Since its origins in the United States, the drum kit has been adopted around the world by many cultures that have employed it in different ways. Based on the rich traditions of their own countries, drummers have developed particular voices by applying phrasings and sonorities that came from diverse palettes of established musical practices. One of such case is Brazil, where the vast array of national rhythms ranges from samba and baião to maracatu and many others. Brazilians emulate percussion instruments such as pandeiro, tamborim, surdo and zabumba on the drum kit in order to simulate full percussion ensembles, creating sonic environments that are distinctly connected to their musical heritage.
Very often, drum kit scholarship focuses on jazz and rock music, ignoring genres outside of those realms. Drum kit culture was originally formed in English speaking nations and that seems to direct scholars’ main focus of research. As a consequence, one frequently finds generalizations about musics from other genres, without taking into account all the subtleties that differentiate them and labelling them in broad terms such as ‘Latin’ or ‘World Music’. Beyond the anglosphere, a growing body of academic work has developed over the early twenty-first century. Studies considering Brazilian drumming present clear examples of a valuable body of non-English scholarship. Research has revealed the intricacies of drummers such as Edison Machado (1934–1990), Airto Moreira (1941), Dom Um Romão (1925–2005), Márcio Bahia (1958), Wilson das Neves (1936–2017), Hélcio Milito (1931–2014) and Luciano Perrone (1908–2001), among others.1 In spite of the recentness of this scientific effort, this area has been competently mapped out and now can be scrutinized by scholars around the world.
Organized in two sections, this chapter presents research in the Portuguese language: Historical Overview and Technical Characteristics of Brazilian Drum Kit Playing. Through the lenses of scholars that explored the subject, there are indications of drummers with significant contributions and a short discussion on some of the aspects involved in what became known as ‘the Brazilian feel’. In no way do I intend for this chapter to be fully comprehensive, given the extent of the matter and the enormous collection of names and details involved. Ultimately, my aim is to display some of the academic achievements in the area, serving as a prelude to more in-depth studies on Brazilian music.
Historical Overview
Pioneer Players
The arrival of the drum kit in Brazil took place during the 1920s and, unfortunately, documentations about drumming pioneers in the country are scant. Nevertheless, there are names from that time frequently mentioned as relevant. Among those pioneering figures are Valfrido Silva, Joaquim Tomás, João Batista das Chagas Pereira (‘Sut’), and Luciano Perrone.2 The latter, although certainly not the first one, is known as a ‘father figure’ for Brazilian drummers.3 Perrone brought the drum kit into prominence with his groundbreaking work, which included the first recorded drum kit solo in Brazil.4
Luciano Perrone started playing in orchestras that accompanied silent movies and soon was applying elements of rhythms such as samba, baião and maxixe to the drum kit. He was the drummer for the first recording of ‘Aquarela do Brazil’ in 1939, composed by Ary Barroso and arranged by Radamés Gnattali, with whom he performed for more than fifty years. Together, Perrone and arranger Gnattali faced the challenge of adapting ensembles comprised of eight or more percussionists into the playing of a single musician, filling all the spaces left.5 When they began working at the Rádio Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, the drum kit was the only form of percussion available to handle all the arrangements. Those circumstances demanded exploration of the instrument’s sonic possibilities.6 Establishing a connection between the informal universe of samba playing, classical maestros, and arrangers, Perrone was pivotal in defining the development of his instrument.7
Luciano Perrone and his fellow peers made efforts to reproduce the sound of samba percussion instruments on the drum kit. One example is his playing on the snare drum with snares off, holding a stick with one hand while the other hand would play directly on the drum.8 The resulting muffling was very characteristic of atabaque or tamborim patterns.9 Perrone also was known for his samba cruzado (crossed samba), a style in which the right hand plays on the snare and the left crosses over to play the surdo figures on the floor tom, with a muffled strike on beat one and an open sound on beat two.10
During the 1930s and 1940s jazz bands proliferated throughout Brazil, performing regularly in nightclubs within major cities and thus jazz music was mixed with a diverse pool of rhythms such as samba, marcha-rancho, maxixe and the Argentinian tango.11 Along with the orchestras that emerged when television arrived in the early fifties, those bands set the scene in which Brazilian rhythms took form on the drum kit. The great success of Luiz Gonzaga, composer and accordion player from the northeast of Brazil, brought the rhythms baião and xote into the common repertoire.
