Rehearsal at the School of Samba Perola Negra
“O God, save the queens
It’s our party and I’ll cheer
Now is the time, my love,
Perola Negra is here
The show will start.”
These are some of the lyrics of the song that the members of the School-of-Samba Perola Negra (Black Pearl) are learning every Sunday evening at 8 o’clock in a warehouse at the Vila Madalena a neighborhood near my office.
The theme for the 2006 parade is a homage to all women as divine creations deserving the right to be queens.
The lyrics are about several queens of different civilizations and cultures all over the world. Among them: the Queen of Darkness, a Halloween witch; the Queen of Tarot and her divination’s; the Queen of Drums with her faithful squadrons; the Queen of Sabah in the heart of King Salomon; Hyppolita, the Queen of the Amazon, a courageous warrior with a powerful belt; the Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, sensual and enigmatic like the Naja, her snake companion; the Night Queen; Iemanja, Queen of the Sea (one of my favorite,) and many others like the queens of the Bee, Chess, Fairy, Flower, and Hortencia, that although a name of a flower is the Brazilian Basketball Queen. To end the long list, Carmen Miranda, the greatest Queen of all queens of the Carnival folly.
Schools of Samba are not like a regular teaching institution. A School of Samba is an association of people generally from a same neighborhood, usually part of the working class community (or favela) in a suburban area. They meet together regularly for samba rehearsals and nights. These Schools of Samba provide valuable jobs to the community, employing people year-round to produce costumes and big floats. The school PerolaNegra will be dancing in the avenue in the heart of the city of Sao Paulo on February 26 as the 7th school out of 9.
It was founded in 1973 after the merging of the Academic School of Samba of Vila Madalena and the carnaval block Bocas das Bruxas (Witches Mouth) and was named after a bottle of black pearl beer over a bar table. To be honest with you I can really barely wait for carnival time.
Since last month, every little bar and hidden neighborhood is already in the mood of the great folly. I was invited to watch them rehearse and as you can already see I am right there figuring out which ”fantasia” or costume I am going to wear. If I want to work hard to represent the school on the avenue in this fierce competition I will probably go out in the “wing” of Iemanja, the Queen-Goddess of the sea.
I marched once in Rio in a school called Grande Rio, and my kids were very annoyed when I told them it had been one of the greatest emotions of my life almost like giving birth or getting to walk through the aisle of the synagogue on your own wedding.
Therefore, at this point, I wish you all get this amazing experience at least once in your lifetime –if you’re not ready yet to be part of it every single year…. Think it over. After all, you still have a little time left to become a king or a queen of a kingdom that you can pick up in few minutes to live in for five great fairy dreamlike days and never forget it for the rest of your life.
Let then the poet Vinicius de Morais sing for us to remind.
To place a reservation of your “fantasia”, on the phone is (55 11) 7712-5344 and talk to Edilson.
Petter Hegre's
