Thanks to everyone who turned out to line the streets for the carnival, we will be posting lots of photos and reviews on here, but today its time to nurse drum-induced bruising and have a nap – dancing til 6am in the Picket after party was amazing – Mangueira’s set blew everyone away!
This photo of Simone in her showstopping costume is by Pete Carr.
If you are performing in the Carnival parade on this Saturday, 2nd August, here’s a reminder of the information you’ll need to know.
Performers- Please meet at Novas Contemporary Urban Centre, this centre will be open from 2pm but everyone must meet there by 6pm at the latest. Novas is open only until 12 midnight, so please ensure all personal and samba school items are removed before this time.
If you are a performer requiring parking, it as advisable to park behind New Bird St. The Echo Arena car park has 24hr access for coaches at a cost of £10 per night.
Help will be needed to decorate the New Picket venue on the day, so anyone wishing to help with this should volunteer at Novas CUC after picking up their costume.
Liverpool Samba School performers – If you are performing in the batería and do not yet have your full costume, you may pick this up at Novas CUC as above. Please wear a white t-shirt and black trousers or leggings (women) to go underneath the sparkly costume trousers. Men please wear a white tshirt and dark grey trousers.
All performers please be responsible for all the costume items and equipment ( drums, beaters, straps etc) you use on Saturday. Information will be given on the day as to where these items are to be stored after the parade.
Floats will be taken to the parade line up at 3pm, Please be on time if you are involved with this.
The parade line up for performers will proceed from Novas CUC to gather in Abercromby Square off Cambridge St, ready for the starting point in Myrtle St.
All samba schools will be given a 15 minute slot to showcase their individual interpretations of samba at the after party at the Picket. Please do not get changed immediately following the parade until you are informed as to when the slot will be, as your samba school may be on first and should perform in full costume.
All samba performers will be given a wrist band at Novas for free entry to the after party at the New Picket.
If you are from Liverpool Samba School and have any questions, please ring Masha, Lyna or Elaine. If you have mislaid their phone numbers which were given out in practice this week, or that of Jelena (who has offered her place in Chatham St to meet up between 12 and 5), email lizinha at mac dot com. If you are on Facebook, you may also leave questions on the ‘Escola de Samba de Liverpool’ Facebook group page.
Have fun this Saturday, it promises to be an exciting culmination to all the hard work everyone has put in to make this happen! Thanks and see you there!
The Liverpool Capital of Culture Carnival is nearly here! After years of preparation, this Saturday sees 500 costumed performers from Brasil and Europe taking to the streets for a spectacular evening carnival parade, with beautiful dancers, amazing costumes, exciting performances, spectacular displays and and superb floats…
Rio party flyer at the Picket
Starting at 8:30pm from outside the Arts Centre on Myrtle St, the parade will wind its way through Liverpool City Centre then off to the New Picket with it’s specially extended outdoor area, to continue the definitive party of Liverpool’s 08 celebrations!
We are proud to announce the night’s amazing line up includes:
Doors open at 10pm and the party goes on til dawn…
Tickets are available for £5 on the door at the New Picket or from Ticketweb
The parade on Saturday 2nd August will begin in Myrtle St at 8:30pm and end at the Chinese Arch, Duke St. The Rio style party then starts at the New Picket, New Bird St, doors open from 10pm
This colourful new flyer has been produced by Brian of the Samba School. On the reverse is a handy map which outlines the parade route for August 2nd Carnival.
Click on the thumbnails to view a larger version.
Carnival flyer front
Carnival flyer back
Mangueira Samba School will be playing with us at this year’s carnival for Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture year! This amazing news adds to the buzz already surounding what promises to be the biggest carnival Liverpool has ever seen, coming up on 2nd of August.
Over 80 years old, Mangueira is one of the most celebrated samba schools in the ‘grupo especial’ of Rio de Janeiro’s competitive yearly ‘carnaval’ (in effect, the equivalent of the F.A cup for samba) -a huge event held in the Sambodromo, a purpose built arena, in Rio each year. Thier iconic pink and green colour scheme makes Mangueira stand out amongst the other schools as they have paraded away as champions with the ’super campea’ title on numerous occasions.
Pink and green or ‘verde e rosa’ colours Manguiera’s costumes, the instruments and even the buildings in their vast favela-based community centre. The centre includes schemes for education, training, sports and community leisure, which benefits hugely from revenue from carnaval competition wins, and year-round preparation is taken extremely seriously, with band practices beginning mid- august for the following February!
Mangueira is famous for their super-fast, super-accurate batucada with the emphasis on the second beat. We are very excited that members of the famous percusion ‘bateria’ will be playing batacada with us again this year in the Liverpool parade, including our own Mangueira-style variation, which we have been playing for many years now, since our connection with Manguiera was first established and we visited their Palácio do Samba with contributions to their community projects (and also a number of Liverpool Football Club shirts!) as seen in these photographs.
Come along for your chance to hear these word class percussionists playing alongside our home grown bateria on the streets of Liverpool this year!
Liverpool Lord Mayor’s Parade 2008
Originally uploaded by John_Kennan.
Yes amigos, we won the hotly contested ‘best band’ accolade again in this year’s Lord Mayors Parade on Saturday.
The parade was witnessed by thousands of people who lined the streets, and was hailed as the ‘biggest and ‘best ever’ by the Liverpool Echo, with 68 – a record number of floats participating.
Photos to come, but for now this picture of Sandy parading in the bateria uniform was uploaded by John Kennan who has a nice set on Flickr from the day’s event. Also see the Liverpool Daily Post picture gallery for more images in the meantime. If you have images of us parading on the day, get in touch and we may post or link to them here.
Parabéns ! – well done everyone for a great day and another nice shiny cup to add to the collection!
Irish Samba School MaSamba, long running collaborators with Liverpool Samba School, bring samba style craic to the streets of Dublin with their own particular flair every year. Look out for them in August in Liverpool as they join us for the European Capital of Culture Carnival on the 2nd!
This video shows their performance at this years St Patrick’s day festival in Dublin.
Liverpool Samba School has a new Facebook group, which newbies (hello, welcome, there were a lot of you at practice this week!) and old school members may find useful to join…
Get info and questions answered on practices, gigs, where to find the best earplugs, how to avoid getting blisters on your blisters etc… Of course you can also express your interest in signing up for the carnival in August.
So if you are already on Facebook (- er is there anyone left who isn’t? ) then join the group here:
Escola de Samba de Liverpool (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18138939746 )
…and sign up to the event page for the Carnival on August 2nd if you can attend and/or help beforehand: Liverpool Capital of Culture 2008 Carnival
( http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=26386884280 )
Discuss things, invite your friends, add photos and videos, pretend you are doing some work, all those good things that Facebook has to offer, now in effervescent samba flavour 
The new carnival feature costumes or ‘destaques’ and corresponding ‘passista’ outfits are modelled in Alma de Cuba in these new photos by Craig Bennett. Elegantly poised there under a tonne of sparkly bits is Sandy, who plays surdo (large drum) in the percussion batería when she isn’t wearing huge flamboyant outfits like this to do her weekly shopping at Asda.
So, expect to see more of this type of thing at the carnival in August. Just a bit of diamanté involved here as you can see… subtlety is soo last season meus amigos…
More shots here