The aforementioned samba cruzado is an example of samba batucado, which means it was played mainly on drums with minimal cymbal work. Cymbals were used for punctuating rhythmic figures and signalling section changes but not for ‘riding the rhythm’. Educator and drummer Oscar Bolão, who lived closely to Luciano Perrone for many years and was his student and disciple, noted that for Perrone ‘Brazilian music was about drums’ (rather than cymbals).12 In Perrone’s approach, even the hi-hat played with the foot was sporadic.13 The samba batucado was firstly played with both hands on the snare drum only and later there was a development, in which the left hand (for right-handed drummers) crossed over to play the toms. The snare drum invariably was the central component of the kit whereas the toms completed rhythmic ideas. That was the norm from the 1930s up to the 1950s, when US influences and technological progress led to new scenarios in the Brazilian musical landscape. Economic development and the strengthening of infrastructure became primary objectives in Brazil and everything related to the cutting edge was greatly cherished and valued.14
A new way to play samba became identified with innovation and modernity samba no prato (samba on the cymbal).15 The ride cymbal took on a central role, with sixteenth note riding patterns as well as a variety of broken syncopated patterns. The bass drum then was played with an ostinato (dotted eight note followed by a sixteenth note, hi-hat on the upbeats), substituting the simpler patterns previously used (most times only a quarter note on the second beat, with a rest on the first beat). That new pattern was known as bumbo a dois (two on the bass drum). Two drummers often get the credit for being the first to play in this new style of samba no prato, during the mid-1950s: Hildofredo Alves Correa and Edison Machado.16 What is certain is that Edison Machado was the one to popularize the novelty and eventually reap respect and recognition. Those new trends were not only stylistic changes, they represented the contrast of the new (samba no prato) against the old (samba batucado). That dichotomy was entangled in a larger discussion, one that included nationalist discourse, safeguarding the ‘authentic’ Brazilian music, and groups that believed Brazil should be open to the influences coming from the United States. The former considered samba batucado as the only genuine approach for the drum kit, the latter was listening to jazz and struggling for experimentation and freedom.
Bossa Nova and Samba Jazz
Within the context presented above, at the end of the 1950s bossa nova emerged as a prominent Brazilian genre. Displaying highly sophisticated melodic and harmonic lines, this music had a strong impact on Brazilian culture. The 1959 recording of ‘Chega de Saudade’ by João Gilberto was particularly influential, leading ears and eyes around the world to the music of Brazil. This was especially true after 1963, when Gilberto recorded the seminal album Getz / Gilberto with saxophone player Stan Getz. Jazz and Brazilian music were effectively blended. In 1962, Brazilian musicians went to perform a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York and stayed in the United States after that, beginning an era of collaborative work between musicians of both countries. At that time rock and roll had landed in Brazil, engendering jovem guarda and subsequently taking part in tropicalismo. Jovem guarda was heavily influenced by The Beatles’ music, irreverent behaviour and clothing style. Tropicalismo was a mix of a myriad of elements, including Brazilian rhythms (especially from northeast Brazil), American and British rock, and symphonic string arrangements.
Drummers were striving to keep up with all this newness. For instance, before bossa nova they usually played brushes just like drumsticks, striking drumheads in their batucadas. Within the delicate ambiance of bossa nova there was a demand for more intricate brush activity, including more of the swishing motions that were traditional for jazz drummers. Often bossa nova drummers played with a stick in one hand and a brush in the other.17 That approach required playing softer and with a smoother touch. Milton Banana (1935–1998) was the drummer for João Gilberto in both Chega de Saudade and Getz/Gilberto albums. To cope with Gilberto’s requests for gentle sounds, Banana had to delve into more advanced brushes technique.18 Helcio Milito also became a master with brushes, developing a particular style in which his left hand played sixteenth notes sweeping the drumhead (with a light accent on the third note of each beat) and his right hand played those same sixteenth notes, but tapping and accenting phrases (another possibility for the right hand would be to play only the accents, especially at fast tempos).19
The 1960s were a prolific era for instrumental trios (piano, bass and drums). Examples include Tamba Trio, with Helcio Milito on drums; Bossa Três and Rio 65 Trio, both with Edison Machado; Copa Trio, with Dom Um Romão; Sambalanço Trio and Sambrasa Trio, both with Airto Moreira; and Zimbo Trio, with Rubens Barsotti; among many others. There were also larger groups, such as the Copa 5 quintet, led by J.T. Meirelles and with Dom Um Romão and later Edison Machado on drums; and the Bossa Rio sextet, led by Sérgio Mendes and that had Edison Machado as well. These musicians pushed their artistic boundaries and were paramount in the development of Brazilian drumming on the drum kit. Those in Rio de Janeiro would gather at the Beco das Garrafas (Alley of the bottles) for jam sessions,20 where instead of a featherweight style the drums were played hard.21 With intense and substantial doses of jazz improvisation, the resulting music became known as samba jazz.
