Nation Beat
Nation Beat -

Songs

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Videos

Recife meets New Orleans
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  • country:USA
  • region:Northeast Brazil
  • style(s):Brass, Brazilian
  • label:Avokado Artists Recordings / Nation Beat Music
  • type:Quintet
  • gender:male, female
  • instrumentation:percussion, brass
  • artist posted by:Avokado Artists / ¡Globalquerque!

Line up

  • Joe Correia (Sousaphone)
  • Mariel Bildsten (Trombone)
  • Mark Collins (Trumpet)
  • Paul Carlon (Tenor Sax)
  • Scott Kettner (Drums, Percussion)

Links

"...A revelation...the most original and alluring fusion band I have heard in years" Banning Eyre, NPR

"Groundbreaking." CMJ

"Addictive." Time Out Chicago

"Just a fantastic group. I was overwhelmed" Willie Nelson

"It's about three songs into a live performance by Nation Beat, the exuberant and inquisitive Brooklyn-based band that has pioneered a synthesis of music from northeastern Brazil and the American South, that you realize for good that this is no run-of-the-mill, world-beat fusion project." The Boston Globe

"In Nation Beat's music, European, African and Latin sensibilities come together in the spirit of a Friday-night party after a week of hard work." NPR

Pounded by calloused hands; blasted by tight grooves. It calls across time and continents - with a response from hips and feet. It’s the force that blew through Louis Armstrong in the twenties. It’s the power that gets Brazilians swinging in the streets for carnival.

NATION BEAT singularly conjures up this elemental musical mojo, drawing on the wellsprings of rhythm that lit up jazz and got maracatu thundering. NATION BEAT takes off with be-bop-via-Brazil drumming; propelled by percussive bursts of New Orleans-flavored brass. But forget the musical history; this is music to make you dance.

NATION BEAT’s live shows have taken on an almost mythological aura for their ability to lift the souls, and the feet, of their growing cross-cultural audience. Band leader, drummer/percussionist Scott Kettner has long been at the forefront of merging different musical elements together, from the earliest days of Nation Beat's Brazil meets North American music.

In 2017, Scott connected with arranger Paul Carlon (tenor sax) and the band entered a new phase in their cross-cultural explorations and experimentations where brass band and percussion explode in a jazz-infused, funkified New Orleans-meets-Brazil carnival sound. 

“Past albums have leaned heavily on Brazilian music,” Kettner says. "While that is ever present in NATION BEAT's sound, our latest groove is jazz-tinged. We are bringing dance back to jazz. This is a beat that moves your feet!"

New York City perseveres as an incredible musical melting pot reining in artistic influences from all across the globe. Accompanying the surging amalgamation of diverse genres, cultures and rhythms, NATION BEAT introduces an unprecedented mix of northeastern Brazil's maracatu and the sounds of New Orleans. NATION BEAT artistic director/founder Scott Kettner, a graduate of The New School University (NYC) and a 2006 Latin Jazz Ambassador, is at once following the path of such Brazilian luminaries as Lenine and Chico Science, and forging new trails with a distinct, contemporary interpretation of the traditional 19th century Pernembuco-born rhythm.

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