Brazil's Carnival: The Biggest Party on Earth and What It Actually Means
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Rio de Janeiro's Carnival draws over two million people to the streets every day for five days before Lent — the largest street party on earth, and the culmination of months of preparation by the samba schools whose competition in the Sambódromo is the event's artistic centrepiece. Each escola de samba builds a theme — political, historical, mythological, celebratory — and expresses it through floats, costumes, music, and choreography over the course of roughly eighty minutes on the parade ground. The judging is serious, the stakes are high, and the themes chosen by the schools are often pointed political commentary delivered through spectacle.
Samba itself — the music and dance tradition that powers Carnival — emerged from the Afro-Brazilian communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century, built on rhythmic foundations brought from West and Central Africa through the transatlantic slave trade and transformed over generations into something distinctly Brazilian. The samba schools originated in the poor hillside favelas and brought their music into the centre of the city. Carnival is, among other things, the annual moment when that reversal is most fully enacted.
Brazil is the fifth largest country and the largest in South America — containing the Amazon basin, the world's greatest river system, with roughly 20 percent of all fresh water on earth flowing through it and the most biodiverse tropical forest ecosystem on the planet. Brazil also contains the Cerrado, the world's most biodiverse savannah, the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetland, and a coastline of 7,500 kilometres that ranges from equatorial heat to sub-tropical wine country. Its size makes it multiple countries sharing a language.