Samba jazz gave leeway to drummers to shine with their individual musical voices. With the samba no prato approach, they could phrase the left hand freely on the snare drum and toms accordingly to the soloist’s ideas, in a similar concept to jazz drummers comping. Edison Machado was the main purveyor in the diffusion of this new conception, having reached it through sheer fortuity. According to Machado, he started playing this way, playing on the ride cymbal, when his drumhead broke during a show.22 Machado’s bass drum technique was described by drummer Tutty Moreno as ‘velvety’ even at very fast tempos.23 Keeping the bumbo a dois solid, steady and effortless was fundamental to handling the syncopated rhythms that took place on the cross-stick and on the ride cymbal. In slow and medium tempos Machado usually played sixteenth notes with the right hand and a fixed pattern with the left (two eight notes on the first beat and the second sixteenth note of the second beat). In fast tempos, he abandoned the sixteenth notes and played both hands together with tamborim patterns, very syncopated and with irregular metrics.24 Machado’s artistry was best portrayed in his only recording as a band leader, entitled É Samba Novo (1963), with polyrhythmic perspectives, melodic lines on the toms, and intense interaction with improvisers.
Dom Um Romão was another influential drummer that emerged along with samba jazz. Romão often also employed samba no prato and bumbo a dois but with distinctive features on his left hand such as the raspadeira (scraper). That was the act of, before playing a cross-stick, quickly striking the rim of the high tom, resulting in a flam.25 When playing the snare and toms, Romão would emulate typical patterns of Afro-Brazilian percussion instruments such as surdo, pandeiro, tamborim, reco-reco, caixa, cuíca, repinique and chocalho, looking not only for the rhythms but also for the sonic singularities of those instruments.26 For instance, his recurrent use of the telecoteco27 and other syncopated patterns on the cross-stick alluded to tamborim figures whilst his rimshots on the snare drum implied the sound of the repinique.28
Dom Um Romão’s playing was fierce and energetic, but he had a delicate touch when the situation demanded, notable on his recording with Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim. The same could be observed in Edison Machado, who also had to restrain his dynamic gamut when he recorded the first Jobim solo album.29 These musicians ventured into uncharted territory with samba jazz but absolutely knew how to navigate in the calm waters of bossa nova. They were the two jazzier players in Brazil at the time and had prowess and finesse to perform at any musical circumstance.30
Technical Characteristics
The ‘Brazilian Feel’
In 1965 Dom Um Romão moved to the United States and three years later Airto Moreira did the same. Both musicians were, first and foremost, drum kit players but became successful musicians in the United States as percussionists.31 Playing a rich spectrum of timbres with their instruments, Romão and Moreira were responsible for the spreading of the berimbau outside Brazil. Both drummers were sought after due to the varied musical palette represented by their approaches and because they added the ‘Brazilian feel’ to their groups, a special quality that can be identified with the idea of ‘swing’ in jazz. Though a difficult concept to pinpoint, the ‘Brazilian feel’ can be explained in technical terms and understood by careful listening to specialist drummers such as Moreira.
