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Dance as ritual, as celebration, as balm for a culture raw with poverty, violence, and racism; Sambe is extraordinarily well written, evoking Guillermoprieto's year in the favela Mangueria and its samba school. The life of Rio de Janeiro and its Carnival are portrayed in all their complexity, in brilliant focus through the lens of its dance. "There was no possibility of sleep in the narrow room Dona Esmeralda's family had vacated for me. The walls were burning. The fan, churning full speed, could not make the air move. Eventually, I joined my hosts on the cooler rooftop, dozing uneasily to the train-track rattle of the drums below, soon woken by a swollen red sky that announced yet another day in flames. It was carnival weather."
--Alma Guillermoprieto, from Samba  (8/91)
ZB3256 Samba $12.00
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