Carnival in the Federal State of Pernambuco in north-eastern Brazil is, from a musical point of view, one of the most varied and interesting traditional festivals in the whole of Latin America. Unlike the famous carnivals of Rio de Janeiro and Salvador (Bahia) with their own repertoires of, respectively, sambas and blocos afro, the carnival of Pernambuco presents in addition to these repertoires almost the whole of the musical and dance spectrum of the North-east. Because numerous segments of the local communities are dramatised in the specific performance styles, the Pernambucan carnival opens up to the scholar an overview of contemporary culture in that region. On the other hand the historic is also highlighted in the performances of the carnival groups (agremiaçdões carnavalescas) through original dramatic reconstructions of, for example, the uprising against Dutch occupation in the eighteenth century, the flourishing sugar industry that was based on slavery during the colonial era, the folk reinterpretation of the Congo empire on Brazilian soil and the “belle époque” of Recife.