Asked what was the best music he had ever played, Moreira points to Quarteto Novo, a group that mixed rhythms from north eastern Brazil with jazz improvisation and that grew to be a major reference for future generations of Brazilian musicians.32 The only record produced by this group dates from 1967 and in it, Moreira was already using different percussion instruments added to his drum kit, searching for ‘colours’ and ‘textures’ that later became his personal mark. Moreira also started emulating the sounds of the zabumba on the snare drum and of the triangle on the hi-hat, widening his vocabulary with new ideas. Unlike the other great Brazilian drummers of the sixties (Romão, Machado, Milito, Banana, etc.) that kept their playing within the samba terrain, Airto Moreira expanded his boundaries by pursuing new rhythms such as frevo, coco, xaxado and baiao.33 Moreover, Moreira brought different time signatures into rhythms that were usually played in 2/4, including sambas in 7/8 and 3/4.34
During the 1970s, especially in solo recordings Airto Moreira was playing drum kit and percussion, sometimes one after the other, sometimes putting it all together through the use of overdubs. That combination had a strong influence on many players that were focusing mainly on the drum kit, such as Robertinho Silva (1941), Nenê (1947), and Tutty Moreno (1947).35 Improvements in recording technologies made possible for various layers of percussion to be stacked on top of each other, and as a result drum kit parts were simplified, to ‘make room for other instruments’.36 The same simplification was happening to drummers who were working heavily in studios in Brazil, such as Wilson das Neves. Instead of his sambas with bumbo a dois and lots of cross-stick syncopations, he recorded many songs with only hi-hat and bass drum on the second beat.37 Das Neves is another name that embodies the Brazilian feel through the whole of his career, despite the fact that he moulded his playing in consonance to many different musical scenarios.38 Whatever the genre, these musicians always employed a considerable dose of ginga, the Portuguese word that corresponds to swing.
Music notation has its limitations to accurately capture the ginga of Brazilian rhythms. As Wilson das Neves has explained, ‘you can’t write down the swing of a person’.39 Understanding ginga with a physics lexicon, there are rhythmic fluctuations in a flexible net, in which the elasticity makes possible the existence of some basic structures, but not in metronomic perfection.40 Considering the question musically, one way to look at it is to ask: how successful is this drum kit player in the reproduction of various percussion instruments, including basic rhythmic structures and transitional sounds?41 Part of the challenge in answering that question stems from the interpretation of sixteenth notes, the ‘elementary pulse’ for samba42 and for other Brazilian rhythms as well.
The ‘elementary pulse’ is played with irregular spacing between the sixteenth notes as they do not each get twenty-five per cent of the beat. There are continuous variations in the distribution of these notes from measure to measure so any attempt to register ‘a definite notation for samba’ is likely to be ineffective.43 The nuances in dynamics also are hardly captured by music notation. Analyses of snare drum samba patterns have shown four levels in the accents played, with consecutive fluctuations in their disposition.44 Disparately, drum technique books usually display samba as an oversimplified pattern of four sixteenth notes, with accents on the first and on the fourth.
Facing all these subtleties in dynamics and note placement, it becomes evident that simply playing a samba pattern ‘as written’ is not enough to perform it authentically. Research on micro-rhythms has confirmed this discrepancy demonstrating that notation is a ‘virtual reference structure’ while the ‘actual sounding event’ often results from deviations from that presumed form.45 Hence samba comes alive from musicians’ use of expressive micro-timing, in the same manner that swing occurs in jazz.46 Just like jazz ride patterns rarely align perfectly on the beat, whether the ‘beat’ is provided by a metronome click or another instrument, samba drummers are playing with the beat, rather than playing with the beat.47
A dichotomy arises for drum kit players when working on stick technique and Brazilian rhythms. Traditionally, technique is developed through the study of rudiments, but that results in a paradoxical situation: when practicing rudiments there is a goal of perfect balance between hands in regards to sound qualities, dynamics and note placement. When playing Brazilian rhythms on the drum kit, however, hands often have to sound different for an authentic feel and note placement occurs within the above-mentioned flexible net and its fluctuations. As a consequence, when performing Brazilian rhythms one must ‘forget’ some of the equilibrium that was emphatically aimed for during technique practice. For those who have practiced rudiments for a long time and are first playing Brazilian drum kit rhythms, it might be difficult to abandon the rigidity and give in to elasticity in note placement. On the other side, those who were raised amidst Brazilian culture possibly have learned those rhythms aurally and might know their sounds, but then to evolve as a drum kit player there is a need to work on rudiments for the development of muscle memory and stick control.
