Carnival Songs: Vou Festejar

One of the things I like most about carnival in Rio, is how inclusive it is. There is no entrance fee for any of the blocos, the beer is cheap, you don’t have to wear a fancy costume and there are no complicated dance moves that you need to learn. In short, even a clueless gringo like me can show up and have a great time.

Chapeuzinho Vermelho (Little Red Riding Hood) and friends having fun. A guy on a fire truck was spraying the crowd with water when I took this shot, causing the autofocus on my point-and-click to go AWOL. I quite like the effect.

Samba comes in several different forms including a traditional version, a slow version, a modern version and so on. I don’t know enough about all that to tell you anything about it, so for now let’s just call it samba. Apparently you can ‘samba-ise’ pretty much any music and one of the most popular blocos is called Sargento Pimenta (Sergeant Pepper) which just plays Beatles tracks in a carnival style.

But on the whole, the music played is carnival music – tracks played every year at carnival. Everyone seems to know all the words and sings along which at first made me feel a bit left out. But pretty soon I realised that it didn’t really matter – in the same way that you don’t need to know how to samba to join in the dancing, you don’t need to know the lyrics (or even the tune) to sing along. Most of the songs are pretty repetitive, and quite a few of them are played at every bloco so you pick them up in no time.

 This bloco ran past Jardim Botanico and was very busy! 

There was one particular tune that I really liked and when I hear it now, it instantly takes me back to my first carnival. You can catch it in this clip from one of my favourite blocos of last year:

 Admittedly, the sound quality isn’t great, but you can hopefully get an idea of how enthusiastically everyone sings along to this one. 

The name of this song is Vou Festejar which means “I’m going to celebrate”. When I heard this song last year I didn’t know the lyrics but I remember being struck by how cheerful it sounded. In my head I decided that we were all singing about someone who was saying how they were going out to celebrate carnival and have fun with their friends.

Well a few days ago I finally got round to looking up the lyrics and got a shock! Let me regale you with some of the highlights (as always, Tom’s substandard translation disclaimer applies):

Cry!

I don’t care,

The time has come,

You’re going to pay,

You can cry, you can cry.

It’s your punishment,

You fought with me,

For no reason,

I’m going to celebrate,

Your suffering,

Your punishment. 

You paid with treachery,

The one who always offered their hand.

I’m going to celebrate,

Your suffering,

Your punishment. 

Hmmmm, cheery little number isn’t it? I still love the song (even though it has been stuck on repeat in my head for the last 3 days), but it puts a rather different complexion on things doesn’t it? I guess you would file it under ‘Gloating Revenge songs’. I mentioned it to a friend who originates from the state of Minas Gerais and she said “Yes, when I first arrived here in Rio I thought it was weird how the Carioca’s like to sing this song at carnival”. I guess it has mass appeal as pretty much everyone over the age of 14 can think of someone as the target of this song. Like a souped-up version of Gloria Gaynor’s “I will survive”.

OK, it’s almost time for me to get my fantasia finalised, so I’ll leave you with the awesome Beth Carvalho belting out my favourite ‘happy’ carnival song back in 1978 (they took down the video I originally posted, so I’ve replaced it with a more recent clip). Do you have a favourite carnival song?

 She seems so cheery doesn’t she?