Riotur, the Rio de Janeiro Tourism Development Department officially announced today the list of all Street Carnival Marching Bands, known as “blocos de carnval”, allowed to parade in 2011 Rio Carnival.
There will be in total 424 street carnival bands, which of them, one third of them, located in the South Zone, as an example Mulheres de Chico, Orquestra Voadora, and Empolga as 9. The center of Rio comes in second with the highest concentration of the free for all marching bands, with 74 authorizations.

On the other hand, RioTur vetoed the presentation of 41 other groups. To minimize the inconvenience caused by the passage of the Rio Street Carnival Bands, the city will hire 500 extra agents to assist transit employees and the Municipal Guard. For RioTur, Rio´s street carnival is expected to attract about 3 million revelers, in comparison to 2.4 million from 2010.

See below Two great Videos of some of my favorite Rio Street Carnival bands:

Orquestra Voadora Playing "The Age of Aquarius"




Mulheres de Chico Playing Live at Lapa