Saigon to Superior: Carnival

The Morning After, Old Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

The party's over. As Ash Wednesday faded into today, somewhere between the stars that were blazing like an ancient road map off the wing of our 767 and the deep black carpet of the Amazon below, this very zoned out celebrant rested his eyes against the window, transfixed by how pockets of thick humid air would temporarily drown out the stars as the plane's strobes electrified the moist darkness with pulsing throbs. Then, back into the dryer black night, constellations again gleaming their brilliant crystal rays over the absorbent jungle canopy below. No humans down there. None. A natural decompressant following five days of frolic amid a dancing mass of humanity at Carnival in Salvador, Brazil.

Your passes into parties there are the clothes on your back, last night’s being electric blue Lycra tank tops ablaze with speckled tridents and fluorescent orange and yellow liberty spikes around the neck, accented by bright yellow ankle-length shorts. These duds give you two options—to dance a marathon with thousands along a five-mile parade route, or to boogie in-place atop an elevated tent city that overlooks the river of revelers passing below. Pushing the current are pairs of stretch semi-trailers, their beds stacked with amps, bands, and bars, as far as the eye can see. Around each rolling duo is a thick rope as wide as the street and as long as the block, carried by hundreds of thick bouncers who ring the flowing party, while those with electric blue tickets bounce along inside or above.

Your fluorescent pass costs about 20 bucks, a day’s pay in Brazil. Outside the ropes on the ground, it’s a madhouse. It is here that the everyman has his party, elbowing his way back and forth in a Latin punk rock dance that might afford two minutes of limelight next to the band that the paying customer gets to roll aside all night long. Inside the ropes, planted elbows give way to the river of humanity bouncing forward with the drums on the semis above. The playlist for most groups consists of about ten songs, and as each band belts them out ten times an evening from their drifting stage, the swirling human river turns to water, as drums and sweat roll the partiers into sweeping currents along the winding parade path that follows their favorite tunes – complete with swirling eddies and DJ-constructed dams behind which the crowd grinds to a halt in a stand still bounce, to be unleashed in a bounding horde as the flood gates are opened by the band’s “1,2,3!”

We spent two nights running the river and two nights dancing in-place on our perch in the tent city above. Our last night, we were again running the rapids inside the ropes. Our ships this time were captained by the percussion band, Timbalada. It looked like there were ten of them atop the semi, all donning white stripes on their faces and shining bodies, a blurring rhythm and counter-rhythm of hands pounding on piles of skin drums.

This time, we dove inside the rope maybe a mile after the ships left their docks and were greeted almost immediately by the captain of this run. She was African, donned denim cutoffs beneath her fluorescent tank top, and wore the biggest smile I saw in all of Carnival. Her feet carried her rhythm in every direction at once, and she wanted everyone to—and was convinced that everyone could—follow right along. Hardly anyone could, yet her smile just grew bigger as charged revelers gave it a try. She gave each a look as if to say, “Come on! It’ll come!” Whether it did or it didn’t, she was happy to share a dance. She owned the entire crowd—in which there was one person who believed that smile enough to truly rise to it. Our friend, Kabral, came bounding out of our ranks and landed face to face with her, feet bounding all over the pavement. Within a tenth of a second they were in sync, their limbs and bodies mirrors that defy description. Every muscle shook, their feet bounding left to right so fast they appeared to float above the ground. Gravity disappeared.

Our new friend and Kabral at the helm, we soon wound our way from a bright urban canyon alongside the tidal pools of an Atlantic beach. Atop a grassy bluff stood a lighthouse—or rather, a fortress with a lighted cement tower rising majestically from the center of it. My buddy, Christian, nudged me. We’d logged in about a mile at this point and had heard our favorite ten songs at least two times over. He motioned toward the light. I nodded. We dove under the rope, and threaded our way through the working man’s masses, quickly finding grass and open land leading to the ancient tower beyond.

The light stood at the top of a gentle hill that rose up from the street, its slight rolls covered with lush green grass, made wispy by the ocean somewhere beyond in the night. We meandered our way up an old path, making ourselves pint-sized along a massive twenty-foot cement wall. In a perfect line it continued on for maybe a hundred feet before a ninety degree turn sent it to the left, overlooking a high cliff. We slipped around the corner into the darkness.

The pounding music and lights from Carnival’s river were all but gone, deflected or absorbed by the behemoth behind us. There was a warm and still silence, made ponderous by the light wind and waves brushing the jagged rock shoreline below. Milling around were probably thirty or so folks, all men that I could see, spaced out alone or with a buddy every ten feet or so, taking advantage of a moment to turn Carnival off and turn their minds toward the black ocean respite beyond. The scene in some ways bordered on shady. My Chicago street sense along with Christian’s formidable height, however, kept my caution light at a mellow yellow.

Christian lit up a smoke and within seconds two characters had made their way over to us, asking for cigarettes. Christian obliged and the four of us passed around two drinks as our new friends rapped with us in Portuguese and we rapped back in English. We talked about the party, we talked about good drinks, and to our answer for, “Where ya from?” they exclaimed, “Michael Jordan!” with broad smiles on their faces. Each of us barely understood a handful of the foreign words exchanged—but their meaning was made clear by the universal human language one is blessed to find in mutual celebrations and the shared beauty of Mother Earth. At the base of this wall overlooking the South Atlantic, just out of ear shot of the world’s biggest party, we had both.

(3/05/03)