The Streets
Carnival is the suspension of daily life. During the four days it lasts, everything is possible. The public exhibition turns participants into temporary actors, allowing them to get into a cathartic theater. In the streets, one can experience a different persona or even pretend to represent a real deep, repressed self. Nothing matters. That´s Carnival.
Masked in street carnival, along Avenida Rio Branco parade (1949) by José Medeiros Instituto Moreira Salles
Streeet Carnival (1951 circa) by Marcel Gautherot Instituto Moreira Salles
Streeet Carnival, man dressed as a woman (1951 circa) by Marcel Gautherot Instituto Moreira Salles
Carnival block Inocentes do Valadares (Innocents of Valadares neighborhood) (1960 circa) by Marcel Gautherot Instituto Moreira Salles
All the photographs in this exhibition have been taken in Rio de Janeiro.
Carnival (undated) by Maureen Bisilliat Instituto Moreira Salles
Travestis (1980 circa) by Maureen Bisilliat Instituto Moreira Salles
Couple dancing (undated) by José Medeiros Instituto Moreira Salles
The House
In the dynamics of Carnival, the notions of "home" and "street" have very tenuous borders, as the sociologist Roberto DaMatta points out in his studies on the theme. In this sense, the space filled by "the house" or "the street", across the history of Carnival in Brazil, varies and mingle. The three sections highlighted here, therefore, aim to mark dimensions of the same ritual. Already in its origins at the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century, the backyard batuque, a "proto-samba", spread to the streets of the neighborhoods, when houses were opened and neighbors joined the dance.
Gala Ball of the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro (1952) by José Medeiros Instituto Moreira Salles
IT'S TEN O'CLOCK,
THE SAMBA IS HOT
MAKE THE BRUNETTE HAPPY
LEAVE THE GIRL TO SAMBA IN PEACE
From the song "Leave the girl" by Chico Buarque de Hollanda
The first small groups of foliões (Carnival players) increased and became cordões and ranchos, and were initially almost exclusively formed by blacks and mestizos, mostly manual workers, with talented musicians among them. Although always attracting the attention of all social classes, the fear of the "uncontrolled" portuguese entrudos and cordões was appeased with the emergence of "carnival societies", thematic balls and of the evolution of various kinds of groups into big samba schools.
Carnival ball (1940 decade) by Thomaz Farkas Instituto Moreira Salles
Carnival ball (1940 decade) by Thomaz Farkas Instituto Moreira Salles
However, the greater motivation of the suspension of everyday reality, transgression, naturally exploded. The frenzy never ceased to invade the party houses, whether they were popular terreiros or elite halls.
This is what helps in understanding the resurgence of the blocos (blocks) - pageant groups associated with particular neighborhoods - a kind of contemporary cords. Following the increasing commercialization of the official parade since the 1970s and the decrease in attendance at clubs, the blocos returned strongly in the late 1990s. The streets of the city were invaded by crowds, mostly young people, who in less than 5 years became the largest concentration of people in public space among the country's festivals. A little more slowly, there was an affirmative "reafricanization" among these groups, a movement that in Salvador, Bahia, the other huge regional carnival, occurs since the end of the 1940s.
The School
"The House" could also be represented by the school of samba, home and family to those who grew up with the music produced in its courts, dancing there since children, protected by their community codes and hierarchy. But what would the art of the school be without the parade, the public contest and the incorporation of the outsiders, which by contrast make the school and its sambistas so unique? The samba school is their home, but the sambistas' home spreads all over the city.
"Unidos do Cabuçu" Samba School Rehearsal (1958 circa) by Marcel Gautherot Instituto Moreira Salles
Carnival parade. Rio Branco Avenue, Downtown (1960) by Marcel Gautherot Instituto Moreira Salles
Carnival scene (1950 circa) by José Medeiros Instituto Moreira Salles
Carnival (1960 circa) by Marcel Gautherot Instituto Moreira Salles
Carnival parade (1960 circa) by Marcel Gautherot Instituto Moreira Salles
For foliões of any social status, the magic of carnivalesque theater is that it makes each person individually free and at the same time in communion with collective joy. But for those oppressed by all kinds of absent basic rights, the staging finds in the costume a very particular type of liberation, a self-affirmation which aims to achieve the sublime.
Mangueirenses (1969) by Maureen Bisilliat Instituto Moreira Salles
Mangueirenses (1969) by Maureen Bisilliat Instituto Moreira Salles
Mangueirenses (1969) by Maureen Bisilliat Instituto Moreira Salles
Angenor de Oliveira, also known as Cartola (1908-1980) at home, Mangueira´s favela (1969) by Maureen Bisilliat Instituto Moreira Salles
Mangueirenses (1969) by Maureen Bisilliat Instituto Moreira Salles
Carnival parade (undated) by Maureen Bisilliat Instituto Moreira Salles
Carnival parade (undated) by Maureen Bisilliat Instituto Moreira Salles
Angola Congo Benguela
Monjolo Cabinda Mina
Quiloa Rebolo
Here where the men are
There is a big auction
They say that there are
A princess for sale
Who came along with her subjects
Chained in ox cars
I want to see
I want to see
I want to see
Angola Congo Benguela
Monjolo Cabinda Mina
Quiloa Rebolo
Here where the men are
On one side sugar cane
On the other side coffee plantation
At the center a gentlemen seated
Seeing the harvest of white cotton
Being harvested by black hands
I want to see
I want to see
I want to see
When Zumbi arrives
What will happen
Zombie is lord of the wars
Lord of the demands
When Zumbi arrives it's Zumbi
It's who's in charge.
I want to see
"África Brasil (Zumbi)", by Jorge Benjor
Carnival parade (undated) by Maureen Bisilliat Instituto Moreira Salles
"(...) carnival was confined in time, not in space. (...) The town square and its adjacent streets were the central site of the carnival, for they embodied and symbolized the carnivalesque idea of being universal and belonging to all people."
Mikhail Bakhtin, in "Carnival and Carnivalesque"
Samba Scholl drumming section (1970 decade) by David Drew Zingg Instituto Moreira Salles
Feast and rite, so intensely profane that it attracts a horde of faithful, Carnival in Brazil brings with it meanings that go far beyond the holiday and the celebration. House and street. Party with no owner, in it emerge the power of creativity and the vocation for integration of a culture formed by sharp differences. If "Brazil is not for beginners", as Tom Jobim said, living the days of Carnival can be a good way to begin to understand it.
Carnival - The Free Body
Images of Instituto Moreira Salles´s collection
Edition: Rachel Rezende
Instituto Moreira Salles Photography Archive
With an archive of around 2.000,000 images, the Instituto Moreira Salles holds the most important array of photographs of the 19th century in Brazil, and the best compilation of Brazilian photography from the first seven decades of the 20th century.
The collection is housed at the IMS’ Photography Archive, in Rio de Janeiro. It is the largest building dedicated to the preservation, restoration, safeguarding, and dissemination of photographic archives in Brazil.
Pereira Cunha, Maria Clementina: Não tá sopa: Sambas e sambistas no Rio de Janeiro, de 1890 a 1930. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 2015
DaMatta, Roberto: Carnivals, rogues, and heroes: an interpretation of the Brazilian dilemma. Indiana: Notre Drame Press, 1991.
Bakhtin, Mikhail: "Carnival and Carnivalesque", in: Cultural Theory and Popular Culture.
