A new Afro-Brazilian band that took form in the summer will hold its first performance at the city of Gainesville’s Holiday Parade on Dec. 7.
A Very GNV Holiday Parade starts at noon from West Sixth Street and University Avenue and includes floats, dancers and live bands.
One of these bands, Bloco GNV is bringing a Brazilian flair to the parade.
“I love this music,” said Cody Case, 42, the band’s founder and a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology. “When I got introduced to [Afro-Brazilian] music, it opened up a whole new world of thinking and playing music.”
Bloco is a performance style from Bahia, Brazil, where drummers number in the hundreds to accompany the celebrations of Carnaval celebrated in its capital, Salvador.
“If you are performing in Carnaval, you perform as a part of a bloco, which is like a big block of people,” Case said. “When I first went [to Brazil] in 2019, 2020, I was just blown away by the music and how you could have 100 percussionists all playing in perfect harmony, in perfect sync, not missing a beat.”
Bahia is a center for the Afro-Brazilians in Brazil.
“Salvador basically, they call it Roma Negra -- the Black Rome -- because it is the highest population density of Black Afro-Brazilian population in the country,” Case said.
“...The religion in Salvador is really prominent. It's an Afro-Brazilian religion called Candomblé, and all of the music, all the rhythms that we play in this ensemble, and most Afro-Brazilian music, has origins in this Afro-Brazilian religion.”
Bloco refers to the band rather than a particular style of drumming, but bands often play samba-reggae, a genre that started in the 1980s.
“Samba-reggae came around in 1986,” Case said. “It was starting to become popular in the late '80s and early '90s, and especially thanks to Michael Jackson and Paul Simon.”
Band member Dyuna Soledade, 23, has a long history with drumming. “Both my parents are Brazilian, and Brazilian culture is a big part of who I am. So this music is a large part of how I grew up.”
Soledade plays the timbal, a tall drum played by hand, which he describes as “almost an alto instrument” because of its versatility in playing high and low parts, “every instrument has its own rhythm, essentially. And once you have them all playing in concert, you get them all making this harmonious sound.”
The band, which has about 30 members, is quite new, only forming in August of this year.
“I lived there [Salvador] for a year... [When] I came back after that experience, I had to focus on my research and focus on the dissertation,” Case said. “But this year, this summer, I started to think, ‘Oh, man, I really want to play this music.’ Because I was sitting in my office writing, typing, studying…my friend Kenneth Mesker… he and I met this summer and we're like, ‘Let's give it a try.’”