Samba

All I know is that samba is a dance. A bit sensual, a bit erotic. I never experienced dancing it but I saw it being performed on TV. It looks interesting but its difficult I guess (oh well, no easy dance for somebody with two left feet, LOL).

The origin of samba is from an Afro-American couple dance, including capoiera which was imported from certain circle dances that originated from Angola and the Congo. Characteristic of the umbigador folk samba is the way the couples dance navel to navel. In its origins, singing always accompanied the dancing. Just as important is influence from Portugal and Europe, from where come samba's relatively intricate harmonies and harmonic instrumentation.

Samba first appeared as a distinctive kind of music at the beginning of the 20th century in rio de Janiero (then the capital of Brazil)under the strong influence of immigrant black people from the Brazilian state of Bhia. More

Every last Saturday of August, Samba Festival is being held in Asakusa, Tokyo, Japan. This year, its their 28^th. I joined a group of friends to witness this event, despite having a headache that day. I thought its an opportunity to take hundred of photos of colorful performers, of course, you already know. Haha!

At first thought, its kind of strange to reconcile samba + japan, right? Perhaps, event like this had some history.

In June 1908, 165 Japanese families made their way to the port of Santos near Sao Paulo, Brazil. Their aim was to make enough money to return to Japan in a few years with a better standard of living. As so often in life, their reason for going - work on the coffee plantations - was not as lucrative as hoped and return to Japan became impossible.

The Asakusa Samba Festival celebrates, in part, the success of these 165 families that first made the journey to Brazil. Through difficult times they established an accepted community that continues to grow and thrive today. The very first samba festival was held last August 29, 1981. More.

The parade had already started when we arrived. As expected, the streets were already filled with photo enthusiasts, tourists and locals. The question is how we can take photos with this amount of people blocking our way. Slowly, we positioned ourselves at the back and tried to sneak even in a small available space until we finally hit the front row. LOL! Of course, it was a good position, oh well, except for the marshal standing in front of me. If only my camera could punch him. Ha ha!

For more than two hours, I just clicked my camera and didn’t have the time to preview each shot. As they, no matter what, you are assured of 1% good shots from your total shots. I guess its true LOL!

As we were enjoying the sights, scenes and sounds of the festival, the skies started pouring. I am not sure if it was brought by jealousy or excitement.

But this didn’t stop the performers to continue swirling and twirling on the streets. Of course, as much as we didn’t want to leave our position, there’s nothing we can do or else our camera will permanently die. That’s life.

The rain stopped for a minute then came back again in full force. We decided to go home since we can’t do anything about it anymore. I went back to Chiba with heavy headache still. Until now.

But hoping that next year’s festival will be more colorful, exciting and of course, dry.

/totomai
09/02/08