Carnaval or for you in Canada Carnival

Each month Nazare comes up with some reason to celebrate. The biggest celebration was during Carnaval. If you link to the description you will probably come away from reading it almost as confused as was experiencing it.

Apparently, if you want to build a float or be part of the parade you dream up your costume and then send your list of supplies to the local municipality. They have a warehouse space where you can work and store your creation and they will supply you with any materials that you need. There were floats on the back of flatbed trucks, cars with streamers, dogs in costumes, kids dressed as super heroes and bums, and wave after wave of women dressed in matching outfits each group dancing to its own song.

If you ask the people here what makes their Carnaval special they all answer the same thing. It is a local celebration… Not a copy of Brazil’s. Then they will shake their head and name a few Portuguese towns that are too “Brazil”. People who grew up here, people born elsewhere but whose parents were born here, and people who now live here all call themselves local. I don’t know enough Portuguese to understand the politics of these groups and know who truly is local, but during Carnaval they all claim local status.

The soundtrack to Carnaval is local. Even without an understanding of Portuguese you can make out the word Nazare in all the songs. By the end of the celebration I wanted to hunt down every copy of all the songs and erase them from the public domain. Now I kinda miss it.

People dress up and dance in the streets. There is a type of public joy you don’t see in Canada. You see people wearing elaborate costumes and right next to them people wearing long johns with a clown wig. And, each person is genuinely excited about the others costume. There is also a tremendous amount of drinking going on. And there is dance. Dance exists everywhere during this time. My favourite moments were when you would see grown men dancing with young girls. The costumed girls and their dad’s/uncle’s/family friend’s spontaneously dance in the streets.

At the start of carnival I woke up to the sound of drums. There appear to be large groups of drummers who parade down the main street drumming. They all wear uniforms and drum. To an outsider there seems to be very little organization behind who drums and marches and when. I am sure there are rules, but they elude me.

Here are the official Canaval photos. Take a look for yourself.