Carlinhos Brown
Encyclopedia
Carlinhos Brown is a Brazil
ian musician from Salvador
, Bahia
. He was born in Candeal Pequeno, a small neighbourhood in the Brotas area of Salvador de Bahia (Brazil). In 1967 he was still a child when Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil (two 25-year-old musicians from Bahia) started a movement that would radically change Brazilian and popular music: Tropicália.
In the early 1980s he started to work in the WR studios in Bahia, where he learned recording and record production techniques, in addition to initiating a task of recompilation and coding of rhythm and percussion sounds from the Bahia area. He then adopted his first nickname: Carlinhos Brown. "It doesn't come from James Brown as people think", he says. "It is inspired in Henry Box Brown
, a black person that escaped from slavery in a box. I also tried to learn from the good (and not the mistakes) of H. Rap Brown
, of the Black Panther movement
".
Brown learned to play various percussion instruments as he grew up and in the 1980s he began to collaborate with other artists. In 1984 he played with Luís Caldas's band Acordes Verdes, one of the originators of samba-reggae, and in 1985 he formed part of Caetano Veloso
's band on the record Estrangeiro, penning a song, "Meia Lua Inteira", that was very successful in Brazil and outside the country. In 1985, Luís Caldas recorded “Visão de Cíclope”, composed by Carlinhos Brown, and it became one of the hottest songs on Salvador's radio stations. Following this, he composed “Remexer”, “O Côco” and “É Difícil” for other artists, earning him a Caymmi trophy, one of the most important music awards in Bahía, and led to his participation in world tours with João Gilberto, Djavan, and João Bosco.
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 neighborhood of Salvador, where Carlinhos was born. They recorded eight albums and toured various countries around the world. In 1993 Billboard Magazine named him the "best record producer in Latin America."
On the heels of Timbalada's success, in 1996 Brown launched a solo album called Alfagamabetizado, on which he sang, composed, and played the instruments. He followed this up with his second album Omelete Man, and a third album, Bahia do Mundo, Mito e Verdade.
1996 also saw Brown appearing on the album Roots by the Brazilian metal band Sepultura
.
In 1997, Brown made a cameo appearance
performing the song "A Namorada" in the film Speed 2: Cruise Control
, and appeared on the Speed 2: Cruise Control Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
.
In 1998, Brown collaborated with Bonga
and Marisa Monte
on the track "Mulemba Xangola" for the AIDS benefit compilation album Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon
produced by the Red Hot Organization
.
In 2002 he formed the group Tribalistas
with Arnaldo Antunes
and Marisa Monte
, contributing vocals and drums to their self-titled album Os Tribalistas
. Their single "Já sei namorar" became the number one song on Brazilian radio stations, and their second single "Velha Infância" almost met with equal success. The album spawned two more hits in Brazil, "Passe Em Casa", co-written with Margareth Menezes
, and "É Você". In 2003 Tribalistas won the Best Album, Best DVD, and Best Song (for "Já Sei Namorar") awards from the Multishow of Brazilian Music.
Brown released Carlinos Brown É Carlito Marrón in 2003 and collaborated with DJ Dero
on the 2004 album Candyall Beat. The Carlito Marrón album achieved considerable success in Spain where it was repackaged a year later with extra tracks, achieveing a hit single "Maria Caipirinha" (with DJ Dero) on the Spanish charts in 2005. Carlinhos Brown remains active in the Salvador da Bahía community, founding the Pracatum Music School in the Candeal neighborhood in 1994 as a non-profit organization dedicated to education, cultural, and community development programs in the city, including a professional music school. In addition, Brown has his own recording label, Candyall Records. Brown has also began painting, and his art works are being well received.
Now, on 10 April 2007, Carlinhos' new album released, 'A Gente Ainda Não Sonhou' (SonyBMG). Recorded in Salvador de Bahia between March 2005 and September 2006. Two Titles Are Co-written with Marisa Monte and Arnaldo Antunes, the record opens with Brazilian percussion mixed with electronica, psychedelic strings and booming beats; primitivism and sophistication with a technically naïve feel, yet always maintaining the best of Brazil.
