There are 11 parades on Fat Tuesday alone this year, and each one is associated with a specific krewe , a club or organization with its own theme and history, some are newer than others, some going back generations. One hallmark of Brazilian Carnival are the samba schools , perhaps superficially best known for their ornately decorated floats, frequently-feathered costumes, and well-practiced dance routines, but they have important roles in their communities that go well beyond the carnival season.
Mardi Gras decor—even the king cake—heavily favors purple, green, and gold, the traditional shades associated with the event, which represent justice, faith, and power, respectively. As in New Orleans and other places where carnival season is celebrated, there are scores of balls and parties that happen in Brazil over a period of several days or weeks in addition to the public festivities for Carnival.
Typically, a plastic baby is cooked inside, and whoever gets the slice with the baby must host the next party. Here, the party favor is optional and the cake is delicious, regardless. Get our Mardi Gras King Cake recipe. This classic gumbo dish is ready in just 40 minutes. After making a golden roux from vegetable oil and flour, soften some onion and bell peppers, simmer andouille sausage and frozen okra, and warm up the shredded chicken, and dinner is served! Get our Easy Chicken Gumbo recipe.
With large pieces of shrimp in a warming, easy bisque, this dish is a classic New Orleans comfort meal. We recommend a large batch for a flavorful and light yet filling meal during the Mardi Gras festivities. Get our Cognac Shrimp Bisque recipe. Get our Hurricane Cocktail recipe. Photo: Renee Peck. We left behind a week of Red Flyer wagons with grandkids tucked among the beads and blinky lights and stuffed animals, a houseful of guests from here and there camped out on couches and air mattresses, tables littered with boiled crawfish and king cake and a growing tower of empty beer cans.
We steered out of the Uptown parade box and threaded floats and routes to reach the airport, where, 4, miles and 18 hours later, we stepped off a plane at the Rio de Janeiro airport. We were met by a tangible wave of steamy heat that felt eerily like what we had just left behind. Carnaval in Rio is really two carnivals — the stadium gig and the street parties. The first is not unlike our superkrewe parades, and the second somewhat akin to our marching groups and social aid and pleasure clubs.
The headline event at Rio Carnaval takes place over two nights in the Sambadrome, which seats about the same number of spectators as the Superdome, but in a linear fashion rather than round.
It was built in the s specifically for the Rio samba clubs to parade along. The Sambadrome in Rio De Janeiro. Photo by: Renee Peck. Each club must start and finish the meter route about half a mile in exactly 1 hour and 22 minutes. Each parade has a theme, and points go to creativity, choreography, enthusiasm, spacing, timing and how well they tell their story.
Think Stompers meet Bacchus, with costumes by the maids of Endymion. And, oh yes, a cast of thousands. Each samba club parades with 3, to 5, members, some dancing atop floats, featured performers performing samba routines in between, the whole strung together with groups of 50 or or or more in matching costumes replete with feathers, sequins, giant headdresses, hoop skirts, life-sized stuffed animals, butterfly wings, capes — crazy, loud, outrageous, festive gear, any one of which would surely hold pride of place in any New Orleans costume closet.
A panel of judges scores each parade, and a grand winner is announced to great fanfare on Ash Wednesday morning. Snagging the top trophy brings a monetary prize, bragging rights and lucrative sponsorships. Spontaneous, free-flowing, boisterous, unpredictable.
The tutu should be relegated to international diplomatic status, as it brings together these two Mardi Gras crowds seamlessly sorry.
In both cities, the tutu is the unisex, near-ubiquitous attire. Feathers and masks run a close second in both places. And in Rio, bare skin is basic, with the bathing suit rather than the bodysuit serving as costume foundation.
The samba club costumes rise to another level. Sure, our krewe members dress up, with LED lighting on the breastplates and neon wigs. But their over-the-top samba costumes are couture compared to our uniform-store lookalikes. Just wow. Our floats are pulled by tractors, theirs by hand. Some krewes refused to racially integrate. Racial exclusion has not been limited to the distant past. In , after an acrimonious debate, the New Orleans City Council passed an ordinance that prohibited krewes from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation or national origin.
Rex pledged to immediately integrate, but Comus, Momus and Proteus chose to stop parading rather than open up their ranks to blacks. Comus has not yet returned to the streets, Momus spun off into the Knights of Chaos and Proteus came back in after signing the non-discrimination pledge. Mardi Gras occasionally gets cancelled. Since Comus ushered in the modern era of Mardi Gras in , the New Orleans festivities have been cancelled about a dozen times.
The last time it was called off completely was A scaled-down version even took place in , just months after Hurricane Katrina flooded the Gulf Coast and killed over 1, people. The Super Bowl interrupted the parade schedule. January and February likewise were kept free of parades. King Cake is only eaten during Mardi Gras.
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