Bixiga 70: how the band gained its place in the lineup of the main festivals worldwide
Instrumental band Bixiga 70 has been gaining acceptance worldwide. On the verge of the celebration of its 10th anniversary, the group has reached a mark of 30 gigs annually, on average. As a member of Brasil Music Exchange – a Brazilian music fostering project carried out by means of a partnership between the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil) and Brasil, Música & Artes (BM&A) –, for four years, the band has already gotten support for major events, such as its showcase during Womex 2016, in Spain, and its participation in SXSW 2019.
Bixiga 70 has already played in important international music festivals, such as the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, the Glastonbury Festival in the UK, and the Montreal Jazz Festival in Canada, an event with a 50 thousand people crowd in 2017.
The first international gig of the band was in 2012, in the afrobeat festival Felabration, in Amsterdam, where major names of the scene, such as Tony Allen, Jungle By Night and Woima Collective, also performed.
Today, the group continues making efforts to reach its goal of being known all around the globe. “In 2006 I started looking for opportunities to travel the world with music”, says Daniel Nogueira, sax player of Bixiga 70 since 2010.
As an instrumental band, Bixiga 70 is able to interact with the foreign audiences without the communication issues resulting from the lack of understanding of lyrics in a different language. “Our music is made for dancing, it has a lot of percussion, which is something people from other countries are not used to explore so much as we do in Brazil, so those who listen to our songs enjoy freeing their bodies and minds”, adds Daniel.
In its fourth album, “Quebra-Cabeça”, the band shows music maturity and delivers a record so solid that it has been considered as a turning point in its career. The album is the result of the exchange of experiences the band had with musicians from all over the world during music events in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Morocco, India, New Zealand, Australia and the United States, for example.
Bixiga 70 is composed by Décio 7 (drums), Marcelo Dworecki (bass), Cris Scabello (guitar), Mauricio Fleury (keyboard and guitar), Rômulo Nardes (percussion), Cuca Ferreira (baritone sax), Daniel Nogueira (tenor sax), Douglas Antunes (trombone) and Daniel Gralha (trumpet). Additionally to “Quebra-Cabeça”, the band has other three albums, and their names refer to their production sequence: “I” (2011), “II” (2013) and “III” (2015). The second and the third albums, recorded during the international phase of the career, were released respectively by +1 Records, from London, and the German music label Glitterbeat (elected by Womex as the most important record label in World Music).
ABOUT BME
The Brasil Music Exchange (BME) – a project that aims to foster the Brazilian music companies’ exports promoted since 2002 by the Brasil, Música & Artes (BM&A) and the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil) – supports this showcase.
Listen to the album “Quebra-Cabeça”: