Yankee Samba Dandy

In 1969, the same year that North Americans stepped on the moon, a group of San Francisco's Bay Area Brazilians took a small but historic step of their own. Opening the doors of a tiny hall in South San Francisco, they invited the world in. There were no costumes. The music was taped. By Rio or Bahia standards, the celebrants, mostly American, were sedate. But it was the first Brazilian Carnaval Ball on the West Coast.

Twenty seven years later, the event has become one of party-minded San Francisco's favorite entertainmments and the longest running Brazilian Carnaval Ball in the United States. It is now called the Bay Area Brasilian Club/Friends of Brazil Carnaval Ball to reflect a progressive shift of leadership a few years ago.

By any name, this one nightful of fun is what finances the Club's activities year round. Many of these concentrate on serious community needs: seminars on immigration, work, drugs, emergency family funding. Others concentrate on culture: concerts by Brazilian musical artists like João Bosco and Beth Carvalho, a film exhibition and San Francisco's First Children's Day. But on Carnaval night, revelers concentrate only on samba, frevo, marcha, samba reggae and axé.

Since 1984, the San Francisco Carnaval has been held in the Galleria, a soaring, multi-tiered building, which adapts naturally to festivity. Each year at Carnaval, it is embellished with banners, streamers, serpentines. Last year, twin cardboard cutouts of a two-story high Carmen Miranda smiled down on the crowd.

This year "The Night of the Masquerade" decorations will be topped by a 24 by 24 foot Carnaval Mask winking seductively at the two to three thousand people who are expected to attend. Included among them is an upscale group from the Domaine Chandon Club, most of whom, it is likely will be attending their first authentic Carnaval Ball.

And authentic is the key word. Through the years traditional Carnaval idols like Elsa Soares and Emilinha Borba have come up from Rio to join local Brazilian performers. Carnaval regulars through the years have included Lisa Silva; Aquarela, directed by Maria Souza; Carlos Aceituno's Fogo na Roupa; and Oxumaré, guided by Gilda Maria. On-stage also, for the past 11 years has been The Brazilian All Star Big Band, under the direction of Célia Malheiros.

Although most of the Band's members are professional performers, there are some whose every day lives are very different. Among the bespangled entertainers are Marilu, who details foreign cars; Marisa, a travel agent; and Roberto, one of the top Portuguese court interpreters in California.

The evening will also include a tribute to Neuza Brown, a native of Rio, who took a rhythmic step of her own in the history of Bay Area Carnaval Balls. She was the first sambista, the first person to bring the fantastic costumes and the fiery spirit of the escolas de sambas to the Bay Area dance floor.

Carnaval `96's theme, A Noite dos Mascarados (The Night of the Masquerades) is one that has been popular among revelers at Carnaval Balls for hundreds of years, in Italy, France and Portugal. Both the elegant Carnaval Balls and the raffish, downright dirty pre-Lenten entrudos of the Portuguese poor were exported to Brazil and, like so much else in that country, it was the mixing which made Carnaval different than any other celebration on earth.

Despite the theme, the masks are optional. One member of the Club, touched lightly by poetic inspiration, explains: "Wear a mask or don't wear one To the Brazilian night of fun!"

While San Francisco celebrants wrestle with that one, Brazilians and non-Brazilians all over the US are following their own traditions and preparing their own Carnaval Balls.

New York actually held the first Carnaval Ball in the country at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel but there have been some years when the event was skipped. This year, however, there will once again be a Carnaval Ball at the Waldorf.

Los Angeles will hold the 15th Carnaval Ball sponsored by Samba e Saudade, at the Hollywood Palladium. Florida Brasileiros will samba at the Seville Beach Hotel in Miami Beach, their ninth such celebration. Made-by-Brazilian Carnaval Balls have also appeared, from time to time, in Chicago, San Diego and even Arizona.

More and more the spirit of celebration, the excitement of the upcoming change of seasons and just the desire to have one rare old time makes the Brazilian Carnaval Ball more popular each year. Someday, perhaps, it may even challenge the New Orleans Mardi Gras in popularity as an "all American entertainment institution."