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Anitta has become a pop music sensation in her native Brazil and abroad, but on Monday she will have her first shot to prove herself on the biggest stage in the country: the Sambadrome.
This year, the 31-year-old has embarked on the new challenge to join some of Brazil’s most traditional Samba artists as a songwriter for a carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro.
Anitta is a songwriter for Unidos da Tijuca Samba School, the first to enter the Sambadrome Avenue on Monday, the second of three nights of the parades.
Each Samba school must have a song that is played repeatedly for up to 80 minutes to support the theme behind its costumes and floats.
Unidos da Tijuca’s theme is Logun Edé, The Star’s Orisha-a deity in Afro-Brazilian religions that represent a natural power. Last year, the singer lost thousands of followers on Instagram after making a video to pay tribute to the Afro-Brazilian religion she practices, Candomble.
Logun Edé is a young fighter who is respected by elders for promoting knowledge about their culture. Some of the songs’ lyrics go:
“With intense brightness/ I challenge the consensus/ restless and intense/ me is Logun edé.”
The artists paraded with the Unidos Da Tijuca Samba School on Monday night, many of them dressed in the yellow and blue colors of the Samba school, with costumes that represent not only the deity, but also the Borel Hill, a community in the north side of Rio where the Samba school is based. It is often caught up in the crossfire between criminals and the police.
Samba writer Diego Nicolau, a member of the Unidos da Tijuca songwriting team, said they held several online meetings with Anitta while the star between concerts in New York and Europe traveled. He added that the singer sets up a small studio in her hotel room to take a choir for the version that won the competition to be the school’s 2025 Samba.
Anitta’s own Carnival festivities started in Salvador on Friday, where she and other singers led tens of thousands of fans on top of Behemoth sound trucks, known as Electric Trios-a Brazilian innovation that strengthens music and effectively gets away with front seats, to make carnival more accessible.
The next day she moved about 550,000 people to a street party in the city of Sao Luis in northeastern Brazil.
When Unidos da Tijuca entered the Sambadrome, Anitta left an event in Metropolis Sao Paulo and published videos of herself in an order, sang and danced for her own Samba. Many of her fans said on social media that they were frustrated about the absence of the star.
“Where is Anitta?” Several of them asked when Unidos da Tijuca started his parade. “I just wanted to watch it because of her,” said another fan of the singer on the social platform X.
The results of Rio’s carnival are announced on Wednesday, with each of the 12 top schools in the hope of victory.
If Tijuca wins, Anitta will join a small group of Top Brazilian music writers who made it with the demanding fanatical of one of the country’s most popular genres. Even if the school simply cracks the top six, Anitta will have another chance to parade on Saturday, at the so -called ‘parade or champions’.
Hours earlier, she offers a street party to the Karnival, where more than 100,000 people are expected to go out.
‘These concerts during carnival are closing the offers long before. I won the Tijuca Samba competition in September, but I had all these scheduled concerts. There wasn’t much I could do, ‘Anitta told journalists on February 26.’ We will make history, regardless of, I am confident. ‘
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Sá Pessoa reports from Sao Paulo.
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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
