fair music weblog

Carlinhos Brown from Salvador, Bahia is one of the most creative artists within the new generation of Brazilian musicians. His fundamental merit has been the total integration of Afro-Brazilian rhythms with pop music. But being a great artist himself is not enough for him. Besides his work as a musician, Carlinhos Brown founded the Asociación Pracatum Açâo Social (APAS) in Candeal, one of the more impoverished neighbourhoods of Salvador de Bahia. The nucleus of this association is the Pracatum Music School, the only school in Brazil that teaches popular music courses.

Carlinhos Brown has been born in a small village as Antonio Carlos Santos de Freitas but later adopted the name Brown, inspired by Box Brown, a black person that escaped from slavery in a box, and H. Rap Brown of the Black Panther movement. Osvaldo Alves da Silvia, known as the Master of the Bongo, introduced him to the tradition of Brazilian folklore and its percussion. In the 1980s Carlinhos Brown began to collaborate with other artists. In the 1990s he became known nationally and internationally as the leader of the musical group Timbalada, which consisted of more than 100 percussionists and singers, called “timbaleiros”, the majority of them young kids from the Candeal neighbourhood of Salvador. They recorded eight albums and toured around the world. In 1993 Billboard Magazine named him the “best record producer in Latin America.”
In 2002 he formed the group Tribalistas with Arnaldo Antunes and Marisa Monte. In addition he established his own recording label, Candyall Records.

Carlito Marron - his Website in 4 languages

photo by Capitu/Flickr under a Creative Commons license