Lynn Adventuring Abroad: Caipigringa Does Carnival in Pernambuco

My first Brazilian Carnival by far exceeded all my expectations. What can I say? It was...well... To give you some idea of what it was like, imagine the best Halloween party you've ever been to, combined with the best music festival, where everyone is happy and hyper and all about making merry, set in a beautiful colonial city on Brazil's Northeast coast for four days straight. Take what you just imagined and multiply it by 10, because this is something that you really can't imagine unless you've been here. Its that amazing. Brazilians of all ages appear to have endless amounts of energy and love to party like no other people I've ever met in my life. Really, its the people that make Carnival. The openness and gregariousness of Brazilians means that you make hundreds of new friends during this time. Meeting up with old Brazilian friends on the street, you find that Carnival brings out a whole new side to them as you dance down the cobblestone streets together with the thousands of other revelers, singing along with the frevo band you're following behind, howling in joy as you're pelted by water guns or rain, and just totally loving life. Of course the incomparable talent and creativity of Brazilian music and dance is also what makes Carnival so special and unique, along with the incredibly creative costumes and famous giant dolls that parade throughout town.

Particularly here in Pernambuco, where Carnival is much more traditional than the other famous Carnivals such as Rio's and Salvador's. The people of the twin cities of Olinda and Recife like to say that they have not only the best and most traditional (almost all music here is live folkloric music played without any sort of electrification/amplification), but also the most democratic and participatory Carnival. This is because here you are not charged entry fees to see the best shows or blocos; it is rare (only in some places in Recife) to see anyone standing in some roped off area or sitting in bleachers that they paid for to be out of the crowd. Here, if you want to go to Carnival, you better be prepared to be fully in it with everyone else. You can try to find a shady place to stand on the sidewalk and watch the action go by, but you'll spend a lot of your time joining the throngs of thousands of people following a bloco through the streets of Olinda. In Recife, whose main Carnival events are at night, once Olinda's have ended, there are multiple stages set up with big shows, in addition to the parades of blocos. All of these are free of course. On any one night in downtown Recife and Recife Antigo during Carnival there is likely at least one million people out in the streets. During Carnival there is so much going on in the culturally rich twin cities of Olinda and Recife, not to mention the smaller towns in rural areas with their own traditional Carnival, that it is difficult to decide how to spend your time during these four days in order to see and experience the most. You can forget anything resembling sleep and rest, at least beyond the absolutely necessary amounts. And eating? Well unless Pitú has recently been declared a member of one of the food groups (its made from sugarcane, does that count for something?), than the ingestion of food during this wild week is limited to things like deep-fried pastries that you can find on the street. So as you can imagine, Carnival is hard on the body.

Yet during these four days I seemed to somehow have boundless energy and rarely felt hunger or fatigue. No, I was not using drugs, and my alcohol consumption was moderate compared to many a Carnival reveler. It was the manic energy out there in the streets. It got into me. I loved it and felt more alive than ever, grinning from ear to ear as I danced along with the other costumed and ridiculously happy and excited merrymakers. One night when I had decided to try and get a good night's sleep, I wasn't even able to due to my addiction to the energy and rhythm of Carnival. I woke up in the middle of the night literally singing the most famous and oft played frevo song, and I got up and started trying out my newly acquired frevo dancesteps (taught to me early that evening by an indefatigable 9 year-old frevo champ named Jessica) in the kitchen as I made myself a pre-sunset breakfast. I just couldn't wait for the day's revelry to start up again!

So what all did I do during those four days of Carnival, you ask? I'll lay it out for you here, as this is my chance to describe some of the beauty that is the Pernambucan Carnival. I just hope I can do it justice.

Because I live in Olinda, Carnival actually began for me long before the official starting date in mid-February. My Recifense friends Mariana and Diego took me to my first Carnival preview back in November. I sambaed the night away with members and supporters of Olinda's "Eu acho é pouco" bloco. That night I learned that this Carnival thing was something I was going to love... When I moved to Olinda shortly thereafter I learned that every Sunday from December until February would be a Carnival preview in the streets of the historic center. On my afternoon jaunts through town on these days I would catch some maracatu groups warming up in the park, and occasionally follow along behind a frevo group for a while up or down one of Olinda's steep hills. By 6 pm thousands of people would have flocked into Olinda's historic center for the Carnival preview, and together we would march and dance behind the bands and blocos, warming ourselves up for the events to come in February. By the beginning of February, two weeks before Carnival, it might as well have already been Carnival. The energy in the streets, and not just the historic center, had definitely changed. You could feel, and most definitely hear, the excitement and anticipation in the air. I partook in my fair share of pre-Carnival activities in Olinda and Recife, and found myself having to spend a couple of days resting up before the actual week of Carnival.

