The rhythmic jubilation of samba is back in Brazil.

The Rio carnival delivered a magical spectacle for its first night, the magic of the parade to make people forget two years of tragedy due to Covid-19 which bled the country.

To make up for lost time, to make up for lost joy, such was the desire of some 20,000 dancers and percussionists from the six samba schools who marched fervently through the sambadrome and of the 75,000 spectators who shouted at each other in the stands as they passed.

“We missed the carnival so much, what energy there will be”, had also predicted before parading on the night from Friday to Saturday Tita Nunes, a 31-year-old Brazilian, in reference to the cancellation of the festivities in 2021 .

An orgy of feathers and sequins

The samba schools therefore surveyed, for an hour, the 700 meters of the sambadrome, in an orgy of feathers, glitter, percussion and wild dances.

They marched with allegorical floats as high as multi-storey buildings, sometimes staggering.

Six others will parade for the second carnival night, until dawn on Sunday.

And the title of champion will cover the best samba school with glory.

As usual, the samba schools, mostly from the favelas, addressed political themes in their parades.

Eight of the 12 schools scheduled to perform over the two nights have thus chosen to represent the fight against racism and the African roots of samba.

Third school to parade in the early hours of Saturday, Salgueiro presented with some 3,000 dancers and percussionists his show in the form of a punch,

Resistance

, inspired by the Black Lives Matter protest movement which shook the United States.

More than 660,000 dead from Covid-19

For its part, by choosing as its theme the carnival of 1919, organized after the terrible Spanish flu, the Unidos do Viradouro school metaphorically evoked this 2022 edition of post-Covid-19 rebirth.

The cancellation of the carnival last year was experienced as a national tragedy by Brazilians, as it is in the DNA of an entire people crazy about samba.

But a year ago, the Covid-19 killed 3,000 people a day in Brazil, compared to 100 today.

The sambadrome had even been converted into a vaccination centre.

The pandemic has made Brazil the second most bereaved country in the world behind the United States, with more than 660,000 dead.

"Without the carnival, Rio would not be Rio", exulted its mayor and first fan, Eduardo Paes, on Wednesday, declaring open "the greatest show on Earth".

It must be said that this event brings a godsend to the "Marvelous City", where it generates 45,000 jobs and 4 billion reais (about 800 million euros) in income.

In 2020, Rio had received more than 2.1 million tourists.

This year, even if there are fewer foreigners, the hotel industry, devastated by the Covid-19, is delighted with an occupancy rate of 85%.

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