Samba is the famous dance of the Brasilian Carnival, the main purposes of which is to hold and judge an annual Samba dance competition amongst all the Samba schools of Brasil. In Rio de Janeiro they stage the worlds largest Samba contest and the entire country pays attention, like the Super Bowl or World Cup of Samba, complete with play-by-play TV commentary, instant-replay and post-contest highlights. Either of these two things; Samba and Carnival, or the invention of the Bikini, is probably what you'll hear if you ask a foreigner for "first things that comes to mind about Brasil?".
Note: The country name is spelled Brasil but pronounced Brazil, so the rest of the world adopted the "Z" in the spelling but it's not commonly used here, except by companies marketing to foreigners. The famous soccer team wear jersey's that have the word spelled prominently with an "S" not a "Z".
The country of Brasil celebrates Carnival with such a passion that it's hard to compare to anything else. When I see old news-reels of the Allied Forces liberating France at the end of WW2 I think the French may have partied with almost as much abandon as Brazilians at Carnival but certainly not with as much style. The centerpiece of the Carnival Samba are the brightly plumed costumes on the women's sparsely clad bodies, hundreds and hundreds of them. The focal-point of the Samba dance-step is the movement of the woman's behind commonly and affectionately referred to as the "bunda or slang boom-boom" as in; "shake a da boom-boom". What a marvelous concept, from the inventors of the Bikini and the Samba, to turn a traditionally boring religious (Catholic) observance and national holiday into a celebration of dance and the adoration of women.
Tomorrow everything will be quiet and a day of rest for the country, except those that can't stop partying. The city of Sao Paulo, where I'm writing to you from is a pleasure to be in at this time of year because the traffic flows quick and easy, free parking spaces everywhere you go and the restaruants have no lines or reservations needed. It feels like half the residents of the city are away.
Once the Carnival is over and after the weekend that happened to follow the holiday this year is concluded, the citizens of Brasil get back to work (seriously) and this is the time to make plans for visiting the beaches as there are vacancies, room for cars on the tight dirt roads of the smaller villages and it feels like half the people have gone back to the city - that's what I like ;-)
