Strip away the spotlights, the elaborate staging and the millions of television viewers, and you start to get back to where Carlinhos Brown started 40 years ago, with a venerable master orally passing on the tradition of creating music to a promising student. But now Brown is the master.
Brown today is a coach on the Brazilian TV music competition The Voice Kids as well as the original The Voice. But that is just the latest chapter of the feverishly inventive musician’s career. Starting as a percussionist sought out by top musicians in the late 1980s, Brown went on to start the drum-based ensemble called Timbalada and then went on to an acclaimed solo career, including two Latin Grammys and an Academy Award nomination for a song from the animated movie “Rio.”
Now with his TV responsibilities on hold until next season, Brown is working on several recording projects and taking a side trip to New York City’s David Geffen Hall for the Lincoln Center Festival for a one-off gig on July 15th.
“This concert is so special to me…I have a great appreciation for the American people,” he said, reeling off an eclectic list of musicians that have been influential, from Parliament bassist Bootsy Collins to Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro.
Brown, 54, grew up amid the poor Candeal neighborhood of Salvador in Brazil’s northwest, an area where the African influence was a strong and lingering presence. As a boy, Brown was chosen by a local master percussionist for his potential. Getting lessons through the oral tradition of African music, he learned ancient Afro-Brazilian rhythms and styles.
“Everything good that the world wanted to preserve in our memory comes more from speech than written,” said Brown.
Ironically, living in a low-income barrio shielded him from the siren song of rock ‘n’ roll that, he said, “contaminated the Bahian middle class.” He said it was as if he was living in the prior century. While Brown appreciated soul and other imported styles, he brought Afro-Brazilian rhythms to them.
He recalled hanging out near the buildings of the Federal University of Bahia to hear sounds of the music within when a friend introduced him to American percussionist John Arrucci, who was there on an exchange program. The friend introduced Brown as someone who knew everything about Brazilian music and, before he knew it, he was inside the classroom teaching.
Looking back at that time, Brown calls it a revolution where, bolstered by the technical knowhow of the visiting faculty, Afro-Brazilian music came into its own. What became known as “axe music” (pronounced “Ah-shay”) jumped into Brazilians’ consciousness and radios. The group Olodum’s collaboration with Paul Simon gave the Bahian style even more of a pedigree, where it had previously been dismissed as brega or “tacky music,” Brown recalled.
In his home neighborhood of Candeal, he trained scores of percussionists, eventually forming a group called Timbalada that revived the use of the tall, narrow timbal drum and developed their trademark use of white paint on their dark skin as distinctive - and inexpensive - costuming. The informal community of drummers under Brown’s leadership was honed down to a pop band that had several national hits, starting in 1993 with its eponymous debut album. Timbalada eventually went out on its own, separately from Brown, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year during the annual carnival street celebration in Bahia. Some of the money earned by Timbalada went to the social-service Pracatum Project, which improved the home neighborhood, from infrastructure to musical education. “That is really the success,” he said.
By that time, Brown had established himself as a musician’s musician, enlivening the records of more-established performers, most notably Brazilian icon Caetano Veloso, and Sergio Mendes, who produced the Grammy-winning Brasileiro in 1992, which melded sophisticated jazz-fusion with choruses of Carnival-like drummers.
Brown’s solo albums also did well, fusing African-American styles such as funk and soul with Afro-Brazilian Bahian sounds. He even scored an international hit with the intense funk of A Namorada, which was in the American film “Speed 2.”
Another successful chapter came in 2002 when Brown teamed up with two friends, the popular singer Marisa Monte and the founder of the rock group Titas, Arnaldo Antunes. The three singular personalities did a one-off project calling themselves the Tribalistas, and garnered several hits in Brazil. But Carlinhos had more career surprises in store.
In 2012, he was named a judge in the first season of The Voice, and has now done all five seasons. For the past two years he has also been a coach on the The Voice Kids, where he worked with children.
Brown said the shows have introduced him to much wider audiences in Brazil and have been a spur to his own musical creativity. “I learn much more than I teach as a coach,” he said. “It has improved my ear from what’s new, contemporary and fresh.”
For now, Brown is putting together his Lincoln Center show, which he said will reprise highlights of his career as both a performer and as a songwriter, adding “We always have surprises.”
“Magalenha” from Sergio Mendes album Brasileiro, written and sung by Carlinhos Brown
A low-fi version of a live performance by the Tribalistas
An early hit of Brown’s signature percussion group Timbalada