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History | FAQS | Testimonials | Press
Some observations that have appeared in the press over the years:
"Best Public Bash"
Richard West
Texas Monthly, June 1980
"Forget New Year's Eve, Halloween, the Fourth of July and even your birthday. Austin's biggest party of the year rolls around again Saturday night at the City Coliseum. Yes, it's Carnaval time. You poor souls who have not yet experienced this frenzied night of revelry owe it to your libidos to show up...
When [last year's Carnaval] was finally over, I, like many other people, stood around in an exhausted daze--not unlike the afterglow of an orgasm--refusing to believe that such a high-level experience could ever end."
Dan Rice
The Daily Texan, 2/14/83
"...there's enough madness at Carnaval Brasileiro for you to store up plenty of small sins to keep you warm for at least 40 days of Lenten austerity.
...when you arrive, you'll swear the walls are going to burst with all that sound. It comes mostly from drums, the bateria; the drums really get to you. Their pulsating, syncopated beat is totally compelling. You don't just hear it, you can feel it, coming up from the floor through the soles of your feet, and it's so intense it will probably have you right out on the dance floor in no time."
Josie Neal
The San Antonio Light, 2/27/81
"...Susanna Sharpe and dozens of drums presided over Austin's best public costume party Saturday night.
While Halloween on Sixth Street is suffocating from crowds and regimentation, and few people dress for Eeyore's Birthday Party anymore, Carnaval is healthy and adapting to middle age without losing its step.
Not only a splendid costume ball, Carnaval is probably the best dance of the year and, if anyone can stop samba-ing long enough to listen to the music, an interesting concert of Brazilian festival music..."
Pete Szilagyi
Austin American-Statesman, 2/8/93
"Brazil Nuts Dept: I keep trying to think of reasons to disapprove of the city's annual salute to bacchanalia, Carnaval Brasileiro, but I just can't. After all, when you consider the capacity for magnum-force sensory overload engendered by thundering Latin percussion, sinuous lines of snake dancers, revelers in gaudy costumes or various stages of undress and ice-cold beer (often Brazilian Brahma), what's not to like? Celebrating Carnaval is a hedonistic and riotously pagan job, but somebody's got to do it."
John T. Davis
Austin Weekly, 2/6/92
"When it comes to 'dress up' occasions in Austin, there's nothing to match the time and energy that goes into the preparation for Carnaval. The pre-Lenten festivity combines Mardi Gras madness with the non-stop Brazilian beat of the sensual samba, transposing a Rio de Janeiro-style celebration to downtown Austin. Carnaval is a sort of dance-happy Halloween for adults that infuses a concentrated burst of hot and steamy tropical energy into the usually dormant winter months. It has become one of Austin's most beloved entertainment institutions, and the city's premier event for festive fashions and just plain weird wardrobing.
Jenna Radke, manager of the S. Congress Avenue costume shop Electric Ladyland, said the event is the highlight of her year. 'There's nothing that compares with Carnaval when it comes to wild-and-crazy outfits,' she said. 'The Carnaval fans are really serious about their costumes. They want something that's totally flamboyant, the more theatrical the better. We do more business for Halloween because it affects everyone, but we sell more really outrageous outfits for Carnaval.'
Austin didn't invent Carnaval, but it has adopted and embraced it with a fervor that may be unmatched in North America. Organizers, who have researched similar events, proudly believe Austin does it better.
'There are a few other places--mostly big cosmopolitan cities like New York, San Francisco and Miami--that have Carnaval celebrations, but ours is the best. In those cities, most of the audience is either made up of Brazilian natives, or else it's a $75-ticket costume ball for the affluent. Here it's more of a populist event, with fewer Brazilians and more people tat aren't tied in directly to that culture who take time out to experience it. Also, there's no doubt that Austinites just like to get wild and crazy like no place else,' organizers say."
