Brazilian Carnival is considered as a great festival that is held forty days before the beginning of Lent or Easter where Roman Catholics and some other Christians traditionally abstained from eating meat and poultry and from all bodily pleasures. It is a four-day celebration that starts on Saturday and ended on Fat Tuesday. The Carnival is the most famous holiday in Brazil and commonly presented and participated in different costumes that vary from one region of Brazil to another. The festival can be considered an act of farewell to the pleasures of the flesh and usually starts in February, when summer is at its peak. The Carnival period in Rio will be on February 8-16, 2013.
The typical variety of music of Brazilian carnival are the following:
- in Rio de Janeiro (and Southeast Region in general): the samba-enredo, the samba de bloco, the samba de embalo and the marchinha;
- in Pernambuco and Bahia (and Northeast Region in general): the frevo, the maracatu, the samba-reggae and Axé music.
Regions of Brazil differs in their own style of celebrating the festival. Rio de Janeiro style originally mimicked the European form of the festival, later absorbing and creolizing elements derived from Native American and African cultures. The carnival in São Paulo takes place in the Sambodrome of Anhembi on the Friday and Saturday night of the week of Carnival, as opposed to Rio’s Carnival, which is held on Sunday and Monday night. In Bahia, there are many rhythms that include samba, samba-reggae, axé, etc.
The best known among the carnivals in every region of Brazil is the one taking place in Recife together with the neighboring Olinda and Salvador but the most famous and the biggest among them all is the Carnival in Rio de Janiero. The most involved groups in Rio Carnival are the so-called favelas, the poorest neighboorhood.
Brazil's tourism reportedly receives 70% of annual visitors and Rio de Janiero's carnival alone drew around 4.9 million people in 2011 with 400,000 being foreigners.
Image source: brazilcarnival.com.br
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