Brazil's culture minister, 62, leads carnival crowds

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Hordes of revelers poured on to the streets of Brazilian cities in Carnival jamborees, led by the country's culture minister and musician Gilberto Gil in the northeastern city of Salvador

Gil, 62, dressed in white and wearing dreadlocks, directed a band blasting rock music and traditional Brazilian tunes from the top of a truck at a Friday night oceanside party that continued into the early hours of Saturday.

A total of 190 such trucks, or "trios eletricos," animated the crowds on a 18 mile Carnival route in the city.

In Rio de Janeiro, where dazzling parades by top samba schools will be televised around the world starting on Sunday night, Carnival fun has already begun as loud, anarchic processions occupied the streets despite a light rain.

A bit of water from the skies does not scare "The Beards" procession formed by bearded Carnival fans. Its key attraction is a watering truck to cool off hundreds of its followers dancing to a catchy samba, singing and drinking. Beer vendors slither through the crowd with giant plastic boxes on wheels.

There are 145 registered processions, or blocos, across Rio for the five days of Carnival which ends on Ash Wednesday. City authorities say the actual number may be at least twice as big.

Floriano Torres, director of Sebastiana, an association grouping 12 of Rio's oldest blocos, says the bloco movement is growing rapidly. "It's as if every corner had one of its own... Friends set up their blocos between them, constant clients of many bars create theirs. It's wonderful," he says.

Two weeks before the official start of Carnival on Friday, blocos have already been luring thousands of people, including many tourists, to their loud rehearsals.

"A bloco doesn't have the glamour of a samba school, it is a more simple thing, and it is more fun as well," said Monica Shaffin, 40, a garden designer who plays the tambourine in two traditional processions of fun-seekers.

The name of one of them is "Christ's Armpit," since it gathers near the Corcovado mountain with Rio's landmark open-armed Christ the Redeemer statue on top.

Elsewhere in Brazil, the world's biggest Carnival procession called "The Morning Rooster" will bring together 1.5 million people in the northeastern city of Recife.

In Paraty, in Rio de Janeiro state, revelers in the "Mud Bloco" will jump in a pool of mud and then parade down the cobblestoned streets of the colonial town.