I Like to Party, Everybody Does

Thursday 11 February
Salvador

Here’s how we attacked carnaval. The first mistake was to wake up early for breakfast. I mean, what were we thinking? Sleep is a precious commodity at carnaval time. Anyway during the day we sorted out the tickets, which come in the form of sleeveless t-shirts that allow you access to the relevant area.

There are three ways to do carnaval – camarote, bloco and popcorn. Popcorn means wondering the streets without a ticket and jumping around with the crowds, listening to the music as it goes past. Bloco means you can go in a special roped off area around one of the trios – the floats, called trios after the three people who first got on a truck and played music, 60 years ago this year – and follow it along the carnaval route. The camarote (pronounced ka-ma-ROSH) is a large balcony overlooking the route where you can watch and hear the trios, and look at the crowds below, and also have free booze and food as well as other things like nightclubs, massages and so on. The other thing to mention about carnaval is that there is a ton of sponsorship, but it doesn’t seem to get in the way. The colourful logos somehow add to the experience.

So for the first night we choose a camarote at one of the top places. Inside it is amazing, really nicely designed, it feels like a good Mediterranean beach resort and nightclub inside. And there is a nightclub playing mainstream dance music, very well it has to be said. We get stuck in to the free booze too, and everyone has a good time. There are even waiters bringing around the free drinks on a tray, so you don’t even have to go to the bar.

From the balcony we can see the carnaval route with the trios, blocos and popcorn. And my word, do the Brazilians know how to party! The streets are packed, everyone is dancing, there are a lot of sexy people here. And music is crazy and infectious. It’s mainly based around drums, the kind you get in the break in Paul Simon’s Obvious Child, but instead of lyrics about feeling awkward or something, you have uplifting, high energy, melodic music in Portuguese. This is axé music (pronounced a-SHAY) which is basically melodic western rock backed by frenetic, chaotic African drums. You can’t help but dance, feel good and party.

The trios themselves are large lorries decked with very loud sound systems, LED screens and lights, and the band and hangers on at the top playing the music. There’s usually one main star singing at the front and the band – who really go for it, there’s no being too cool for school here – are behind. And they play all the hits – everyone seems to know the songs. And from a songwriter’s point of view, it’s easy to pick up the melody and structure and sing along, even though you have no idea what they are talking about. One song even had similar chords to Wonderwall, so we all got strange looks as we started singing a different song that no one knew...

We get swept up in it all, get drunk and have a good time. Before you know it, it’s about 5 in the morning and time to go home.

But the truth is that the words don’t do it justice. The map is not the territory. It has to be experienced. There’s nothing like seeing hundreds of thousands of people going crazy for hours on end. It just leaves you with a massive Cheshire cat grin on your face.