, seniors, mothers nursing new borns and pregnant women in their second and third trimester. Everybody’s partying. Everybody’s dancing. Everybody’s united. It’s the weirdest most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And everybody’s black. We have nothing like this in the states, nothing. Not black history month. Not the fourth of July. Not even Juneteenth. This is really hot.

Last day of Carnaval and we did what… go to the beach. That night, we went back to the Camarote for what I call “putting an upstart in her place.” The way this camarote was set up, it sits at an X intersection on a hill. The Avenidas flows down one street and turns up another. If a bloco went straight, it would go in to a sea of people spilling over from the square. If it goes left, it heads down to where the military police are dragging offenders in choke holds. The Avenidas route actually makes a U shaped turn up another street. What happened was another bloco’s electricios was sitting still and pumping up the crowd with hits as Ile Aiye’s bloco approached the intersection. The Ghandy’s were grooving to the pop star’s music and since their bloco had just came through they just spilled into the crowd already there. With the Ghandy’s being the largest group, there were a lot of blue towel hats and abadas in view. Ile Aiye’s bloco was moving into position for the turn and pumping their music but the pop electricios didn’t stop. Next thing you knew, Ile Aiye pumped up the sound and sat their electricios at an angle for maximum reverb in the middle of the turn. With the height and narrowness of the angled road it was like a huge bass tube with the electricios in the middle. Ile Aiye cranked up their system and blasted the youngster into silence. The drummers just kept beating. The Ghandys moved away from the pop star towards Ile Aiye. Ile Aiye won this clash hands down. It was the African drum that did it. That African drum beat stronger and deeper than pop music syncopation. It just would not be out done. It was as if Africa came through

sound. To translate this feeling is beyond my ability. I just felt the link Afro-Brasilians have to Africa in that drum and it was unlike any music I’ve heard stateside. It is something that I have been trying to put into words ever since.

I could go on about the last two days and the beaches I went to but I won’t. It adds nothing to the story. Carnaval was over and with it, the fever pitch that held Bahia broke.

But what did I really see? It was weird, Brasil. There were things I saw I liked and things I didn’t like. I saw the racism I see in America but it was largely black on black crime, and it manifested in a different way. Think of segregation in America fifty years back but without Jim Crow. You can go anywhere without physical racism but there’s still social racism. If you have dark skin, you are black and if you are black, your opportunities are limited. Nobody wants to be black. If you are white or have light skin, you got the world ahead of you. For a country that received double the African slaves that the United States did, being somewhat African is what most everybody is, light or dark skin. They even say among themselves that everyone has to have a “connection” to Africa, so everybody, black or white, is still black in Afro-American terms. But Brasilian terms don’t put it that way. They acknowledge their African culture and blood yet still have a skin toned class system.

Nevertheless, Ile Aiye showed me that Afro-Brasilians have a stronger connection to Africa than Afro-Americans. Obviously Afro- Brasilians and Afro-Americans are kindred. But unlike America’s creators, African slaves in Brasil retained more of their own culture. I could tell in the drums of Ile Aiye that Africa wasn’t lost in Brasil but dissolved in with the native and Portuguese cultures to create something unique. I could see it in the mix of Portuguese, Native and African features. I could see that I was not lost there and felt that I would never be. I had fun, hung out, kicked it and talked that universal language- laughter.