The History and Roots of Samba

is an organisation, based in the Lavapiés neighbourhood, which works to disseminate Brazilian culture in Madrid. Over the past twenty-one years, it has organised activities to promote the richness and diversity of Brazilian Afro-Indigenous culture, and to offer a space where artists and communities can share their creations and traditions. Their main initiatives include: Black Consciousness Day, the Pachamama Carnival, the Música Brasileira de Autor Festival (FEMBA) and the Lxs Niñxs Traditional Fiesta.

is a percussionist and multi-instrumentalist with a solid professional trajectory developed between Brazil and Spain for more than three decades. Alabê’s talent, versatility and in-depth knowledge of percussion have led to collaborations with salient samba groups, with a style that fuses the rhythmic wealth of Brazilian tradition with contemporary influences.

is a dancer, percussionist and capoeirista. In Madrid she previously worked as a percussion teacher and contributed to forming the Batucada Feminista da Maloka group. She is currently working on different Afro-Brazilian dance projects, where she researches and interprets the dance genre to rescue ancestry and recover artistic forms rendered invisible over a long period. She is part of the Black Women’s March Steering Committee in Madrid.

holds a degree in Psychology and has aligned her trajectory towards dance, culture and activism. She trains in Brazilian and Latin ballroom dance and cultivates rhythms such as gafieira, no pé samba and forró, with an understanding of dance as a medium that connects to her roots and celebrates Brazilian identity. She is also the creator of the project Muvuca Brasil, focused on disseminating Brazilian artistic and cultural expression, and is part of the Black Women’s March Steering Committee in Madrid.

arrived in Madrid from Pernambuco and soon integrated into Madrid’s music scene, collaborating with different artists. A maracatu teacher, he is an arts researcher by nature and one of the most respected percussion teachers in the Iberian Peninsula, as reflected in his myriad collaborations with bands and ensembles in Spain.

is a musician with a command not only of cavaquinho and the guitar, but also an array of percussion instruments. He also performs his own compositions. Marreta has participated in different cultural shows in Spain, including in the Teatro Real, and currently performs with Samba y Algo Más in Café Berlín in Madrid, as well as different samba projects and with Roda de Choro de Madrid.

is a multidisciplinary visual artist, dancer, choreographer and social and cultural anthropologist with a post-graduate degree in the Culture and Thought of Black People and Gender Equality. In 2002, he received the “Best of Brazil in Europe” award from High Profile magazine and has collaborated with renowned national and international artists.

is a singer, composer, guitarist and percussionist. Since his arrival in Madrid, he has played and danced with different ensembles while developing his solo work, which encompasses samba, bossa nova and popular Brazilian music. For many years he has performed on different stages in the Spanish capital, most notably participating in different editions of FITUR, the International Tourism Trade Fair, and with different Spanish television channels during carnival.

is a deep-voiced and mixed-race-soul singer. Her music fuses Afro and Indigenous roots with contemporary sound that celebrates life and nature. After stints with choral ensembles and the music school from Madrid’s Sierra Norte, she pays homage to the female figure in samba, evoking the voices of Black people and ancestral women and mothers who sing from memory to be heard, recognised and exalted. An activist for racial and gender justice, she is part of the Black Women’s March Steering Committee in Madrid.

is a singer, composer and guitarist. In 2014, he was invited by the Teatro Defondo company to be the musical director on the work La ópera del malandro, by Chico Buarque, performed at Madrid’s Teatro Fernán Gómez. He also participated at FITUR 2024.

is a Brazilian art educator, curator and cultural researcher who lives in Madrid. She also holds a PhD in Education from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her work connects art, film and popular culture as tools of mediation and social transformation as she focuses her practice on cultural diversity, the creation of networks and the collective construction of memory. She has created projects such as the Cine de Andada and Cine Caipirinha film societies, and has collaborated with institutions such as Patrimonio Nacional, the Galería Capibaribe and the Museo Nacional de Arte in Bolivia.

grew up around the Beija-Flor de Nilópolis samba school in Rio de Janeiro, the source of her passion for samba. She has lived in Madrid since the age of nineteen, graduating in Labour Relations and Human Resources at the Complutense University of Madrid. She combines her work with dance.