Michael Point
Austin American-Statesman, 2/10/90
"The pre-Lent festival is an all-consuming party, complete with outrageous costumes and non-stop dancing. It is not a night for the timid or introverted, although the anonymity provided by costuming frees even the most inhibited souls to celebrate with complete abandon.
...Carnaval's uninhibited atmosphere allows partygoers to witness and take part in what one regular calls "a festival of flesh" as the Mardi Gras-type event brings out the wildly dressed and the barely dressed for hours of energetic dancing to the seething samba beat."
Michael Point
Austin American-Statesman, 2/9/91
"Discriminating party animals agree--it's the wildest party in the known universe, a fevered boogie fest that strains the most exaggerated adjectives, a mass of bodies breaking into spontaneous combustion. What else? It's Carnaval Brasileiro--a little gathering of a few thousand friends who know how to get crazy.
Know any other party that people fly down from Seattle every year to make? Longtime Austinites Dawn and Bob Haslanger have been doing just that ever since they moved to Seattle three years ago.
But is any party that good? 'It's a great party. I've never seen anything like it anywhere else,' Dawn said. 'It's kind of a magical atmosphere, a samba frenzy. You go out and get as crazy as you can. Since you're disguised that makes it even easier.'
A jet-propelled cultural transplant, Carnaval transforms Austin into
Rio-on-the-Colorado--Carnaval turns Brazil into one big street party.
Samba music gives Carnaval its torrid ambience. Organizers say, 'Unlike any other party, this one has its own music to integrate the dancing and costumes. The music has been developing since the turn of the century; it's honed to the right atmosphere.'
Under the spell of the music and in the anonymity of a costume, 'people get all revved up. It's an opportunity to unbridle lot of things that are normally bridled.'
Above all, it's the crowd that makes the party, they say. 'It's a great crowd--you get over 3000 people on a bumper-car dance floor; it's just fun. It unleashes the child in everyone.' "
John Herndon
Austin American-Statesman, 2/4/89
"In Austin, the occasion for civic debauchery has been, since around 1970, the fabled Carnaval Brasileiro. Some might argue that Halloween gives Carnaval a run for the money, but this survivor of both events disagrees.
[Carnaval is] a flagrant affront to all that is self-righteous, responsible and stuffy. May it be ever thus."
John T. Davis
Austin American-Statesman, 2/21/87
"They come in feathers, lamé, masks and papier-mache heads. They come dressed as film stars and suppressed desires. Herds of party animals costume around a single theme, forming a bloco. And every year, it seems, some woman comes dressed in everything she brought into this world.
They're coming to Carnaval Brasileiro, perhaps the most uninhibited bash north of Copacabana beach. Only in Austin could a Brazilian-style pre-Lent carnival party become an institution. With Eeyore's Birthday and Halloween, Carnaval forms the triple-crown of Austin costumed madness...it's become the focal point for pent-up mid-winter madness.
Carnaval literally means 'farewell to meat.' Historically rooted in Catholic countries, it is a time to indulge before the ritual penitence of Lent, a binge before the fast. But its roots go much deeper, to pagan times, when it was a celebration to usher out winter and rejuvenate spring. In Austin, it has become a time to throw off the staleness of a shut-in winter and banish inhibitions."
John Herndon
Austin American-Statesman, 2/9/85
"Marlin Perkins of Wild Kingdom fame never saw as many animals as danced the samba, whooped, jumped up and down and just generally went bananas Saturday night at Carnaval Brasileiro, Austin's annual answer to Brazilian Mardi Gras.
We are speaking of just one species of beast, though. Or, as they say in Rome, "partius animalaroonus." An estimated 3,300 of these friendly critters jammed the City Coliseum for non-stop dancing to sensual, pounding Brazilian music played by a band called Carnaval Knowledge.
...It was kind of like the Cotton-Eyed Joe on steroids...The costumes at this bash, as usual, were fit for a Fellini movie. One guy who didn't volunteer his name showed up in an outfit that sported a pair of fabric female breasts. Just who the heck did he think he was?