Modern Brazilian Drumming
Those distinctive sixteenth notes fluctuations prompt a difficult task when playing samba no prato in fast tempos. There are alternatives of using broken patterns with hands in unison or in combinations of phrases, but many Brazilian drummers have risen to the challenge of playing the non-stop flow of sixteenth notes. That approach is inevitably burdensome and special techniques have been developed to cope with that demand in tempos over 130 bpm.48 For instance, renowned drummer Kiko Freitas plays sixteenth notes using what he denominates ação e reação (action and reaction), derived from the Moeller technique.49 This enables him to emulate the sound of the repinique, which is traditionally played with a stick in one hand (playing the first three notes of each beat) while the other hand plays directly into the drum (the fourth note), but using only his right hand to ride his samba rhythms.50
As part of a long lineage of players, Freitas is a symbol of modern Brazilian drumming. Between Freitas and Luciano Perrone, many others have carried on the traditions and taken them to new heights. Newer generations are in constant exposure to modern drumming concepts through communication technologies and the diffusion of hybrid styles, from influential musicians that have flourished since the 1970s. Examples are plentiful. Marcio Bahia came with a progressive rock background, and after jazz studies and classical percussion training, spent more than thirty years of intense work with Hermeto Pascoal, exploring an ample spectrum of Brazilian music. Bahia played rhythms such as choro, maxixe, samba, baião, xote, xaxado, frevo, and maracatu in odd times, orchestrated around the drum kit with great dexterity and four-way coordination.51 Because of the pluralism in experiences prior to joining Hermeto’s group, Bahia was able to adapt to multiple situations, sometimes improvising freely in complex structures and other times reading note per note dense and intricate written arrangements.
Before Marcio Bahia, two other prominent drummers had played with Hermeto Pascoal: Zé Eduardo Nazário and Nenê. Nazário acknowledges Edison Machado and Dom Um Romão as his foundations and understands that his generation took their work a step further.52 Realcino Lima Filho, best known as Nenê, replaced Airto Moreira in Quarteto Novo when Moreira left for the United States. Both Nazário and Nenê had the right skills and musical tools to embark on Hermeto’s artistic journey during the 1970s, just like they both did for multi-instrumentalist Egberto Gismonti in later years. Along with Paulo Braga, Pascoal Meirelles, Duduka da Fonseca and many others, these musicians shaped Brazilian drum kit drumming to modern times, building ideas that younger musicians are now fusing with past approaches, current techniques and twenty-first century drum sounds.
Conclusion
The influence of Brazilian drum kit drumming on global popular music has been immense and cannot be underestimated. It has been especially evident in the popularity of samba and bossa nova, as genres popular in their own right, but even more so in the influence of those genres on contemporary drumming in jazz and popular music throughout the world. Therefore, Brazilian drum kit drumming has been essential in the cultural flows that informed the development of the drum kit. As much as Brazilian musicians look for references within jazz and rock, the rhythms that emerged from Brazil are nowadays deemed to be a core part of the skillset for jazz drummers and players of other genres.
The fine details of what makes Brazilian drum kit drumming unique and special are yet to be explored thoroughly. Definitely the concept of ginga is a distinguishing element, in which musicians play around the rhythmic fluctuations and characteristics of the music. The verb gingar is also related to body movement and is used to describe the motions in capoeira, another cultural manifestation that vividly represents the essence of Brazilian people. In other words, gingar intrinsically means the expression of being Brazilian both musically and in the way dancers move. That idea resonates with ‘the fact that different microrhythmic designs appeal to (and signify differently for) different audiences’.53 Even though any rhythm may be deconstructed and mathematically analysed, that remains an ineffable and ethereal trait of all the drummers mentioned in this chapter.
Besides this intangible quality of ginga, Brazilian drum kit drumming comes from adaptations of percussion instruments, opening singular pathways for musical creativity. Drummers might emulate the sound of a pandeiro on the hi-hat and then make the snare drum have earmarks of a repinique; they might use the floor tom like a zabumba or bring tamborim patterns into life on the ride cymbal bell. They also often weave colours from assorted rhythms of the Brazilian plate, forging new combinations of ideas. Thus the ‘Brazilian feel’ keeps evolving, well grounded in its roots but open for innovation, establishing a fertile field for new music and for scientific investigation.
