Thanks to the Riotur.Rio team of talented and hard working photographers, a quick and colourful look at the two nights of parades of Rio’s top samba schools, the Grupo Especial, on 11 and 12 February 2024. Dates of the parade of the Grupo Especial in 2025 are 2 and 3 March.
DAY ONE – 11 FEBRUARY 2024
DAY TWO – 12 FEBRUARY 2024
MESTRE-SALAS & PORTA BANDEIRAS (Dance masters and standard-bearers)
The main parades of the Grupo Especial in Rio de Janeiro’s carnival take place on the nights of Sunday, 11 February and Monday, 12 February 2024. The 12 schools will parade in the following order and their themes are:
SUNDAY, 11 FEBRUARY
Porta da Pedra
The plot of “Lunário Perpétuo: A Profética do Saber Popular” (Perpetual Lunary: The Prophetics of Popular Knowledge) is based “Lunário Perpétuo”, an almanac that dates back to medieval times, written in the 14th century in Spain by Jerónimo Cortés. The book travelled the world, arriving in Brazil and becoming one of the most widely read books in the Northeast for nearly 200 years.
Beija-Flor
“Um delírio de carnaval na Maceió de Rás Gonguila”” (A Carnival Delirium in the Maceió of Rás Gonguila) pays homage to the city of Maceió through the story of Rás Gonguila, a shoeshine boy and porter who lived in Maceió at the beginning of the 20th century. Passionate about Carnival, he founded Cavaleiro de Montes, one of the main blocos in the Alagoas capital at the time. Gonguila also proclaimed himself a member of the Ethiopian monarchy, became the Ethiopian Prince of Alagoas and an influential person who was consulted by politicians and intellectuals.
Salgueiro
In the Yanomami language, “hutukara” means “the original sky from which the earth was formed”. In 2024 Salgueiro is telling the story of the Yanomami people who occupy the largest Indigenous land area in Brazil with a samba that comes out in defence of Brazil’s indigenous peoples and defends the preservation of the Amazon.
Grande Rio
Guided by the mythical narrative of the book by Alberto Mussa, the plot for “Nosso destino é ser onça” (Our Destiny is to be a Jaguar) is a reflection on the symbolism of the jaguar for the Tupinambá people. Grande Rio promises to explore the jaguar’s link within different manifestations of Brazilian culture and express the strength of Brazil’s native peoples.
Unidos da Tijuca
“O conto de fados” (The Fairy Tale) looks at the history of Portugal through the country’s legends and tales, as well as showing the Portuguese cultural influence on Brazil. Tijuca, has strong links with Portugal, and had Vasco da Gama, a club founded by Portuguese immigrants and their descendants, as its theme in 1998, and the Portuguese language in 2002.
Imperatriz Leopoldinense
The reigning carnival champions close the first night with the storyline “Com a sorte virada pra lua segundo o testamento da cigana Esmeralda” (With Luck Turned to the Moon According to the Will of the Gypsy Esmeralda). The story is fictional and tells the tale of a gypsy who tries to decipher the world of dreams, palm reading, the influence of the stars on everyday life, lucky numbers, dates for good and bad things to happen and other forms of fortune-telling.
MONDAY, 12 FEBRUARY
Mocidade
With the storyline “Pede caju que dou… Pé de caju que dá!” (Ask for a Cashew and I’ll Give You One… I’ll Give You a Cashew!) Mocidade looks at the cashew fruit with its stories, legends and curiosities, and even puns. The idea is to show the “Brazilianness” behind this fruit that was one of the first treasures taken by the colonisers when they arrived in Brazil.
Portela
The storyline of “Um defeito de cor (A Defect of Colour)“, is based on the novel of the same name by writer Ana Maria Gonçalves, and tells the story of the character Kehinde, who is also Luísa Mahin, a formerly enslaved woman of African origin who is believed to have taken part in the organisation of the slave uprisings that shook Bahia in the first decades of the 19th century. The samba depicts the trajectory of this black heroine and shows passages from Afro-Brazilian history to tell of Luísa’s connection with her son, the black abolitionist lawyer Luiz Gama.
Vila Isabel
In 2024 Vila Isabel returns to its 1993 storyline “Gbala – Viagem ao Templo da Criação” (Gbala – Journey to the Temple of Creation). The plot is based on a fictional story from Yoruba culture to show the harm mankind does to the world and to argue the case that children and their purity are the salvation of the planet. The samba was written by the great Martinho da Vila.
Mangueira
The famous “verde e rosa” will pay homage to the great samba singer Alcione with “A negra voz do amanhã” (The Black Voice of Tomorrow). It is the story of the singer from Maranhão, starting from Alcione’s childhood and musical beginnings in São Luís to her connection with Mangueira. It will also reflect Alcione’s contribution to its youth school, Mangueira do Amanhã, of which she is the founder and president of honour.
Paraíso do Tuiuti
“Glória ao Almirante Negro!” (Glory to the Black Admiral!) will use the language of comic books to tell the story of João Cândido, the Brazilian naval rating led the Revolta da Chibata in 1910. Cândido led his peers in the navy in a revolt calling for an end to the mistreatment, malnutrition and physical punishment of sailors, which had already been abolished at the beginning of the Republic, but was still in use.
