RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Anitta has become a pop music sensation in her native Brazil and abroad, but Monday she will have her first shot to prove herself on the country’s biggest stage: the Sambadrome.
This year, the 31-year-old took on the new challenge of joining some of Brazil’s most traditional samba artists as a songwriter for a Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro.
Anitta is a songwriter for the Unidos da Tijuca samba school, the first to enter the Sambadrome avenue on Monday, the second of three nights of parades.
Every samba school must have a song that is repeatedly played 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 represents a force of nature. Last year, the singer lost thousands of followers on Instagram after she made a video to pay tribute to the Afro-Brazilian religion she practices, Candomble.
Logun Edé is a young warrior respected by elders for promoting knowledge about their culture. Some of the song’s lyrics go:
“With intense brightness/ I challenge the consensus/ restless and intense/ I am Logun-Edé.”
The artists on Monday night paraded with the Unidos da Tijuca samba school, many of them dressed in the samba school’s yellow and blue colors, with costumes representing not only the deity, but also the Borel Hill, a community in Rio’s north side where the samba school is based. It is often caught in the crossfire between criminals and police.
Performers from the Unidos da Tijuca samba school dance during Carnival celebrations at the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, Monday, March 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
Samba writer Diego Nicolau, a member of the Unidos da Tijuca songwriting team, said they had several online meetings with Anitta as the star traveled between concerts in New York and Europe. He added the singer set up a small studio in her hotel room to record vocals for the version that won the contest to be the school’s 2025 samba.
Anitta’s own Carnival festivities began Friday in Salvador, where she and other singers led tens of thousands of fans atop behemoth sound trucks, known as electric trios — a Brazilian innovation that amplifies music and effectively does away with front-row seats, to make Carnival more accessible.
The next day, she drew 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 was leaving an event in metropolis Sao Paulo and published videos of herself in a van, singing and dancing to her own samba. Many of her fans said on social media they were frustrated with the star’s absence.
“Where’s Anitta?” several of them asked as Unidos da Tijuca started its parade. “I only wanted to watch this because of her,” another fan of the singer said on the social platform X.
A performer from the Unidos da Tijuca samba school dances during Carnival celebrations at the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, Monday, March 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
The results of Rio’s Carnival will be announced Wednesday, with each of the 12 top schools hoping for victory.
If Tijuca wins, Anitta will join a small group of top Brazilian music writers who have made it with the demanding fanatics of one of the country’s most popular genres. Even if the school merely cracks the top six, Anitta will have another chance to parade with it on Saturday, at the so-called “Parade of Champions.”
Hours earlier, she will host a post-Carnival street party, where more than 100,000 people are expected to turn out.
“These concerts during Carnival, we close the deals long before. I won the Tijuca samba contest in September, but I already had these scheduled concerts. There wasn’t much I could do,” Anitta told journalists on Feb. 26. “We will make history regardless, I am confident.”
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Sá Pessoa reported from Sao Paulo.
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