Carnival Industry

A review and comparison of four Calypso Tents during Trinidad & Tobago Carnival 2014: three traditional Calypso tents: Kaiso House, Kaiso Karavan, The Kalypso Revue, and a new venture based on the concept of a calypso tent re-imagined as a Las Vegas-style show, “Live at the Hyatt”. I also looked at the experiences of four calypsonians during the Carnival 2014 period: Winston Henry “The Explainer” of Kaiso House, Kurt Allen of Kaiso Karavan,  David Rudder and Destra Garcia of “Live at the Hyatt”.

Events can be differentiated into many types based on the category, size and domain such as public events which has a big number of audience and participants or private events which revolve around the primary interest of individuals, small or miniature private groups. Such types of event can be considered as mega events which are organized in a large scale and can cater a huge cluster of people gathered in a single place. Carnivals are fall under the category of cultural celebrations. Although there are many carnivals celebrated in different locations of the globe, including different locations in Brazil as well as many other catholic countries but Rio de Janeiro’s carnival is extremely popular all over the globe due to its gargantuan size and flamboyant performances. In this report, we will discuss the complexities involved in organizing Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival in 2014, its SWOT analysis, risk management and services available in the carnival.

In the 21st century culture has moved from the periphery of economic activity to the centre and in the Caribbean, festivals are important generators of revenue. The Bahamian festival of Junkanoo resembles the carnivals of the Caribbean, but unlike them, no emphasis has yet been placed on the economic benefits of the festival. This paper summarizes the findings of a long-term study of the economic impact of Junkanoo.

Published in The International Journal of Bahamian Studies Von 20 No. 1 (2014)

El presente artículo pretende ser un aporte al estudio de diversas transformaciones musicales que ha presentado la murga montevideana en los últimos cuarenta años. También intenta aportar al debate estético sobre los diversos procesos de estandarización estilística que han permitido a las murgas transformarse en fenómenos musicales representativos de la cultura uruguaya, cuestionándose a su vez sobre si dichos procesos devinieron en un empobrecimiento estético o, por el contrario, en un enriquecimiento plurisignificativo de este género carnavalesco.

This paper examines the Afro-Brazilian afoxé as a form of cultural struggle that critically contests narratives and practices that reproduce racial inequality in contemporary Brazil. Through their afoxé in the interior of São Paulo, the Orùnmilá Cultural Center mobilizes Afro-Brazilian knowledge and cultural practices to challenge culturalist treatments of Afro-Brazilian “difference” in the management and representation of carnaval. I explore how such treatments reflect broader state-orchestrated attempts to undermine black anti-racism and the implementation of substantive policies to address racial inequality in various spheres, including education and culture. The afoxé and the Orùnmilá Center's broader work constitute an important, contemporary means through which black organizations in Brazil make visible and vocal public claims for representation and self-determination. Such work pushes policy-makers and academics to reinterpret the terms of black inclusion vis-à-vis subaltern or “other” cultures, historical experiences, perspectives, and participation in societal transformation.

This essay uses fieldwork conducted at the Rio de Janeiro carnival of 2014 to mount a critique of the tendency to focus on 'unhappiness' apparent in postcolonial studies. Using instead material from the carnival as spectacle, and marrying the analysis to an examination of the relationship between embodied behaviour and post-trauma, an alternative focus on postcolonial happiness is proposed and argued for as a viable political project.

An analysis of changes introduced to the carnival of São Luís, Maranhão, Brazil during the 1980s and 1990s, which saw the competition between three types of carnival: the Rio model with samba schools, the Bahian model of Trio Eletricos and the street carnival which attempted to rescue traditions from Maranhão.

A partir do famoso desfile da Beija-Flor de Nilópolis de 1989, o ensaio objetiva uma revistação de temas clássicos dos estudos carnavalescos a fim de propor uma interpretação dos desfiles das Escolas de Samba que se resume na ideia de “assombro holístico”, qualificando-se os desfiles como significantes porque constituídos de partes articuladas holisticamente na direção de uma “totalidade”, e assombrosos, na medida em que intencionam reações emocionais dos espectadores.

This paper examines the Afro-Brazilian afoxé as a form of cultural struggle that critically contests narratives and practices that reproduce racial inequality in contemporary Brazil. Through their afoxé in the interior of São Paulo, the Orùnmilá Cultural Center mobilizes Afro-Brazilian knowledge and cultural practices to challenge culturalist treatments of Afro-Brazilian “difference” in the management and representation of carnaval. I explore how such treatments reflect broader state-orchestrated attempts to undermine black anti-racism and the implementation of substantive policies to address racial inequality in various spheres, including education and culture. The afoxé and the Orùnmilá Center's broader work constitute an important, contemporary means through which black organizations in Brazil make visible and vocal public claims for representation and self-determination. Such work pushes policy-makers and academics to reinterpret the terms of black inclusion vis-à-vis subal...

This study seeks to address the legal aspects of contracting public events in Brazil, considering as such those events in which organization or sponsorship procedures are made by the Public Administration (direct or indirect) within States and Municipalities for the local calendar of festivities. The research explores sponsorship and organization contracts inside 5 (five) of the largest street carnivals in Brazil through a case study, seeking to describe the mechanics adopted in the cities of Belo Horizonte, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, and São Paulo since 2016 until 2020. In this field, the investigation lists some of the main problems faced by public managers, organizers and sponsors of those events taking into account the current hiring models. For that purpose, the investigation reviews practical reports (interviews), analysis of administrative hiring procedures, positions of the control bodies (Courts of Auditors, District Attorney’s positions), and both State and Supreme Court decisions. The central research hypothesis resides in the mismatch of the normative environment offered by the Brazilian public contracting legislation versus the gradual increase in complexity and sophistication related to public events organization. The study seeks to describe how the Public Administration choose a path for the contraction public events, searching for legal certainty and without looking for an exhaustive model in legal typicality to solve the problem. At the end, the study seeks to point out the best practices adopted in the public and private sectors involving the contracting of public events in Brazil.

Cercherò di affrontare alcuni dei temi che mi sono cari in questo momento: la morale rovesciata della società spettacolare, il Carnevale della società del potere mediale, il riso degli oppressi, il potere delle immagini e le immagini del potere.

In Trinidad two distinct bodies scar everyday cultural life. One is the Carnivalesque – a naked, commodified, and sexualised body of the popular bikini and beads type of Carnival portrayals called ‘pretty mas’. The other body is the grotesque – a dead, maimed, and murdered body appearing frequently in news media and in daily discussions on social media as the murder rate locally reaches one person every day. From the mid 1980s to the present, the numbers and visibility of these bodies in the same everyday spaces has increased. While there is no causal connection, fieldwork suggests cultural conversation between two representations of the body, between laughter and grief, jouissance and mutilation, celebration and fear exists in Trinidad. Through ethnographic fieldnotes, historical data, discourse analysis and the cultural theories of Guy Debord, Mikhail Bakhtin, Lloyd Best and Antonio Benítez-Rojo, this article explores the cultural correlation between everyday images (sexual and violent) of the body in Trinidadian society and their impact on the constitution of subjectivity, nationhood and segregation locally.

This research aims to investigate, from the speeches of BATV television news during the coverage of the Salvador Carnival, as they are organized and mobilize different strategies and discursive operations through which the idea of “baianidade” is triggered. Therefore, it is proposed to characterize the contemporary process of media coverage and how the spectacle reverberates in television news organization as well as the operations that the production does to reporting the events. Search is still pointing from the statements of the newscast, markers that make possible to personify the idea of “baianidade” in that program and which triggered discursive formations.