Pedra do Sal
When I woke up on Wednesday, I thought it was just another work day. I quickly found out that it was National Samba Day, and a reason to celebrate!
As we all know, samba is a genre of music and dance that symbolizes Brazil and Brazilian heritage. Taking it cues from Africa and Europe, the first true samba was composed on the streets of Rio, specifically in the neighborhood of Pedra do Sal located in the Port District of downtown Rio.
Man in costume at Pedra do Sal
Historically, Pedra do Sal was the former site of the salt and slave trade and now houses several predominately black communities and quilombos. To date, Pedra do Sal is a place of special importance to black culture in Rio, and for lovers of samba and choro. Weekly samba festivals in this cozy, beautiful, and historic location make Pedra do Sal one of the best known samba sites in Rio.
To celebrate National Samba Day, this past Wednesday my coworkers and I traveled to Pedra do Sal to absorb some of this history and to sambar, which quite literally means “to dance to the rhythm.”
After this block party, where people were dressed in costume and the colors of their samba school, my friends and I took a walk over to Central, one of the most famous train stations in South America.
Every year on National Samba Day, music fans can ride one of four samba trains departing for Ozwaldo Cruz. Each car of every train has a samba band playing throughout the duration of the one hour ride. The price of admission for the train was one kilogram bag of food to be donated to the poor. I was particularly impressed by the wide age range of people who voluntarily crammed themselves into a hot, sweaty train car for a giant sing-along.
Logo for Trem do Samba 2009
Once in Ozwaldo Cruz, several other samba bands played on the street well into the night. Thousands of people crowded the streets, dancing, drinking, singing, and playing. Looking around me, I was taken aback by the sheer number of people and the array of food no matter where we went. Cheap beer and grilled chicken on a stick seemed to be the norm. I even saw for the first time, fried chicken on a stick filled with requeijão (a Brazilian cream cheese).
Everyone knew the words to each song, and everyone was dancing. Even on the train ride home, amateur musicians played their drums as people sang, danced, and clapped along. It seemed that National Samba Day 2009, at least in Rio, didn’t skip a beat.
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Wow, that sounded like a lot of fun. Too bad they don’t have that here in the USA. Or maybe they did…it was called American Bandstand. Every afternoon teenagers would sing and dance to the latest music watching the show on the TV. Only the performers were black not the teenagers on the show dancing until much later…Go see “Shampoo”…