Viradouro
The closing storyline of “Arroboboi, Dangbé” talks about the energy of the cult of the powerful serpent god of Voodoo mythology, Vodou, the force that manifested itself in epic battles on the West Coast of Africa and influenced the struggles of the all female Mino warriors of the kingdom of Dahomey, a dynasty of women chosen by the python spirit, Dangbé.
In 2024 the main parades of the Grupo Especial samba schools during Rio de Janeiro’s carnival are scheduled to take place on the nights of Sunday, 11 February and Monday, 12 February 2024. The 12 schools will parade in the following order:
Sunday, 11 February
Monday, 12 February 2024.
G.R.E.S Unidos do Porto da Pedra has topped Série Ouro, the second league of samba schools, with its samba “A Invenção da Amazônia”. The school will now parade with the elite schools of the Grupo Especial in 2024.
The samba was based around a book by Jules Verne published as “La Jangada” in French in 1881, and “Eight Hundred Leagues of the Amazon” in English.
It was Porto da Pedra and its returning carnavaleso, Mauro Quintaes, that featured the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs in its carnival samba “Samba No Pé e Mãos ao Alto isto é um Assalto” (Samba On Your Feet and Hands Up. This is a Robbery) back in 1998 in Grupo Especial..
The markings and results of the main samba school parades in Rio will now start at 16.00 on Wednesday, 22 February at the sambodromo (19.00 in UK).
In all, 12 schools from the Grupo Especial and 15 from the Série Ouro will be evaluated in the categories of drums, samba, harmony, evolution, plot, allegories and props, costumes, front commission and mestre-sala and porta-bandeira (ballroom master and flag bearer).
This year, there will only be four marks per category, and only the lowest note will be discarded – unlike recent years when there were five sets of marks and the highest was also removed. The final classification will be determined by the total sum of the marks and often just one or two percentage points out of 270 can make the difference of winning, losing or being relegated.
Thanks to the Riotur.Rio team of talented and hard working photographers, a quick and colourful look at the second of the two nights of parades of Rio’s top samba schools, the Grupo Especial. On 20 February it was the turn of Paraíso do Tuiuti, Portela, Vila Isabel, Imperatriz Leopoldinense, Beija-Flor and Viradouro.
The results of the Grupo Especial, which covers Rio’s top twelve samba schools, will be announced in Rio on Wednesday (22 February) starting at 15.00 local time (18.00 in London). The lowest scoring school will be relegated to the Série Ouro for 2024, with the winner of this year’s Série Ouro joining the top 12 in 2024.
Dates of the parade of the Grupo Especial in 2024 are 11 and 12 February.
Saturday, 18 February, sees the return of the iconic Baile do Copa carnival ball to the equally iconic Copacabana Palace, A Belmond Hotel in Rio de Janeiro.
The hotel is celebrating its centenary this year and the ball – that took place for the first time in 1924 – will celebrate its own centenary in 2024. This year’s theme for the ball is “Time Tunnel” to encourage guests to dress to recreate some of those special moments from the hotel’s past 100 years, or even if they wish from its future. The hotel promises an evening of “decadence, joy and glorious excess,…”, something we all need in 2023. Many of the great and the good have attended the ball over the decades from Orson Welles to Brigitte Bardot, to name just two.
As always a diverse selection of themes and story lines have been chosen to be presented by the top schools at Rio’s carnaval.
In 2023 these include Vila Isabel that will celebrate the human capacity to have faith in what cannot be seen; Salgueiro that has chosen a plot about valuing freedom of expression, showing that paradise is built individually by each person, without restriction or sin. Mocidade will look at the cultural legacy of artists from Alto do Moura in Pernambuco, and the disciples of the artist Mestre Vitalino. Historic figures also feature and Viradouro will tell the story of Rosa Maria Egípcia who was brought from Africa to Brazil in 1925 and is credited as the first black woman to write a book in Brazil. Imperatriz Leopoldinense will travel to the northeast and tell the story of the arrival in both heaven and hell of the bandit leader and folk hero, Lampião. Império Serrano brings a storyline based on Arlindo Cruz’s success, “My Place”. In a tribute to the singer, the samba school will go through moments and places that marked his career.
Paraíso do Tuiuti will tell the story of the arrival and impact of buffaloes to Brazil, through the Marajó Island, in Pará, which inspired a cultural manifestation in the region. The state of Bahia is featured by three schools. Unidos da Tijuca will celebrate everything about Bahia, taking a lot of axé to the avenue and feature the joy of Bahia’s carnival. Mangueira will highlight the impact of women on the music of Bahia, while Beija-Flor will argue that the “true” independence of Brazil was the expulsion of the Portuguese troops from Bahia 200 years ago in 1823. Celebrating its centenary, Portela, one of the city’s most famous and traditional schools, will not surprisingly look back at the school’s history through the eyes of five characters who have been fundamental to the school and Rio’s carnival. And Grande Rio, the current champion of Rio’s carnival, will pay tribute to the musician and great sambista Zeca Pagodinho, who will join the school for the parade.
The main parades of the Grupo Especial – Rio’s top 12 ranking samba schools – will next take place on the nights of Sunday, 19 February and Monday, 20 February 2023.
Sunday, 19 February 2023
Monday, 20 February 2023
In 2023 the main parades of the Grupo Especial in Rio de Janeiro’s carnival are currently scheduled to take place on the nights of Sunday, 19 February and Monday, 20 February 2022. The 12 schools and the order that they will parade in 2023 are:
Sunday, 19 February 2023
Monday, 20 February 2023
Rio the Guide 