"I'm the whore of Babylon," he said of his gear, which included an odd crown decorated, in part, by a couple of synthetic, curling ram horns. "It's Carnaval, the festival of the flesh. Where else would the whore of Babylon be?"
A rather large fellow with a mustache sambaed the night away in a lime-green gown with huge hoops that made the outfit about 2 1/2 yards wide. He had a basket of white flowers on his head. Some of the female outfits were rather skimpy. A woman danced in front of the stage in a teddy. And later in the evening, she managed to make it onto the stage with the band.
Everybody seemed to have a good time. "That's why I live in Austin, to go to things like this," said Jackie Soliz, who was wearing a 1920s flapper outfit. "Don't they have them all the time?"
John Kelso
Austin American-Statesman, 2/10/86
"While in Austin it's winter, in Rio, it's the middle of summer. But no matter what the climatic conditions, the atmosphere at Carnaval Brasileiro will be hot.
In fact, Carnaval annually proves to be the hottest party of the winter.
The samba beat is largely responsible for the heat, said party organizers. 'The beat somehow ties in with body rhythms and really gets you jumping. Samba seems to be the most motivating kind of music, it's almost impossible not to dance to it.
The real attraction, though, will be the crowd. Austin's wildest party animals come wearing feathers, lame, masks and at least one person will come dressed in little more than glitter. "The costuming is a way of changing roles or positions in the sociological hierarchy," organizers say. "It's a way for people to hide their identities while going crazy."
John Herndon
Austin American-Statesman, 2/86
"Rays of neon lights swirled about, revealing glimpses of a mass of pinks, greens, golds, feathers and sweaty flesh pulsating to the thumping of drums and the pounding Portuguese vocals. The room expanded and contracted in ecstatic frenzy.
Carnaval Brasileiro, Austin's own version of Brazilian street carnivals celebrating Mardi Gras, took place Saturday at the Palmer Events Center. 'It is about the music, the dancing and the outrageous costumes,' said Mike Quinn, the event organizer.
'I'm not here five minutes, and I already know I'm definitely coming back,' said Paul Shugar, a consultant from Houston. 'With this much skin, how can you not come back?'
Shugar and his buddies were covered in silver body paint and sparkles and wore boxer shorts, fishnet stockings and sandals. Shugar heard about the party from a friend and decided to come check it out.
The appeal of Carnaval is the opportunity to dress up as 'your anti-personality, show up and have fun and at the end of the night, no one cares,' Shugar said. 'It's like a license to have fun.' "
Cyndee-Nga Trinh
The Daily Texan, 2/9/04
"TEXAS TAMBEM TEM SAMBA, ZIRIGUIDUM E BALACOBACO"
("Texas also has samba, ziriguidum and balacobaco")
O Globo, Brazil
• AUSTIN, Texas. Thousands of people wearing Halloween costumes filled the arena feverously dancing to the samba beat. The drums inspired enthusiastic movements, while multicolored lights provided the ambience. The party-goers were celebrating carnaval, but it's not Brazil: it's Texas.
Since the middle of the '70s, when Brazilian exchange students at the University of Texas began to organize a carnaval, the inhabitants of the city have commemorated the Brazilian festivity. The event has become one of the city's most popular.
'It was natural for Austinites to get into this. They are known for their party-loving attitudes,' organizers say.
'It's crazier than in Brazil,' says Andre Bastos, an engineer from Sao Paulo.
At last Saturday's party, people were still buying tickets at midnight and when the box office closed, more than 4,800 had arrived. Organizers are already studying ways to make next year's party even better.
In 2000, they flew in 13 drummers from the samba school Portela in Rio, and last year brought in a veteran samba group from New York. Twenty-seven years of carnaval have opened the doors for shows by Brazilian music stars like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Milton Nascimento, who would normally not make tour stops in a city as small as Austin.
Aaron Nelsen
O Globo (Brazil), 2/2004
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