"For the past three decades, Rio de Janeiro has marked the national day of samba in December with a remarkable tradition, the samba train, a musical journey that revisits the genre's early struggles and salutes the musicians who shape it. Julia Carneiro takes the ride. It's 6 p.m. in Rio's Central Station. This platform is usually packed with people waiting for their trains to commute back home after work. But today, all the passengers are dancing to samba music, and every carriage has a different band playing."
"He explains how Paulo da Portela, one of samba's great pioneers and the founder of Rio's first samba school, Portela, would take this train to escape police repression in the early 1900s. At the time, playing samba could land people in jail for vagrancy, a charge widely used to criminalize Black culture in the decades after slavery was abolished in Brazil. "The musicians bought their tickets, got on the train," he says, "and when the doors shut, they'd play all the way to Oswaldo Cruz, and the police couldn't get them." The samba train celebrates this history."
The Samba Train is a musical procession in Rio de Janeiro held each December to mark the national day of samba. Musicians perform in every carriage as passengers dance on platforms and trains, transforming commuting spaces into concerts. The event recreates a journey to the Oswaldo Cruz neighborhood that began about a century ago. Paulo da Portela and other early samba pioneers used the train to evade police repression when samba gatherings were criminalized under vagrancy laws after slavery. The annual ride honors those struggles and salutes contemporary musicians who sustain the genre.
Read at www.npr.org
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