monobloco, the world’s most commercially successful bateria and the people at the centre of rio’s street carnival rebirth since 2000, are generous people. they created the inspiration for rotc to pursue an adventurous line in playing music of styles that don’t originally belong on carnival samba instruments. they also taught us and shared their not insignificant crowd with us. pretty, pretty…. pretty good. circo voador (flying circus) is a permanent 3000 capacity tent in the centre of lapa, rio de janeiro’s nightlife district. this was the biggest gig of rotc’s 12 year history, and as the finale of this we invited one of monobloco’s lead singers fabio allman to guest with us. the songs? local hit ‘o que sobrou do céu’ (from o rappa) and in a ‘coals-to-newcastle’ move, taking 2 sambas of joao nogueira from london back to rio: ‘o jeito que o rei mandou’ & ‘mineira’. videos here: o que sobrou do céu – samba finale
rotc with monobloco + crowd @ circo voador 22 dec 2012