The Special Group returns on the night of today (23) for the Sambadrome with the last six schools to parade in the 2022 carnival. Paraíso do Tuiuti, in São Cristóvão, in the north of the city, enters Avenida Marquês de Sapucaí at 10 pm.
With the theme “Ka ríba tí ye”, the school is one of the special group to extol black culture and personalities, as did Salgueiro and Beija-Flor on the first day of parades. In search of the unprecedented title, the association will take to the avenue a tribute to the black men and women who have marked the history of humanity through determination, beauty and knowledge.
The great champion of Rio’s carnival, Portela, which boasts 22 titles, features a plot about the baobab (“Igi Osè Baobá”), which is called the tree of life by Africans and which can live for over 5,000 years. The association of Madureira, in the north of Rio, will talk about the symbolism of the plant as a tree of resistance and connection with the ancestry of the African people.
Mocidade Independente de Padre Miguel, in the west of the city, will be the third school to set foot on Marquês de Sapucaí, in search of its seventh title at Carnival. The plot “The drummer of the hunter” will talk about Oxóssi, the orixá of hunting and food, which has the bow and arrow as its symbols.
With the theme “Waranã: a red reexistence”, Unidos da Tijuca will parade in the Sambadrome in search of the fifth title exalting guaraná, a plant traditionally used by the Brazilian indigenous ethnicity Sateré Mawé that conquered the entire country.
The Duque de Caxias school, in Baixada Fluminense, Acadêmicos do Grande Rio, bet on the theme “Fala, majeté! Seven keys of Exu”, about the Yoruba entity revered in Candomblé and Umbanda, but demonized by Christian churches.
Unidos de Vila Isabel ends the second day of parades with the theme “Sing, sing, my people! A Vila é de Martinho”, a tribute to the samba artist Martinho da Vila, one of the great artists of Brazilian popular music and also the composer of many sambas of the association of the north of Rio de Janeiro, among them the one from 2013 (when the school won its third and last title).
Twelve schools are vying for the title of the Special Group this year. On the first day, paraded Imperatriz Leopoldinense, Mangueira, Salgueiro, São Clemente, Viradouro and Beija-Flor.
The champion and the other five best placed parade again in the next Saturday (30). The last place will be relegated to the Gold Series, the Monday division, which also parades in the Sambadrome.