The albums continues with tracks that fuse electronic sounds with a radiant rhythms, a rumba-tango con a Bahian feel, touches of the most dynamic reggae that clearly show the Brazilian - Jamaican connection, a syncopated funk and also two ballads, one that mixes acoustic with electronic ambiance and shows Brown's mastery of this type of music, and another with a magnificent string arrangement that adorn one of the most lyrical songs on the album.
Carlinhos Brown is extensively featured in the 2004 documentary El Milagro de Candeal.
In 2011, he collaborated with Los Van Vans to record the track "Soy Loco Por Tí, América" for to the Red Hot Organization's
most recent charitable album "Red Hot+Rio 2." The album is a follow-up to the 1996 "Red Hot + Rio
." Proceeds from the sales will be donated to raise awareness and money to fight AIDS/HIV and related health and social issues.
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian musician from Salvador
Salvador, Bahia
Salvador is the largest city on the northeast coast of Brazil and the capital of the Northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia. Salvador is also known as Brazil's capital of happiness due to its easygoing population and countless popular outdoor parties, including its street carnival. The first...
, Bahia
Bahia
Bahia is one of the 26 states of Brazil, and is located in the northeastern part of the country on the Atlantic coast. It is the fourth most populous Brazilian state after São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, and the fifth-largest in size...
. He was born in Candeal Pequeno, a small neighbourhood in the Brotas area of Salvador de Bahia (Brazil). In 1967 he was still a child when Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil (two 25-year-old musicians from Bahia) started a movement that would radically change Brazilian and popular music: Tropicália.
Biography
His parents, Renato and Madalena, were not able to help him learn a job but Osvaldo Alves da Silvia (known as the Master of the Bongo) introduced him to the right tradition of Brazilian folklore and its percussion: tambourine, drums and reco-reco. He soon learned all the secrets from the percussion instruments the Master knew how to play and developed a personal style he has never abandoned.In the early 1980s he started to work in the WR studios in Bahia, where he learned recording and record production techniques, in addition to initiating a task of recompilation and coding of rhythm and percussion sounds from the Bahia area. He then adopted his first nickname: Carlinhos Brown. "It doesn't come from James Brown as people think", he says. "It is inspired in Henry Box Brown
Henry Box Brown
Henry "Box" Brown was a 19th century Virginia slave who escaped to freedom by arranging to have himself mailed to Philadelphia abolitionists in a wooden crate...
, a black person that escaped from slavery in a box. I also tried to learn from the good (and not the mistakes) of H. Rap Brown
H. Rap Brown
Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin , also known as H. Rap Brown, was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s, and during a short lived alliance between SNCC , later the Justice Minister of the Black Panther Party...
, of the Black Panther movement
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....
".
Brown learned to play various percussion instruments as he grew up and in the 1980s he began to collaborate with other artists. In 1984 he played with Luís Caldas's band Acordes Verdes, one of the originators of samba-reggae, and in 1985 he formed part of Caetano Veloso
Caetano Veloso
Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso , better known as Caetano Veloso, is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s,...
's band on the record Estrangeiro, penning a song, "Meia Lua Inteira", that was very successful in Brazil and outside the country. In 1985, Luís Caldas recorded “Visão de Cíclope”, composed by Carlinhos Brown, and it became one of the hottest songs on Salvador's radio stations. Following this, he composed “Remexer”, “O Côco” and “É Difícil” for other artists, earning him a Caymmi trophy, one of the most important music awards in Bahía, and led to his participation in world tours with João Gilberto, Djavan, and João Bosco.
In the 1990s he became known nationally and internationally as the leader of the musical group Timbalada
Timbalada
Timbalada is an Afro-Brazilian musician group from Candeal, Salvador, Brazil. It was founded by drummer Carlinhos Brown. The musical style is between samba reggae and axé, with strong influences from African music...
, which consisted of more than 100 percussionists and singers, called "timbaleiros", the majority of them young kids from the Candeal neighborhood of Salvador, where Carlinhos was born. They recorded eight albums and toured various countries around the world. In 1993 Billboard Magazine named him the "best record producer in Latin America."
