Parade of samba schools Rio Carnival 30s- 50s

1930 to 1950
In the early years of the 1930s, the parades of the samba schools were disorganized.  There were time, routing, and award disputes. Before 1935, it was important for the groups to come by Eleven Square and the houses of aunts Bahia, respected as the mother of samba and carnival popular, especially Aunt Ciata the most famous and respected of them all and represented today in the Bahia wing of schools’ parades.

Joe Espinguela of Mangueira was responsible for the organization. After the success of the Eleven Square parades, newspapers attracted sponsorship of the carnival season, starting the journalistic coverage of the parades. Already in 1935, Pedro Ernesto, mayor of Rio de Janeiro, legalized the schools and formalized the street parades, creating the acronym GRES (Gremio Recreativo Escola de Samba) used by most associations. The first champion was the hose, and until the end of the 1940s alternated with Portela, of blue and white colors.

The schools now have rules for parades such as the requirement that the plots must contain something of the history of Brazil. This demand changed the structure of sambas, which began to make huge descriptive letters, almost telling the story of the episode, and the plots often portrayed ambiguity and contradictions. Then came the words of Creole samba crazy, a reference to the letter gaffes and composers, which usually were black and – most times – illiterate. Decades later, Stanislaw Ponte Preta, immortalized the phrase in song.

With the demolition of Praca Onze to the newly inaugurated President Vargas Avenue in the early 1940s, the shows grew in size and importance, surpassing those of the ranches and large carnival companies and creating a new culture of samba.

With the official schools, the Sambistas of all city areas and small towns neighboring Rio de Janeiro organized new groups in their communities by increasing the number of schools.  An example is the Pleasure of Serrinha Vaz Lobo, who in 1947 would lead the Empire Serrano School that would break the hegemony of Mangueira and Portela.

In the early years the public crowded on the sidewalks to see the parades, while authorities and jurors saw the parade in small lean-tos of wood, which were installed specially for the occasion. Soon the audiences brought wooden crates to get up on to get a better view of the spectacle. In turn, the City began installing a rough wooden platform, with steps from where one could watch the parade on foot. This was insufficient for the growing public and soon the city began to install bleachers.

In these early years the middle class did not find the parades fashionable and so did not begin arriving until the mid-1940s.  In turn, the City began to charge for admission to the parade and could not pay agglomerate in places of concentration and dispersion of schools. At the same time, with improved organization came the construction of barracks with dirt floors of the tests for squares. The number of members also grew, which prompted the appearance of the wings, which became for those with status.

During the end of the 1940s and through the 1950s, the fashion show saw the first stars of the schools, as teachers-room door-flags created special choreography for the show.  The public began to recognize features such as door-flags and Cheddarcheese Neide of Mangueira, Vilma Portela and the master-room New Man of Estacio. The cabrochas, which were dancers to samba in the foot, delighted the audience with their art and beauty. Some gained fame, such as Paula and Narciso of Salgueiro, Maria Lata D’Agua, da Portela.

Some performed samba carrying a lard can filled with water on their head, showing a mark of good-humor by the Carioca in dealing with the vicissitudes.  As most components of the schools were from the hills of Rio, where there was water in the season, the Sambistas were forced up the slopes with cans of water on their heads to supply their huts.

Workshops operated in the barracks of the schools creating allegories in “paper-dried meat” (a technique adapted from French males) and fantasies, which made it better every year, using the colors of the schools that in turn recruited fans enthusiastic about the football of the times.

In 1954 the union of three schools in the Morro do Salgueiro samba in Tijuca, north of Rio, became the Salgueiro school.  This school of samba would bring profound changes in fashion. It was the first school to make plots that put the emphasis on black and not in figuration, as in 1957 when slave ships in the parade, which people from the community hitherto made, became the responsibility of artists. This led to the figure of the Carnival in plot under the baton of visual artists Dirceu and Marie Louise Nery Nery of the National School of Fine Arts

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The Salgueiro performed the plot in 1959 of quaint Travel to Brazil.  Debret, who won the vice championship, removed the roped sides that distances the audience from their fashion, and the jury this year was Professor Fernando Pamplona, of the National School of Fine Arts.

Excitement about the show from that year would be the main feature to transform the aesthetics of fashion, bringing to Salgueiro a group of professionals that would redefine the aesthetics of the carnival, which were: Arlindo Rodrigues, Maria Augusta, Joaosinho Thirty, Rosa Magalhaes, Licia Lacerda, among others