Banda Black Rio
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Banda Black Rio is a Brazilian musical group from Rio de Janeiro that was formed in 1976 known for songs such as Magia Do Prazer. It has a repertoire based on funk but also including samba, jazz and Brazilian rhythms. The band recorded 3 albums in the late 1970s and reunited for 2 albums in the 2000s.
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History
Compared to other foreign soul-funk groups, such as Kool and the Gang and Earth, Wind and Fire, Banda Black Rio developed a kind of instrumental soul music that was gladly accepted in other countries. At this time there was a natural movement coming: musically it linked soul to samba, but it was not a movement restricted just to music. It had a variety of names: Black Power, Soul Power, and the most famous one, Black Rio. The names are in English, because the idea was to fuse languages, to break down individualism, to open up gaps, to confront the purists.
The scene of these events was in Rio de Janeiro, but not down in the Zona Sul, the upper middle class, white district which bred the bossa-nova, but in the city that the postcards hide, the Zona Norte, the hills, the favelas and the escolas de samba (samba groups that perform at Rio’s Carnaval). There, the Black Rio movement established itself, through dances at the weekends, which became more frequent and more hugely attended, often taking place in the squares of the escolas de samba. Who went to these dances? A mass of people, essentially black who, influenced by the civil rights activism of America, were trying to understand the information in terms of their own environment.
Visually, instead of the style of the Malandro Carioca (someone who is considered to be a great dancer of samba established through the sambistas), there were afro hairdos, platform shoes coloured clothes and ivory necklaces. Musically, funk and soul music livened up the dances and gave rise to groups like Soul Grand Prix, Black Soul, Black Power, Arte Negra among others (some still active today). It wasn’t an exclusive movement: it wasn't a case of 'out with samba, in with soul'. Instead, it was a union of both.
At this time, WEA had just been established in Brazil, and they wanted to create a band which could be the pioneer of this movement; so they contacted Oberdan Magalhães, a renowned saxophonist, that accepted the challenge and formed Banda Black Rio. Born and brought up in Madureira (an area of the Zona Norte), he was the cousin of Silas de Oliveira, (the great composer of many sambas enredo and one of the founders of the Escola de Samba of the Império Serrano) and the godson of Mano Décio da Viola (another great name of the escola), he had the tradition of samba in his family but other musical background too.
Influenced as much by Pixinguinha as by Coleman Hawkins, and split between Cartola and Stevie Wonder, he had taken his plans of musical fusion into the Rio night-club scene, where he had begun playing at the age of 15. A student of Paulo Moura, the Brazilian sax master, he then joined the group Impacto 8, where he started to outline what would much later become the sound of Banda Black Rio. In Impacto 8 Oberdan brought together musicians like the trombonist Raul de Souza and the drummer Robertinho Silva, playing a mixture, still in its early stages, of soul, jazz and samba. From there, after a short period alone playing in bars, he joined the pianist Dom Salvador’s band, the “Abolição”, where he met the drummer Luis Carlos, the trumpet player Barrosinho and the trombonist Lucio Silva. Between shows and as a session musician for recordings with other artists, Oberdan also met the guitarist and arranjer Claudio Stevenson, the extraordinary bass player Jamil Joanes and the pianist Cristóvão Bastos. It was with these musicians that he created his core group, Rio 40º
When the call from WEA came, Oberdan called up his musical partners that, at this time, were playing in different places. Oberdan elaborated a musical work that united the grooves of samba and funk with the musicality of jazz, with references to the gafieiras, the traditional dance halls of Rio, where, for decades people had been dancing together to the warm mixture of jazz with samba, played by local big bands (the most famous of which was led by Paulo Moura).
The band recorded five albums: the instrumental “Maria Fumaça” (1976), “Gafieira Universal” (1978) and “Saci Pererê” (1980). They were also invited to take part in other artists’ albums, such as Luiz Melodia and recorded a live album with Caetano Veloso entitled “Bicho Baile Show” and Global Brazilians in 1985.The album just came out in 1995. These albums and songs continued to be played in Europe, specially in the UK, Germany and also in Japan. Banda Black Rio is not associated with the revival Band .
Discography
Studio albums
- 1977 - Maria Fumaça
- 1978 - Gafieira Universal
- 1980 - Saci Pererê
- 1995 - Global Brazilians
- 2002 - Bicho Baile Show
Contributors
- 1978 - Bicho Baile Show, by Caetano Veloso
- 1978 - Tim Maia Disco Club, by Tim Maia