On the heels of Timbalada's success, in 1996 Brown launched a solo album called Alfagamabetizado, on which he sang, composed, and played the instruments. He followed this up with his second album Omelete Man, and a third album, Bahia do Mundo, Mito e Verdade.
1996 also saw Brown appearing on the album Roots by the Brazilian metal band Sepultura
Sepultura
Sepultura is a Brazilian heavy metal band from Belo Horizonte, formed in 1984. The band was a major force in the death metal, thrash metal and ultimately groove metal realms during the late 1980s and early 1990s, with their later experiments melding nu metal, hardcore punk and industrial.Sepultura...
.
In 1997, Brown made a cameo appearance
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
performing the song "A Namorada" in the film Speed 2: Cruise Control
Speed 2: Cruise Control
Speed 2: Cruise Control is a 1997 action–thriller film, and a sequel to Speed . The film was produced and directed by Jan de Bont, and written by Randall McCormick and Jeff Nathanson, based on a story by de Bont and McCormick. Sandra Bullock stars in the film, reprising her role from Speed,...
, and appeared on the Speed 2: Cruise Control Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Speed 2: Cruise Control Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
The Speed 2: Cruise Control Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the soundtrack album to the 1997 action thriller film Speed 2: Cruise Control. The album was released in May 1997, almost one month prior to the release of the film...
.
In 1998, Brown collaborated with Bonga
Bonga
Bonga is a town in southwestern Ethiopia. Located southwest of Jimma in the Keficho Shekicho Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region upon a hill in the upper Barta valley, it has a latitude and longitude of with an elevation of 1,714 meters above sea level...
and Marisa Monte
Marisa Monte
Marisa de Azevedo Monte is a Brazilian popular singer. As of 2011, she has sold 10 million albums worldwide.- Biography :...
on the track "Mulemba Xangola" for the AIDS benefit compilation album Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon
Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon
Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon is the eleventh entry in the Red Hot Benefit Series of compilation albums. The album and related television special were both created by the Red Hot Organization , an international organization whose objective in this project is to raise AIDS awareness in the...
produced by the Red Hot Organization
Red Hot Organization
Red Hot Organization is a not-for-profit, 501 3, international organization dedicated to fighting AIDS through pop culture.Since its inception in 1989, over 400 artists, producers and directors have contributed to over 15 compilation albums, related television programs and media events to raise...
.
In 2002 he formed the group Tribalistas
Tribalistas (group)
Tribalistas were a short-lived but popular brazilian musical trio consisting of Arnaldo Antunes, Marisa Monte and Carlinhos Brown . Their one-off collaboration resulted in the popular album Tribalistas, released in Brazil in late 2002 by EMI and in international territories in 2003...
with Arnaldo Antunes
Arnaldo Antunes
Arnaldo Antunes , is a writer and composer from Brazil. He began as a member of the band Aguilar e Banda Performática in the late 1970s. For most of the 1980s he was a member of the rock band Titãs. After 1992 he had six solo albums. Since 1992 he has been an award winning poet, but he was first...
and Marisa Monte
Marisa Monte
Marisa de Azevedo Monte is a Brazilian popular singer. As of 2011, she has sold 10 million albums worldwide.- Biography :...
, contributing vocals and drums to their self-titled album Os Tribalistas
Os Tribalistas
Tribalistas is an album released in 2002 by brazilian musical trio Tribalistas, consisting of Marisa Monte, Arnaldo Antunes and Carlinhos Brown, as a one-off collaboration....
. Their single "Já sei namorar" became the number one song on Brazilian radio stations, and their second single "Velha Infância" almost met with equal success. The album spawned two more hits in Brazil, "Passe Em Casa", co-written with Margareth Menezes
Margareth Menezes
Margareth Menezes is a Brazilian singer from Salvador, Bahia.Her style is considered axé but her music also steers into samba and MPB territory, at times drawing on African rhythms and reggae....
