Carlinhos Brown | |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Antonio Carlos Santos de Freitas |
Born |
Salvador, Bahia, Brazil |
23 November 1962
Genres | Axé, samba, Afro, MPB, Candomblé music, bolero, salsa |
Associated acts | Timbalada, Tribalistas, Sergio Mendes |
Website | http://www.carlinhosbrown.com.br/ |
Carlinhos Brown (born Antonio Carlos Santos de Freitas; November 23, 1962) is a Brazilian musician, songwriter and record producer from Salvador, Bahia. His musical style blends tropicália, reggae, and traditional Brazilian percussion.
He was born in Candeal Pequeno, a small neighbourhood in the Brotas area of Salvador de Bahia (Brazil) to parents Renato and Madalena. 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.
Osvaldo Alves da Silva (known as the Master of the Bongo) introduced him to the tradition of Brazilian folklore and its percussion: tambourine, drums and reco-reco. He soon learned all the secrets of the percussion instruments 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, 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 Accordes 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.