On the Friday before Carnival I received five guests in my apartment, all of whom would spend the week there with me. These folks hailed from France, Israel, Canada, and Alaska. An international bunch, all Carnival virgins, all ready to make the most of this experience. That night a few of us went to a concert in Recife where we saw some of the state's best maracatu groups perform, and where I, while wearing an afro wig with a yellow feather in it, met up with some of my Brazilian colleagues, including a 60-something priest whose enthusiasm for this region's culture was unparalleled, and who expertly and calmly navigated the crowds.

On Saturday I woke up by 8 ready to hit the streets of Olinda. The Carnival festivities here begin early in the day and mostly end by around 7 pm. If you want to keep going into the night, you have to either go to the concert held nightly two blocks from my apartment (you could see the stage from my bedroom window) or head to Recife, where the shows would go until the wee hours of the morning. So upon waking up and hearing the sound of drums in the distance, I made breakfast, which included a round of caipirinhas, and hit the streets with my glittery feather headdress. I watched the blocos go by with these ladies for a while:

As I wandered around Olinda, checking various maracatu and frevo groups out, and eying all of the awesome costumes, I made some new friends, which included Batman and Robin.

And even DuffMan.

Once my Israeli friend Dana and I met up with this group of ladies weilding a water gun, our Carnival fate was sealed. We would spend the rest of the week in water fights day and night, and this turned out to be one of the most fun parts of Carnival. With a water gun you manage to make all kinds of new friends- as if that wasn't already easy enough at Carnival in Olinda!

Later on Saturday I met up with my Recifense friends Mariana and Diego who have been talking non-stop about how excited they are for Carnival since the day I arrived in Pernambuco back in October. They are experts when it comes to Carnival in Olinda. They took me around town, found us a great shady spot to hang out at and watch the craziness go by (while shooting some crazies with water guns of course), and then took me to see the "Eu acho é pouco" bloco with their wild dragon and throngs of thousands of wild people dancing in the street behind them. It was a great time!

I ended that night dancing at the concert near my house, and turned in somewhat early. Before the concert that night the vision of caipigringa was dreamt up by a fellow caipirinha lover and me while I prepared a round of what I boldly called Olinda's best caipirinha.

By Sunday morning I was more than ready for another big day in Olinda. I was desperate for a costume, so I cut up my white New Year's Eve dress, pinned some flowers to it and to my hair, and bought a set of fairy wings, with wand and headband included. So I spent Sunday as a fairy, or fadinha in Portuguese.

Some people thought I was a butterfly (maybe because I had butterflies on my headband?), and from one old man I got a "A butterfly like that deserves a nice garden!" I received quite a few comments as a matter of fact, but that one was by far the sweetest, without nearly as dirty of undertones as some of the others (yes Carnival is famous for being quite sexual, although its not at all sleazy). After purchasing my fairy accessories we made our way up through the crowded streets to the Alto da Sé, which is the highest point of the historic center, and where one of Olinda's famous blocos would be meeting up and leaving from. This bloco "Enquanto, na Sala de Justiça" is apparently based on some cartoon that I have no recollection of ever watching, where all the cartoon superheroes (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, etc.) would meet up and work together to fight crime. Needless to say, there were a lot of superhero costumes at this bloco. And they were great! My favorites included Penguin and Catwoman, the Ninja Turtles, the Borats (okay, maybe Borat can't be classified as a superhero, but this was a really popular costume), and this French guy dressed up as some kind of Super Cheese man (hilarious and oh so French, in a good way!).

