We congregate at dawn in the hills of Santa Teresa as a lazy sun rises, bathing Rio de Janeiro below in a gentle pink. Soon, a vendor negotiating the precipitous cobbled streets will boast eggs so big they “made the hen cry.” The morning swarm of motos, horns blaring, will once again sound out. But it’s quiet now, the electric hum of cicadas only sporadically interrupted by the yelp of a marmoset or errant dog.
These moments of relative calm are conspicuous in their rarity here, and this month more so than any other. Rio Carnival is back.
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By 6:30 a.m., last night’s fireworks and gunshots from the neighbouring Morro do Fallet favela have barely ceased, and already the strains of samba drums are in the air. The beat grows steadily louder, and a saxophone wails as more musicians join the fray.
But this is not Carnival as you may know it, beamed onto your TV screen from the purpose-built 90,000 capacity, 570m long Sambadrome, where tickets to watch the self-styled “Greatest Show on Earth” can set you back as much as 5,000 Brazilian Real ($950).
This is one of Rio’s blocos: free, sometimes clandestine street parties that are open to all, presenting the people’s face of the annual spectacle. Revellers congregate at an agreed time and place, then follow a roving band wherever the rhythm dictates. Not limited to a single location or date, they run from as early as January and number over 500 in Rio alone.
Want to hear the Beatles back catalogue played in traditional samba style? Head to the Sargento Pimenta bloco in Flamengo. “Hey Jude” reimagined on a cuica doesn’t float your boat? The elusive Tecnobloco recreates the pounding kick of the club with the same traditional instruments while roaming—and often outright running—around the city at night. The only problem is you have to find it.
“There may be an understanding in the west that Carnival is limited to the Sambadrome,” says Fabiano Lacombe, a musician and author who sang during the past decade in the Bloco ExaltaRei, a group celebrating the music of Brazilian icon Roberto Carlos, before turning his attention to academia. “This is really a big misconception.”
While some blocos, like Cordão da Bola Preta, date back more than a century and regularly attract hundreds of thousands of revellers taking over entire freeways, others are considerably lesser-known, adopting something of a hush-hush approach.
For example, there’s the Desce Mas Não Sobe bloco in the uppermost reaches of the city, on the fringes of Tijuca national park—the name, fittingly, means “go down but not up.” This relatively small gathering goes ahead without any approval of authorities, as its organizers consider the need for such permission antithetical to the nature of Carnival. Instead, they instead assemble at the chosen location of Mirante do Rato Molhado (Wet Rat Hill) at 7 a.m., thanks to a last-minute flurry of WhatsApp messages.
While most of the city sleeps, the early birds buy ice-cold cans of Heineken, Beats Sense, and Cachaça de Gengibre from ambulantes (travelling vendors without whom there would be no Carnival), and pass them around with conspiratorial smiles. Someone cuts up and hands out a tab of LSD. It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.
“There is something magical in the early morning,” says Páula Margaux Devismes, a Franco-Brazilian singer touring the country with her band PPJ. “The first birds, the quiet city. And the first thing you do? Imagine: you don’t wake up to go to work, but to express your liberty with other people.”
It’s been a long time coming. The Rio Carnival hasn’t gone ahead in its full glory for three years.
In 2021, these streets were deserted as COVID-19 laid waste to the nation. According to the World Health Organization, only the United States has suffered more deaths from the virus. Then last year, authorities argued there “wasn’t time” to safely sanction street carnivals, despite private events and the more globally marketable, lucrative Sambadrome procession occuring.
But some people think there’s more to it than that. “There is a part of Brazilian society that seems to hate Brazil, which perceives the street party as vagrancy,” says Luiz Antonio Simas, a celebrated Carioca writer, historian and composer.
The man tasked with cracking down on these street parties in 2022 was Brenno Carnevale, the municipal secretary of public order, who deployed 32 agents to monitor social media and infiltrate WhatsApp groups for bloco samizdat. Hundreds of officers patrolled the streets, listening out for the faintest rumblings of brass or syncopated rhythm. Many events went ahead anyway.
