“Percussion is deeply interwoven in my country’s history,” says Brazilian drummer Claudio Oliveira. Oliveira is in the city as a guest faculty at Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music, to teach students Brazilian rhythms such as samba, bossa nova, and maracatu.
“Brazil has a long tradition of drums; in Rio de Janeiro, there are samba schools on every street. You go to Salvador, there are percussion groups performing on the road, it’s a huge mix of music, dance and well, partying!” he says.
It is this Brazilian idea of fun that he will be bringing with him to his act tomorrow. “It won’t be just a performance, I will also be explaining some of the different rhythms that are popular back home,” says the 48-year-old, adding that he was a big fan of bossa nova and samba.
“I like to play Brazilian jazz. Jazz is about improvisation, so it gives itself to fusion with different styles; I will play Brazilian rhythm on regular drums,” he says. Normally however, samba is played on snare drums. He has also written a book, A contemporary view of Brazilian rhythms for drums and percussion , on this very concept, that was published last year.
It is a technique he refined in his three years at the LA Music Academy. He was already a professional drummer by the time he went to Los Angeles in 2000, having trained for many years in his hometown São Paulo, under drummer Dirceu Medeiros. “Mederios was experimenting with Brazilian rhythms, and introduced me to a lot of jazzy styles, which fascinated me,” he says. He knew then that if he wanted to get closer to this style of music, he had to move to Los Angeles.
“In LA, I was fortunate enough to take part in World Stage, organised by Billy Higgins, where the whole community would come together to learn the history of jazz,” he says. It was there that he discovered, that in LA, similar to how it was in his hometown, jazz came from the ghettos. “In my hometown too, music was not something you went to a school to learn, it was something the community taught you,” he says.
Oliveira’s first tryst with music, like most young boys, had been when he, all of 15, picked up his elder brother’s acoustic guitar to play. “But I never took to it. And then, one day, I played on my friend’s drum set. That sound stayed with me even after I went back home,” he says.
Though has been working with different bands and artists for over two decades now, he has only once been part of a band. “I do not like all the complications that come with it: in-fighting, members splitting up, and all the effort that you put in gone to waste even if you were not involved in the fight,” he says, now preferring to keep a professional distance from people he works with.
The performance will be held on August 3, from 6 pm to 8 pm at Backyard, Adyar. Tickets priced at ₹500. Call 7358000759.
