Bixiga 70

An instrumental collective from São Paulo's Bixiga neighbourhood, named for the address of the studio they built, who fuse afrobeat with Afro-Brazilian music, jazz, funk and dub.

Origin
São Paulo, Brazil
Years active
2010-present
Genres
afrobeat, Afro-Brazilian, jazz, funk
Labels
Traquitana, Água Forte, Mais Um Discos, Glitterbeat, Deck, Selo SESC SP
Also known as
Bixiga70

Number 70

Bixiga 70 take their name from number 70, Rua Treze de Maio, in the Bixiga neighbourhood of São Paulo, the address of Estúdio Traquitana, where the band was born. The name also tips its hat to Fela Kuti's Afrika 70. Bixiga is a central district settled largely by Italian migrants more than a century ago, and the home of the Vai Vai samba school. The studio building was a bar in the 1970s, and Mauricio Fleury says Stevie Wonder, Sarah Vaughan and Elis Regina all played there. The musicians largely built the studio themselves, with guitarist Cris Scabello and drummer Décio 7 doing much of the work.

Fleury's path into African music began in 2007, when he met Tony Allen at the Red Bull Music Academy in Toronto and set out to find the African roots of his own Brazilian music. A song grew out of electronic pieces he had made under Allen's influence, and Décio 7 proposed forming a band. Ten musicians who already played together on studio projects gave their first show in October 2010, and Guia da Folha listed it among the city's best shows of the year. From the start they were instrumental by principle and ran as a horizontal collective with no leader. Cuca Ferreira has called the democratic process a nightmare, while insisting the music is richer for it.

The first records

The first single, Tema di Malaika, came out in 2011 with a dub B-side by Victor Rice, who mixed the early records at Estúdio Copan. The debut album, Bixiga 70, followed that year on the band's own Traquitana label with Água Forte. It opens with Grito de Paz, the first original the group ever arranged, and Rolling Stone Brasil heard a powerful debut built mostly on Fleury's writing. Its sleeve by the artist MZK earned a Latin Grammy nomination for packaging in 2012, the year the band played Rec-Beat in Recife, the Virada Cultural in São Paulo and Felabration in Amsterdam alongside Tony Allen.

A second album, again called simply Bixiga 70 at home, was recorded at Traquitana in 2013 and released abroad by Mais Um Discos in 2014 as Ocupai, a title that pointed to the street protests that swept Brazil in 2013. They toured Europe that summer, Roskilde included. In 2014 they won the Revelação prize at the Prêmio da Música Brasileira and played the Mawazine festival in Morocco, where they also held workshops with local musicians.

III

Back from Morocco in the summer of 2014, they wrote and recorded a third album at Traquitana, playing live in the studio with no arrangements worked out in advance. For the first time every composition was credited to the whole collective, and Ferreira described the record as 100% collective. A Moroccan saxophonist had taught him to play microtones, and Lembe carries that trip most directly, while the guitar leaned toward psychedelia and brega. 100% 13, a salute to the studio's own street, came out first as a single in December 2014, and in January 2015 the band played four shows in New York, among them globalFEST at Webster Hall.

The album went online in Brazil on 7 April 2015, titled Bixiga 70 like the two before it, and Glitterbeat released it internationally that September as III. Sounds and Colours gave it five stars, and NPR's Banning Eyre called the band a 10-piece Brazilian juggernaut. A film crew followed the launch shows and the American tours of that year for the documentary Segue o Baile (2017).

Since

In 2016 Victor Rice dubbed seven of the III tracks for The Copan Connection, a Record Store Day vinyl. The band backed João Donato on Donato Elétrico, played Glastonbury, and appeared on records by Elza Soares. Their music has no lyrics, but Scabello has said it carries a clear message, and at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 2017 they showed a Fora Temer sign. Quebra Cabeça (2018), which Bandcamp Daily called their strongest album, was named by APCA among the best Brazilian albums of the second half of that year. Glitterbeat reissued the debut on vinyl in 2021 for the band's tenth anniversary.

The pandemic stalled the collective, and three musicians left. The remaining six rebuilt after Lula's election victory in 2022, bringing in drummer Simone Sou, percussionist Valentina Facury and keyboardist Pedro Regada, and Vapor, their first album in four years, arrived in October 2023. They still tour Europe and Brazil, and 100% 13 is the song setlist.fm logs most often in their sets.

Members

Records

Songs

Fela Kuti, Tony Allen, João Donato, Elza Soares, Antibalas

Where to go next

Official

Reference

Discography and data

  • MusicBrainz Every release, including the live Sesc album and the 2024 singles.
  • Discogs The 7-inch singles, guest appearances and physical credits.

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Live performance archives

  • setlist.fm Logged setlists, song statistics and covers played live.
  • RNZ: WOMAD 2018 A broadcast recording of the opening-night set in New Zealand.

Film and video

Sources

  1. Bixiga 70, Glitterbeat
  2. Bixiga 70, Wikipedia (Portuguese)
  3. Bixiga 70 interview, Bandcamp Daily (2018-10-10)
  4. Bixiga 70: Brazilian afrobeat messengers, Afropop Worldwide (2017)
  5. Bixiga 70 on III and Morocco, Rolling Stone Brasil (2015)
  6. Bixiga 70: Vapor, Pan African Music (2024-01-10)