Last night, this year’s top 12 Carioca samba schools met at the Sambodrome in Rio de Janeiro to reveal their songs and themes for the upcoming Carnaval in February 2009. This year’s themes include a homage to famous Brazilian writers, a Brazilian history theme, a homage to the 100 year-old Municipal Theater of Rio, an outer space theme, an evolution theme, a mermaid theme, as well as themes about France and Bahia.

The event was also to release the official Carnaval 2009 Samba CD, which includes the samba song from each school, which sold 142,000 copies last year. You can check out the lyrics and listen to excerpts from the songs here. Also, check out the news coverage of the event here, including parts of the performance from the various samba schools.