“Carnival is not a social event that depends on a permit from the government,” read a manifesto signed by over 100 blocos. “It is a popular expression and a historical right conquered in the struggle. The street belongs to the people and our voice is free.”
No stranger to protest and armed with a drum, Renata Rodrigues was one of those who defied Carnevale and his cronies. The 46-year-old journalist grew up in a conservative Catholic family in mountainous Teresópolis, a smaller city around 100km inland from Rio. Initially, her parents’ distrust of the Carnival’s more bacchanalian tendencies became her own. Even as a teenager, she says, she regarded it as “a place of liberty but also a place of danger, where one could push the boundaries too far.”
“For a long time, I was distant and unconnected from carnival,” says Rodrigues. “I got married, had children, lived the conventional life.” Years ago, when she separated from her husband in “violent” circumstances, everything changed. Gradually, through reconnecting with Carnival and her own self-expression, Rodrigues discovered a whole community of “free, curious” women like her.
A viral social media post in 2014 by the young conservative group Jovens de Direita lit the touch paper. It pictured a man holding a sign reading “não mereço mulher rodada”: “I don’t deserve a woman who gets around.” It was these parochial values Rodrigues and her friend, political scientist Débora Thome, sought to challenge when they formed a bloco inspired by that phrase: Mulheres Rodadas.
She expected just a few close friends to show up in solidarity for the first outing but was amazed to discover thousands of like-minded people sharing the event page, with complete strangers joining them on the streets. As Mulheres Rodadas approaches ten years of existence, they now hold workshops teaching women to play instruments typically deemed the precinct of male Sambistas.
“I would risk saying that the same spirit of resistance of the original Carnival is still present in the blocos,” says Roberta Rodrigues, a languages teacher and the owner of nipple tassel brand Osada. “To take the streets despite the government, despite any rules; to gather around music and jogue o carnaval (play the carnival).”
Nothing is stopping them today.
A stern, white-haired sexaganarian in a blue hard hat and sparkly tie begins pounding his bass drum like he means it; beside him, a man in neon green sunglasses puts a melodica emblazoned with Lula campaign stickers to his lips. As the clock strikes 7:45, prominent local saxophonist Thales Browne turns up just in time for the first bar of Sergio Sampaio’s 1972 hit single, “Eu Quero É Botar Meu Bloco Na Rua.” The bloco descends.
Any latecomers wishing to join the fray haven’t got far to go. By 9 a.m., we’ve moved a grand total of 400 metres, so narrow are the Santa Teresa streets.
The police make an appearance, cutting through the crowd sirens wailing, but provide no more than a momentary intermission.
Minutes later, a grinning man in an Egypt football shirt waves the Palestinian flag. A man who could be Slash’s doppelganger plays a novelty blow-up guitar. A sort of hippie Jesus brandishes a cardboard sign urging people to “Drop Acid, Not Bombs.”
By noon in Santa Teresa, it’s hot enough to fry tapioca on the bonnet of a Beetle—this February Saturday is reportedly the warmest day in Rio since records began.
The parade culminates at Odylo Costa Neto Square, where the sensible seek shade and the hardy venture onwards to another bloco and beyond.
There’s a whole month of this to come.
At times, the bloco finds you. Emerging from a typical lunch of rice, black beans, and grilled meat at Restaurante ABCD onto the labyrinthine streets of Pereira da Silva, the way is blocked by the children of Favela Brass, a community project started to offer local kids the opportunity to transform their lives with free music lessons and equipment.
There’s nothing to do but stand back until the bobbing tubas have been and gone.
It’s a scene reminiscent of some words of advice from Browne, whose boundless energy you’ll find at the nerve centre of blocos all over the city: “The best place is where you’re at right now,” he says. “Don’t try to chase; let the carnival come to you.”
Should you venture a little further afield, away from the landmarks you’ll find on postcards, there’s every chance you’ll encounter yet another form of Carnival celebration.
Heading into the north and west zones of Rio, the street Carnival turns into large neighbourhood parties pulsing to the beat of funk until the early morning hours, where hundreds of groups of bate-bolas (ball-beaters) frighten and amaze in equal measure.
