Eu Brinco!

War or no war, there was sustained last week one of Brazil's most cherished institutions--the Rio de Janeiro Carnival. There were no garish street decorations, no fancy-dress granfino (high society) parties in the Casinos. Priorities had hit the manufacture of langa (perfumed ether) with which hilarious Cariocas love to squirt each other. There were no tourists to goggle. The Chamber of Commerce, in a grim wartime mood, had washed its hands of the whole thing. But that was not enough to stop the Cariocas.

This time it was a "carnaval do povo" (carnival of the people), concentrated in the back alleys and dance dives, probably the most spontaneous carnival in years.

The gente do morro (hill folk), who inhabit the Negro slums on Rio's numerous hills and make virtually a year's living in Rio's four carnival days, clambered and skidded down from their hilltops singing a brand-new crop of carnival songs and dances. Lacking jalopies to parade in, they hung three-deep to the sides of streetcars, beating out wild rhythms on their tambourines and shouting the new tunes that would soon pulsate in all the samba palaces of Brazil. Usually the streetcar motormen got the idea and joined in, clanging out the rhythm with their bells. One song caught on faster than all the rest and ended by sweeping Rio. Sample stanza:

Com pandeiro ou sem pandeiro

E-e-e-e-e Eu Brinco.

Com dinheiro ou sem dinheiro,

E-e-e-e-e Eu Brinco.

(With a tambourine or without a tambourine

E-e-e-e-e, I get along.

With money or without money E-e-e-e-e, I get along.) Like nearly all Rio de Janeiro's carnival songs, Eu Brinco was conceived by one of the thousands of amateur song writers who drive Rio's taxis, run its elevators, sweep its streets and constitute a sizable portion of its population. Pedro Caetano happens to be a shoe-store clerk. Swarthy Pedro, with slant eyes and a cavernous mouth, cannot read music. He claims that he cannot even play the Brazilian song writer's traditional instrument: an empty matchbox with which the rhythms are tapped on cafe tables. But he has been inventing carnival songs ever since he came to Rio from the farm ten years ago.

To get his songs written down, Pedro relies on a musician friend named Clau-dionor Cruz. But Pedro has what he describes as "cerebral rhythm." All year round, Pedro and his friends compose carnival songs. Most of them are duds. But this time Pedro Caetano was well on the road to fortune. Eu Brinco was a smash.

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