There's a crowd moving down the street

In the glare of a midsummer's beat

The men beating on their drums

Dancing the Samba

There's a girl of seventeen

Playing rhythms on her tambourine

The heat is so strong

It's already well past December

And in the strange and misty haze

I saw those old colonial days

Of Rio in the old Carnival of 1890

There's a man sleeping in the street

He's unable to stand up on his feet

He's drunk too much rum

And made too much love in the moonlight

The Mulatta's got a look in her eye

You can tell the way she's moving her thighs

She's lost in a trance and you know she'll dance

Till sunlight

And in the strange and misty haze

I saw those old colonial days

Of Rio in the old Carnival of 1890

They were dancing in the street

Dancing in the street

Dancing in the street