Hairy Potty Man and the Deafly Hollows

-- Prologue --

It finally looked like something was happening. The pink-and-green clad ushers pushed all the onlookers back from the open area in the middle of the hall, forming a clear space for the performers for the Carnivale. The performers formed two lines, lips twitching in anticipation for the start of the music that will drive them into an orgiastic fervor.

The drummers from the stage started a rhythmic cadence signature to samba. The song had started! The performers began their sinuous movements around the cleared area, dancing in the manner of a conga line. Only that it was samba. A dance that, as Yi Lin says, makes the participants look like they were busy stamping dead millions of ants at their feet.

The visitors to the rehearsal looked on, swaying along as if enthralled by the beat. All of a sudden, as if the snaking conga line decided that it was hungry, the dancers started pulling in the onlookers. It looks like they are no longer here to watch the show, they are going to be part of the show! The conga line was now going to be half-local blood, and half-foreign blood!

And then, the Hairy Potty man made his appearance...

-- End Prologue --



Part One: The Philosopher's Cash

We had traded price for experience in deciding to come to Rio de Janeiro in December rather than in January. We had known that we would miss the world-famous Carnivale, but our budget was just too tight for the skyrocketing prices that the Carnivale peak would cause. Fortunately, we were just in time for the Carnivale rehearsals at the various samba schools, and could easily make plans to visit them on either of the Saturday nights that we were in Rio.

The school we chose to visit was Mangueira, one of the oldest samba schools in Rio, with a rich tradition of winning at the Carnivale. As the school was located in a favela, we decided to take as little money as possible.

Taxi fare (about 30 Reals per way) turned out to cost a bit more than expected, and I had totally forgotten to bring additional cash for the entrance fee (another 20 Reals each)!

After paying off the taxi driver for bringing us there, we were left with only 30 Reals, just enough to admit one person. I tried to convince the wife to go into the school alone.

"It should be safer in the school that out here in the favela. I'll just wait here. You just go in, take a few photos and come right out, okay? Here, take my camera."

And just as I was handing her my camera, I remembered that we had secreted some extra cash into the pouch when we went to the beach earlier. Hooray! We now have enough cash to go in together!



Part Two: The Chamber of Samba

This guys formed the band, and they literally sang all night

We entered the main chamber of the samba school, immediately noting that everything was decked in pink and green. Nervously, hoping that we were not wearing the colors of another school, we strode forward into the hall.

Big man, little instrument

There was currently only a small band playing, but the music echoed throughout the hall. The walls and tables were vibrating along with all the tables and chairs set out for guests. It seemed like speakers were lined throughout the hall, and every one of them was turned to the 'Are You Nuts??!' volume setting!



Part Three: The Prisoners of Standing

Getting a table is useful only until the rehearsal starts. After that, everyone is standing and/or dancing!

We picked a table out of those placed along both ends of the hall, and settled in to wait for rehearsals to begin. Then an pink-and-green clad usher came along and yelled something that we couldn't hear. And frankly, even if we heard what he was saying, we wouldn't understand a word. Locals here speak Portuguese, remember? In the end, he was jabbing his finger angrily at a little strip of masking tape that had some marking on it. Oooohh... the table was reserved!

Fine, fine. We moved on to another table that had no masking tape on it. After another 15 minutes, yet another pink-and-green man came along. That was when we realised... you want to sit at a table, you gotta pay another 30 Reals!

Since we had no more money, we had no choice. We just had to stand till the rehearsal started!



Part Four: The Legs on Fire

A samba school is okay, but discos, video arcades and bowling alleys give her headaches!

Coming to the rehearsal at 9.30pm was beginning to seem like a bad mistake. The rehearsal was expected to start at around midnight, which meant a minimum of 2.5 hours wait. We could not chat with each other to pass the time, because the music was just too loud. We could not sit around because we did not have the money to pay for the tables. There was nothing to do but to stand around and look like we were having fun, like some of the other locals and (drunk) foreigners who were dancing to the band on stage.