, and "É Você". In 2003 Tribalistas won the Best Album, Best DVD, and Best Song (for "Já Sei Namorar") awards from the Multishow of Brazilian Music.
Brown released Carlinos Brown É Carlito Marrón in 2003 and collaborated with DJ Dero
DJ Dero
Ezequiel Dero , also known as DJ Dero, is a DJ, producer and remixer of House, Electro House, Techno and Eurodance styles...
on the 2004 album Candyall Beat. The Carlito Marrón album achieved considerable success in Spain where it was repackaged a year later with extra tracks, achieveing a hit single "Maria Caipirinha" (with DJ Dero) on the Spanish charts in 2005. Carlinhos Brown remains active in the Salvador da Bahía community, founding the Pracatum Music School in the Candeal neighborhood in 1994 as a non-profit organization dedicated to education, cultural, and community development programs in the city, including a professional music school. In addition, Brown has his own recording label, Candyall Records. Brown has also began painting, and his art works are being well received.
Now, on 10 April 2007, Carlinhos' new album released, 'A Gente Ainda Não Sonhou' (SonyBMG). Recorded in Salvador de Bahia between March 2005 and September 2006. Two Titles Are Co-written with Marisa Monte and Arnaldo Antunes, the record opens with Brazilian percussion mixed with electronica, psychedelic strings and booming beats; primitivism and sophistication with a technically naïve feel, yet always maintaining the best of Brazil.
The albums continues with tracks that fuse electronic sounds with a radiant rhythms, a rumba-tango con a Bahian feel, touches of the most dynamic reggae that clearly show the Brazilian - Jamaican connection, a syncopated funk and also two ballads, one that mixes acoustic with electronic ambiance and shows Brown's mastery of this type of music, and another with a magnificent string arrangement that adorn one of the most lyrical songs on the album.
Carlinhos Brown is extensively featured in the 2004 documentary El Milagro de Candeal.
In 2011, he collaborated with Los Van Vans to record the track "Soy Loco Por Tí, América" for to the Red Hot Organization's
Red Hot Organization
Red Hot Organization is a not-for-profit, 501 3, international organization dedicated to fighting AIDS through pop culture.Since its inception in 1989, over 400 artists, producers and directors have contributed to over 15 compilation albums, related television programs and media events to raise...
most recent charitable album "Red Hot+Rio 2." The album is a follow-up to the 1996 "Red Hot + Rio
Red Hot + Rio
Red Hot + Rio is a compilation album produced by Paul Heck as part of the Red Hot AIDS Benefit Series intended to promote AIDS awareness. This installment is a contemporary tribute to the Bossa nova sound, especially the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim...
." Proceeds from the sales will be donated to raise awareness and money to fight AIDS/HIV and related health and social issues.
Studio albums
- 1996 Alfagamabetizado (Blue Note RecordsBlue Note RecordsBlue Note Records is a jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards. It derives its name from the characteristic "blue notes" of jazz and the blues. At the end of the 1950s, and in the early 1960s, Blue Note headquarters...
) - 1998 Omelete Man (Blue Note RecordsBlue Note RecordsBlue Note Records is a jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards. It derives its name from the characteristic "blue notes" of jazz and the blues. At the end of the 1950s, and in the early 1960s, Blue Note headquarters...
) - 2001 Bahia do Mundo, Mito e Verdade (Blue Note RecordsBlue Note RecordsBlue Note Records is a jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards. It derives its name from the characteristic "blue notes" of jazz and the blues. At the end of the 1950s, and in the early 1960s, Blue Note headquarters...
) - 2003 Carlinhos Brown é Carlito Marrón (Blue Note RecordsBlue Note RecordsBlue Note Records is a jazz record label, established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis. Francis Wolff became involved shortly afterwards. It derives its name from the characteristic "blue notes" of jazz and the blues. At the end of the 1950s, and in the early 1960s, Blue Note headquarters...
) - 2004 Candyall Beat (Vale)
- 2007 A Gente Ainda Não Sonhou (Sony BMG)
- 2010 Adobró (Sony BMG)
- 2010 Diminuto (Sony BMG)