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Carnival manifestations are realized at a series of organizational levels. Large *blocos charge $100 - 500 for the right to parade and dance within an enclosed area marked by rope which moves along the street. The music comes from a stage mounted on a truck covered in speakers (*trio elé), featuring a notable local band (playing *axé music, during the 1980s and 1990s). TV coverage of the carnival concentrates on these large blocos. The blocos afro were created as communitarian associations but most have since adopted the commercial formula of the blocos. Smaller groups with different resources and dimensions gather particularly in the in the narrow streets of the historical center (*Pelourinho). Here we find everything from eccentric individuals in inexplicable costumes, to miscellaneous community groups, such as small theater and dance troupes taking their work to the street, to smaller carnival blocos. This area is also the best place for parents to take their kids in costume.
Picture #26 "Carlinhos Brown"/"Mr. Brown" The most innovative carnival bloco of the 1990s was the Timbalada, creation of master percussionist and composer Carlinhos Brown. The sound draws on *Candomblî and local secular rhythms, adding technology, world pop influences and eccentric creativity. The look is global primitive chic. In the photo we find Carlinhos atop his trio elîtrico (stage-truck), at palm-tree height, with the sea behind looking like a blurred TV screen. At right, primitivist co-performers and a very focussed sound technician.
Picture #27 "Timbalada girl"/"Barbarella"
The body painting of the Timbalada is not traditional Afro-Brazilian or indigenous. It is a globalized artistic cannibalizing of various traditional motifs, and also invents new forms. The solid lines visible here suggest use of a stencil. The girl is mounted on the side of a *trio elé trico decorated as a spaceship in the style of 1950s Hollywood. Partial nudity is another taboo-breaking act associated with the Timbalada. Generally, the extravagant, fetishistic idealization of the naked female form as presented in the Rio carnival show, and indeed any other form of nudity, is absent from Bahian carnival. As a participatory event, with less clear boundaries between performers and enthusiasts, rules of social behavior must be more conventional, despite the party atmosphere.
Picture #28 "Bloco Didá & Neguinho" The most important musician in the creation of *axé music music may well be Neguinho do Samba, who created the samba-reggae rhythm while musical director of the bloco afro, Olodum. This became the backbone of the *axé music sound, well beyond its original communitarian confines. Neguinho do Samba subsequently left Olodum to work with the much smaller, all-female communitarian bloco named for its leader, Didą (a corruption of the name, Adriana). In the foreground photo we see the back of Neguinho do Samba wearing a Wayne Gretzy shirt. His raised hand directs the youthful band, which, for carnival, includes boys also. Didá's face is visible on the extreme right, with cowbell in hand, her face raised in musical concentration.
Picture #29 "Café boy" There's a song from an old American musical that goes, "there's an awful lot of coffee in Brazil". True, still, Salvador does not have cafės (establishments where one pays for and consumes coffee rather than a meal). Coffee is sold by wandering street vendors armed with a row of thermoses and a set of little plastic cups. Some do this with great flair and build up rolling coffee trolleys with lights and sound. Here, the "coffee boys" have been invited by a new bloco afro, called Cortejo Afro, to participate in the bloco's parade, and been given the costume of the bloco. The main subject is particularly strong on café PR and has candies for sale and ribbons and CDs for decoration. The tall white antenna shapes are stacks of plastic coffee cups and the rectangular white boxes are cigarette packets; the cigarettes are sold individually and often consumed with coffee. Such coffee consumers are also street workers. Most professionals eat in restaurants where coffee is served after the meal. Thus street coffee belongs to a locally oriented social realm. The coffee boys are a classic example of the informal or black economy - undocumented, untaxed, and low paid, but often paying more than the minimum wage of many formally contracted employees. These humble professional activities can be engaged in a way which accentuates individualism - a sort of symbolic resistance to the impossibility of conventional social legitimacy in the "system" as it stands - racist, classist, etc. Brazil has one of the worst income distribution inequity patterns in the world. Some people grumble about how all the best coffee is exported, which seems emblematic of the dependency syndrome, whereby rich countries get the best product from poor countries, and also repackage it and sell it back to these countries. There's more to coffee than meets the nose.
Picture 30 "Cafuz"/"cafuza" The cultural acknowledgment of racial mixing is reflected in the rich vocabulary of Brazilian Portuguese for various specific mixed racial types. Mulato really means of black and white mix; cafuz means a black and indian mix; caboclo means white and indian, like mestizo in Spanish. This local dance troupe is not an ethnically consistent group. Most would identify as Afro-Brazilians. Their costume focuses on indigenous Brazilian themes, with various elements external to this source thrown in.
Picture #31 "Body art"/"marcha" A theatrical group dance through the streets of the Pelourinho. They have used body painting to incorporate partial nudity, along with creative weaving of reeds for hat-gear.
Picture #32 "Mask group" Masks are the hallmark of another famous carnival, that of Venice in Italy. Here a community group which has worked on mask-making through a government grant takes its product to the street.
Picture #33 "Represent"/"cantar î contar" This small classic samba group is playing what is Brazil's most characteristic music outside of carnival. The signature style of samba was developed in Rio but the rhythm originated in Bahia and there are many local sub-genres. This group have improvised a costume for carnival with the creative application of a pair of scissors to yellow T-shirts. They are amateurs but play well and with a decided intensity. Title tip: "get out and represent" or just "represent" (intransitive verb - you don't say "what" you represent) is slang in L.A. for making the effort to be present at some event, thereby affirming one's community or group.
