Although Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the Christian Lenten season, has passed, the ISU Brazilian Portuguese Association is still celebrating the hedonistic traditions of Carnaval.

The association will host “Carnaval Party 2003,” an ethnic celebration of samba music with a taste of Brazilian summer, at 8:45 p.m. Saturday at Boheme Bistro, 2900 West St.

Carnaval is an annual celebration of Brazil taking place before the 40-day Lenten season, a time for Christian repentance before the observance of Easter, says Stephanie Tang, member of the Brazilian Portuguese Association.

The celebration is based on the European traditions of painting bodies and wearing masks to exorcise demons. During Medieval times, the Catholic Church incorporated these traditions into the Church’s pre-Lenten activities, which focused on the asking of repentance of sins.

It’s a tradition that continues today, says Tang, sophomore in marketing, who is originally from Brazil.

“Carnaval, at that time, was a celebration of the elite population, restricted mainly to the rich and royalty,” she says.

The Brazilian tradition of Carnaval started in 1840, when an Italian family of immigrants hosted a masked ball. Most of the ideas for costumes were of French origin. Today, Carnaval is a massive Afro-Latin celebration of music and freedom in the major cities of Brazil, involving members of every social class — from the very poor to the very wealthy.

“[Carnaval] is one big party,” Tang says. “It’s an egotistical period, a time of high intensity … [one] is limitless, boundless. It dries the stress out. It’s wild, fun and crazy — there’s no time to care.”

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Afro-Brazilians joined together to form samba schools, which used samba music and parades to protest for the middle to lower classes, says Vicente Faria, treasurer of the Brazilian Portuguese Association.

Parades and samba music are still very much a part of Carnaval, if not a defining characteristic. These parades give dancers the opportunity to display individual freedoms not expressed throughout the rest of the year, he says.

“These parades are huge!” says Faria, graduate student in zoology and genetics, who is originally from Brazil. “This is all for Carnaval — It’s not for any kind of money.”

In the streets of Brazil’s major cities, including Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Recife, samba groups as large as 4,000 are separated by a buffer space filled with samba drums to drown out the music played between the groups, Faria says. Each group sings and plays its own original music, with each piece telling a story of their neighborhood — all performed at durations for over an hour at a time.

“These samba schools started to get bigger and began to spill out onto the streets during the early part of last century,” says Steffen Schmidt, university professor of political science. “[The schools] get together and put together costumes and floats. The bigger and more attractive they are, the more attention they will get.”

Brazil is a racially diverse country, incorporating elements of the backgrounds of its citizens into many aspects of culture, says Alex Rodrigues, member of the Brazilian Portuguese Association. African, European and native cultures have all combined to create a national “race” of Brazilians.

“It’s a time to socialize with different backgrounds,” says Rodrigues, graduate student in mechanical engineering, who is originally from Brazil.

Due to these multicultural influences, combining elements of Catholic and nativist traditions has been a substantial aspect of Carnaval.

“It’s always been that way,” says Hector Avalos, associate professor in religious studies. “African traditions have mixed with the Catholic-dictated practices of Latin America.

“Carnaval is like one last hurrah before the 40 days of Lent, which affects every strata of this society.”

Carnaval has continued to be a time when societies and ethnicities join together to express political sentiment in a humorous way, including Brazil’s poverty issues and the impending war on Iraq.

“[Carnaval] has became a huge tourist event that has stimulated a lot of economic activity, especially for the poor,” Schmidt says. “It’s very typical for this activity where the people blow off steam — it’s more political than people realize.”

He says the costumes and dances featured in Carnaval are indirect political statements. Vendors sell masks of President Bush, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in an effort to poke fun at the serious nature of the conflicts between the political leaders.

This year’s Carnaval festivities in Brazil, which ended Wednesday, were marked with a heavy military presence in the streets of Brazil’s major cities. The country has had long-running problems with drug gangs and violence, and security at this year’s festival was tighter than in past years, Tang says.

Despite recent issues with violence, Carnaval may have become more ambiguous during the years, losing its edge with religious concern and becoming more of an opportunity for just few days of stress-free bliss, Tang says.

“We like to say we do a lot of bad things throughout Carnaval,” she says. “So we have the 40 days of Lent to repent.”

“For the 360 other days of the year, I only use the five associated with Carnaval to really live,” Faria says. “I use it as a time to get to know different places and people. It brings so many good feelings. It’s special to us.”