Midnight came, and the show had not started. But that ache in the legs from standing too long started to grow. By the time the rehearsal finally started at 1am, our legs were afire!



Part Five: The Order of the Maestro

The guy conducts with his hands. The girl conducts with her ass. I'm not kidding!

Something was finally happening. Loads of people suddenly showed up on the stage at the far end of the hall. A young man appeared, and took the conductor's platform. And without further ado, the entire percussion band (for that's what they were) burst into a cacophony of sound. Unfortunately, while I did shoot a video, the speakers at full blast drove the microphone on my camera nuts, and the audio it captured was very similar to static with a beat.

Not the pink-lingerie tranny at Sentosa, but we believe they are trannies nonetheless

This maestro was impressive though. He know what he was doing, and the percussionists followed his every signal perfectly, much to the pleasure of the Evil Queen Clown of Mangueira...

Okay, seriously, I have no idea who she is. But she reminds me of the clown from IT.

Part Six: The Half-Blood Performers

Locals and foreigners jiving to the samba beat

As the percussionists built up to a crescendo and finished off their performance, the rest of the band came back. The pink-and-green clad ushers pushed all the onlookers back from the open area in the middle of the hall, forming a clear space for the performers for the Carnivale. The performers formed two lines, lips twitching in anticipation for the start of the music that will drive them into an orgiastic fervor.

The drummers from the stage started a rhythmic cadence signature to samba. The song had started! The performers began their sinuous movements around the cleared area, dancing in the manner of a conga line. Only that it was samba. A dance that, as Yi Lin says, makes the participants look like they were busy stamping dead millions of ants at their feet.

Little girl knows her moves! She'll be a heartbreaker one day!

The visitors to the rehearsal looked on, swaying along as if enthralled by the beat. All of a sudden, as if the snaking conga line decided that it was hungry, the dancers started pulling in the onlookers. It looks like they are no longer here to watch the show, they are going to be part of the show! The conga line was now going to be half-local blood, and half-foreign blood!

And then, the Hairy Potty man made his appearance. This guy, obviously potty from an over-indulgence of alcohol, decided that because I was swaying to the beat, I must be interested in joining the conga line! Coming straight for me, he clasped one huge, hairy arm across my back (I could feel his sweaty pits against my shoulder... erks!) and tried pulling me in. I tried to resist and say no, I wasn't interested, but despite the Portuguese 'nao' sounding very similar to the English 'no', I somehow could not get my point across, and was sucked into the ever-growing conga line.

For the 15 seconds or so that I spent in the line, I must have been the stiffest person there. Thankfully, Yi Lin joined in as well, and I did not lose her in the crowd. We got out of the conga line as soon as we could. Spoilsports, yeah. But this was one occasion that we just preferred to watch and not participate!



Part Seven: The Deafly Hollows

The conga line goes around these two central dancers

Samba schools that compete in the Carnivale are judged upon several criteria, including costumes, the dance, and most importantly the song. The response of the crowd, however, plays an unofficial part in the scoring criteria, and that is why the samba school takes great pains to invite singwriters to compose new songs every year, then select them and try to gain popular favor for them. And they do this by singing the song over and over again, to get people familiar with it. Once peopls are familiar with it, then they would naturally react to the song being played at the Carnivale.

It's like this: You may not be a fan of 'Play that Funky Music' by Wild Cherry, but you recognise it when it's being played. And if you were listening to to it one day on the radio, wouldn't you sing along ...'lay down the boogie and play that funky music till you die"?

The rehearsal at Mangueira that night was the same. The same song kept repeating over and over, and the conga line just kept going round and round. By about the 30th cycle, we decided that we've had enough, and decided to make our way back to our guest house.

I wonder when did they finally stop dancing

We stepped out into the cool night air, with our ears still ringing. After spending some 4 hours in the samba school, we had developed a ringing hollow sound in our years. I'm not proud to admit it, but I think we shouted our address to the taxi driver. He just grinned like he was used to people shouting at him after a long night at the samba school, and brought us safely back to our guest house.

Home (sorta) Sweet Home (sorta).