While English make noise in his Glastonbury Festival, in the middle of the Brazilian Amazonian jungle it is happening the largest and more cheerful Brazilian festival after the carnival:
http://www.band.com.br/parintins/ During this festivival Parintins is divided among blue and red, colors of the Bois Garantido and Caprichoso. The dispute and the show had developed starting from a popular tradition the boi-bumbá (ox-bumbá).
The essence of the legend of the ox-bumbá it ties the satire, the comedy, the tragedy and the drama, and it always demonstrates the contrast between the man's fragility and the rude force of an ox. This essence originated from the legend of Catirina and Pai Francisco,origem Northeasterner, that it suffered adaptation to the Amazonian reality. In that way, it reverences the ox free and native of the Amazonian forest, as well as the happiness, synergy and force of the collective parties of the pindoramas (pindoramas = indigenous - the "indian" and "indigenous" words flow of the fact that the "discoverers" have imagined arrive in India, and the Brazilian earth was named then by their native of Pindorama).
The party of the ox-bumbá it appeared in the northeast of the Brazil, but specifically of the State of Maranhão that exported for the State of Amazon, visited annually by thousands of tourists that are going to know the famous Folkloric Festival of Parintins, accomplished since 1913.
A citizen from Maranhão that took the culture of the was ox-bumbá to Amazon. It is spoken that was a promise, typical of Maranhão in paying through presentations of oxen in the person's door that receives the grace of São João, Santo Antonio or São Pedro, the game it was promised in continuing the ox-bumbá in Amazon. However, the folkloric from Maranhão manifestation suffered influence of the amazonense culture, modifying their original aspects. It is born then, the ox-bumbá with amazonenses characteristics.
Of the theatrical point of view, the rest flows of the Portuguese and Spanish tradition, so much in what it concerns the parade as to the representation; tradition of if they stage religious pieces of erudite inspiration, but destined to the people to commemorate Catholic parties been born in the fight of the Church against the paganism. That habit was retaken in Brazil by the Jesuits in his work of the natives' conversion to the Catholicism through the staging of small pieces.
As dramatic dance, the ox-bumbá acquires through the times some characteristics of the medieval solemnities, what gives him his character of communication vehicle. Simple, emotional, direct, oral language, clear narrative and a wide identification on the part of the public, taking similarities with the satirical comedy or tragicomedy for their allegorical characters' dramatic structure, the comic incidents, the gravity of the conflicts and the outcome almost always cheerful, that it works as a cathartic process.