Later that day we found ourselves in many more water fights, dancing lots of frevo and some maracatu, and somehow inside Alceu Valença's house. Alceu is a quite famous singer from Pernambuco who happens to own two beautiful homes in Olinda. His dog jumped out of a window and into my friend's arms, and before we knew it Alceu's caretaker was inviting us in for the grand tour. He gave us beers and showed us the place, including Alceu's bedroom, his closet (full of crazy costumes), and his lovely outdoor bathroom that I was quite jealous of. We even got a screening of a movie that Alceu directed and the caretaker played a role in. The movie is not yet out, but it sure looked good. We ended up visiting both of Alceu's houses, and in the second one we watched the Carnival procession on the street below from a second story balcony. While it was fun to watch from above, after only a few minutes I was dying to be back down there in the lively crowds again. Once things had died down in the historic center, my group and I headed to the nightly concert, where I received my frevo dance lesson from Jessica, my 9 year-old idol. My legs were so sore afterward (frevo dance has its roots in capoeira, so the moves are quite gymnastic) that I barely made it up the stairs to my apartment (to my credit its an intense staircase!) and I was feeling it for the rest of Carnival.

Frevo dancers (too bad there's not more action in this shot to show you just how crazy dancing frevo is)

On Monday morning I had barely slept after waking up in the middle of the night craving frevo. Nonetheless, I fought fatigue and headed out with my housemates on a long hot walk to the bus stop. We were determined to make it to Nazaré da Mata, a small town in Pernambuco's forest region, for an encounter of rural maracatu groups. This was something that I was particularly interested in due to my research in the region. Rural maracatu is rooted in sugarcane plantation culture- the very culture that I am here studying. So I had to spend at least one day of Carnival there. Getting there was quite the journey, but I'm glad we made it. We spent the day in Nazaré watching dozens of highly talented, often hilarious, and beautifully costumed maracatu groups parade through the streets with a procession of African kings and queens, caboclinhos de lança, clown-type characters threatening to hit observers with blown up cow bladders, and characters on paper maché horses cracking their whips as they played the role of the slave driver. Pernambuco's rural maracatu was developed by slaves on the region's sugarcane plantations centuries ago, and the influences from Africa, Brazil's indigenous groups, and slave and plantation culture are all obvious. While the aggressiveness of the whip-cracking slave driver character seemed quite harsh, I realized that this is one way of reconciling with a difficult past that is in fact not so far in the past. The maracatu mestres stood on stage improvising lyrics to their songs while the caboclinhos danced in their hand-stitched sequined ponchos and giant brightly colored streamer wigs.

A caboclinho de lança acting out resistance to the slave owners in Nazaré da Mata

Once night fell in Nazaré we decided to head back to the city. We arrived in downtown Recife just in time to catch the much acclaimed "Noite dos Tambores Silenciosos" (night of the silent drums), which is an impressive show of traditional afro-Brazilian music and dance, complete with parading African kings and queens.

Tuesday, the last day of revelry before we would all have to repent for our sins, finally arrived. It was bittersweet, really. The energy had only continued to build over the past few days, so I was more excited than ever to join in the merrymaking again, but already sad that it would soon be over. I woke up on Tuesday morning with these thoughts, and trying to figure out how to make the most of this final day of Carnival. The most important thing for me was to have a good and creative costume. Caipigringa came to me quickly, and it was a natural. I had plenty of limes around, and I just so happened to possess a lime green tank top and some cachaça (sugarcane liquor- key ingredient in the caipirinha), so all I had to do was figure out how to pull off putting these things together and turning myself into a caipirinha. With the help of some safety pins it was in the bag. I made a round of caipirinhas for the house and soon we were off.

Caipigringa is born, and Dana borrows the fairy costume (might as well get some use out of it!

Caipigringa received quite a bit of attention, and it was hilarious to watch people look from my lime-covered head to the Pitú label on my shirt, to the bag of sugar on my shorts until they finally figured it out. I got a lot of laughter, and of course a lot of people volunteering to help me out with the bottle of cachaça I was carrying around.

As a huge fan of costume parties, this is a strong statement, but I'm going to make it anyway: Caipigringa was one of my top 3 favorite costumes ever, due to the appropriateness of it for the event, the amount of positive attention and laughter it brought out in people (I took lots of photos with strangers, at their request), and just how damn fun it was to dress up as my favorite mixed drink. This was such a great day! I was in the Carnival spirit more than ever. One of my favorite moments of this day, and of all of Carnival, was when I was walking/dancing down the street in a group of hundreds of other people following a frevo bloco, and it started to pour. As the rain hit the crowd started to howl and jump with joy. It was exciting, fun, and a welcome relief from the heat of the mid-day sun and all those bodies pressed together. The energy of Olinda's Carnival seemed to manifest itself more than ever in that moment as people howled, danced, jumped, and sang. I didn't want this day to end, but alas, it did...