Ed Cunningham of Time Out travels to the heart of the Amazon rainforest to attend the Parintins Folklore Festival, one of Brazil’s liveliest and most extraordinary events. Here’s his description of the event. It sounds AWESOME!
Taking place on an island in the middle of the Amazon river, Parintins is accessible only by plane or boat. Despite that extreme remoteness, Parintins’ festival has developed a prized reputation within Brazil for its celebration of Amazonian culture, its bold, spectacular performances and its fierce, city-splitting rivalry.
A social divide, and an intense rivalry
Parintins Festival is, at its core, a competition between two teams. Over three nights performances retell a folkloric story through song and dance called Bumba Meu Boi, a legend of a resurrected ox, and at the end a winner is declared by judges. While Brazil’s carnivals typically mark the start of Lent in the Christian calendar, Parintins Festival is grounded in the heritage, traditions and folklore of the indigenous communities of the Brazilian Amazon.
With me so far? Great. Now, take whatever you’ve envisioned and up the stakes massively. Parintins Folklore Festival isn’t just a competition between two sides, it ruptures an entire city and sees two communities face off, with teams – and their fans – preparing all year for the event. On one side you have the Garantido [transliterally ‘guaranteed’] team coloured in red and white, historically representing the masses. On the other is Caprichoso [tr. capricious], in blue and black, classically repping the upper classes.
Such is the intensity of the rivalry that neither side utters the other’s name.
The Village Market 
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