Traditional figures of the city’s periphery, these brightly-coloured, clown-like figures come out, loudly beating balls tied on strings on the ground, dancing alongside friends and family. The bate-bola groups often spend 10 months of the year preparing their costumes for Carnival.
“I don’t know who I’d be if it weren’t for Carnival with the bate-bolas,” says Jefferson Luiz Pereira, member of the bate-bola group Solução from the neighbourhood Abolição. “I’ve been going out to celebrate Carnival as a bate-bola for 20 years and am now raising my son in the culture too.”
“We live this,” Pereira explains passionately. “For us, it’s about love and having fun together.”
When she left Rio for Normandy in 2020, the day before the borders closed due to COVID-19, Páula Margaux Devismes, the singer, swore it would be her last Carnival.
“It’s a wild thing,” she offers by way of explanation. “So intense, very physical, sometimes aggressive, often confusing; always crazy. Sometimes you start the bloco in the mountains near Cristo Redentor with just a few hundred people and emerge from the forests to a great avenue having swollen to tens of thousands. You’ve been out dancing for more than 20 hours.”
The Franco-Brazilian says she ended up losing 10kg over the course of one particularly raucous Carnival month in her mid-twenties. Now she’s back, the hairs on the back of her arm standing up as she revels in the “communion” of the blocos.
“It’s a big mixed salad,” she says. “The people on the streets are like popcorn, coming into contact with one another, exploding.”
How to make the most of blocos
Veterans of the carnaval de rua offer their best tips and favorite blocos.
Stick with the crowd
“Be aware of smaller events and search social networks for unofficial blocos. The city centre brings together most of these groups but, as it is an area that is deserted and little policed, it is good to always be sure that there will be a procession and once in it not to stray from the larger group.” —Singer and academic Fabiano Lacombe, author of upcoming book on the blocos entitled Carnavais nas periferias do Rio de Janeiro
Bloco recommendation: Cordão do Boitatá
Look for parties on WhatsApp
”If you want to know where the blocos will be, join a WhatsApp group. There are so many, and that’s where you find out where to go. People share tips, make friends; it’s great fun. Safety is also an issue. With the government abandoning and neglecting a huge swathe of Brazilian society during the pandemic, some parts of town require attention – especially at night – so partying during the day and walking in groups is best. And please, please bring cans not bottles—the broken glass will ruin someone’s weekend! Other than that, invest in your costume, wear sunscreen, drink water and come with an open mind and heart. You will still get a sunburn, lose half of your costume and dehydrate a little… but that probably means that you have done it all correctly!” —Roberta Santa, languages teacher and owner of Carnival nipple tassel brand Osada
Blocos recommendation: Panamerica transatlântica, Cordão do Prata Preta, Amores Líquidos
Consider the context
“Remember carnival is always political in the expression of your body, the power of the collective, the occupation of the streets.” —Renata Rodrigues, co-founder of the feminist Bloco Mulheres Rodadas (Women Who Get Around)
Blocos recommendation: Cordão do Boi Tolo, “a classic, because it’s a collective of musicians improvising everything. Nothing is written. An organised mess. And of course Mulheres Rodadas.”
Trust in yourself
“Drink water, find the shade, trust in you, trust in other people, make new friends easily. Drink a nice freezy beer and just go ahead” —Franco-Brazilian singer Páula Margaux Devismes, touring Brazil with her band PPJ during Carnival month
Bloco recommendations: Tecnobloco, Tarado Ni Você (homage to legendary Tropicalia musician Caetano Veloso), Desce Mas Não Sobe.
Don’t forget the Sambadrome
“I really like Street Carnival, but also recommend going to the Sambadrome (in the popular sectors!) – Federal Deputy and President of the Carnival Special Committee Tarcísio Motta
Bloco recommendations: Loucura Suburbana, Embaixadores da Folia, Bola Preta, Prata Preta, Cordão do Boitatá, Comuna que Pariu.
Let the party come to you
“The best place is the place you’re at right now. Don’t try to chase; let the carnival come to you” —Thales Browne, street vendor turnedsaxophonist, who spearheads a number of alternative events all over Rio
Bloco recommendations: Charanga Talismã, Meu Doce Acabou (“My LSD Has Run Out”).
