Zerai’s International Bar, located on Tucson’s Sunshine Mile, is bringing some Brazilian flair to town Saturday, with a Brazilian Carnaval celebration.

In Brazil, Carnaval is an annual week-long festival that takes place on the first Friday before Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of Lent before Easter.

The most well-known Carnaval event in Rio de Janeiro has a lavish parade with floats and dances that stretch along several blocks. But every state in Brazil observes Carnaval in its own way, from the celebration itself to the music.

“The plan is… to play music from basically all the states in Brazil—so Rio, all the northeast, in Piauí… so everyone is represented,” said the event’s organizer, Eliseu Cavalcante.

Cavalcante is a Brazilian photographer and artist who misses the feeling of Carnaval, saying that there is no event or holiday in the United States that comes close.

“Since I moved to the U.S., it's like I never went back (to Brazil). I usually go at the end of the year… because my family likes to meet me during Christmas,” Cavalcante said. “It's kind of impossible to go back right in March, so I’ve been skipping Carnaval for the past 15 years. It’s sad.”

Zerai’s is located in the Z Street International Marketplace (2731 E. Broadway,) the expanded footprint of Zemam’s Ethiopian Cuisine that opened in April 2024.

Zemam’s serves as the central hub of Z Street, which also includes Zedamo’s Ethiopian Coffee Shop.

“We wanted to do stuff for other groups of people that are marginalized (in Tucson) and make it a place where you can come and kind of experience something that you wouldn't experience at any other bar,” said owner Lucas Gebramariam.

Gebramariam’s mother met his Eritrean father in Sudan while working with the Peace Corps, with the couple eventually moving together to Tucson.

“It’s my family business,” Gebramariam said. “We opened when I was in third grade. I was 10 years old.”

Zemam is Gebramariam’s grandmother, who has inspired the family’s Ethiopian flavors in Tucson since Zemam’s opened in 1993.

After making the decision in 2015 to help run the family restaurant, Gebramariam saw the opportunity to expand when businesses began to close during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When they bought the new location on Broadway, Z Street was originally meant to have three restaurants.

“That evolved into a bar and a coffee shop,” Gebramariam said.

Between the coffee shop and Zerai’s sits an open event space with ping-pong tables and speakers, where DJ Herm can be found playing Brazilian funk music during the marketplace’s Passport club nights.

“It's Carnaval, so that's one of the best parties,” Gebramariam said. “I always wanted to do something … like a Brazilian night.”

After attending one of the Passport international dance parties in 2024, Cavalcante told Gebramariam that it was time to throw a Brazilian party.

Andressa Vidigal Rosenberg, a Brazilian graduate student at the University of Arizona, was excited to hear that Carnaval was coming to Tucson.

“I want to experience something as if I was in Brazil,” she said in Portuguese.

Rosenberg already has a Ph.D. in music and is working toward her master’s in higher education. She’s from Maringá, Paraná, in the south of Brazil, which has its own Carnaval traditions.

Rosenberg has been helping Cavalcante and Gebramariam pick out music from her hometown and Pernambuco, where her mother is from.

“Carnaval is my life,” she said.

The all-ages event, which runs from 5 to 11 p.m., will include capoeira, samba dancers, face painting, and themed cocktails. There’s a $5 entrance fee, but kids get in for free.

Cavalcante is calling the event “Acadêmicos dos Zerai’s,” which means “Zerai’s Academics,” a nod to the Brazilian-themed parties he created with his friends in Greenpoint, New York, that had a similar name.

“I think, as (Gebramariam) said, he just wants us to be happy, the Brazilian community. That's why he's doing this,” Cavalcante said. “I just want the international bar to be recognized as an international bar.”

Gebramariam said that now more than ever, it’s important to reunite people and to “celebrate different cultures and different people in different lives” and bring people together.

“It’s so anti-‘us’ right now,” Cavalcante said.

Rosenberg said she’s also experiencing anxiety and fear, but she won’t let that stop her from celebrating one of her favorite holidays.

“I want to have fun with my son and husband because it is the first time that we can experience something like this here in the United States,” she said. “On Saturday, I just want to be able to dance and be free.”

Thatcher Warrick Hess is a graduate student in the University of Arizona's bilingual journalism program and and Tucson Spotlight intern. Contact him at twarrickhess@arizona.edu..

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