Scott Kettner's Nation Beat: Brazilian Big-Beat, world-groove music. Inspired by the Afro-Brazilian rhythms of maracatu, Chico Science & the Mangue Beat movement of Recife, Brazil as well as New Orleans second-line funk and jazz, the Brooklyn-based group Nation Beat has created a fresh compelling new sound. The Nation Beat transcends borders, musically and literally; they're the first American group to record in Brazil with the legendary Maracatu Naçao ("nation") Estrela Brilhante ("brilliant star"), led by Mestre Walter and rhythm master Jorge Martins. Effortlessly swinging from gritty 'Nawlins funk, through jazzed-up new songs and traditional tunes, to the huge sound of a Brazilian bateria, improvising and telling their own story through it all, The Nation Beat is making 21-st century music for one nation under a groove!
Nation Beat. It's a name, a description, and at the same time a question – which nation, and which beat? What makes this group of musicians special is that they offer no simple answers. Nation Beat plays American music…both North and South American music. They are rhythm gatherers, harvesting the fruit of 500 years of cultural cross-breeding, which is why the sounds of the northeast of Brazil and the southern United States blend together so seamlessly on this recording. Both nations are the colonial creations of Europe, fed by black African slave labor, and populated by immigrants from everywhere, creating syncretic, New World societies. Brazil, that vast nation, has nurtured it's own rhythm 'nations', namely the naçao of the maracatu musicians from the state of Pernambuco. This immense area culminates geographically in a horn that juts into the Atlantic, the eastern-most point in the Western Hemisphere. It was here, in the old city of Recife, that many of the travellers in our tale first landed in the Americas, bringing their culture, their rhythms – their nations- with them.
One of the oldest and most respected of these maracatu groups, Naçao Estrela Brilhante, celebrates their centennial this year. A century of history, the history of a people condensed into rhythm, song, dance, and ritual. One hundred years old, and still kicking- Estrela Brilhante were the proud champions of the 2006 Carnaval in Recife, and Nation Beat is the first group from the United States to perform, collaborate, and record with the "Shining Star", led by Mestre Walter. Yet this partnership isn't a case of the hosts patiently indulging the curious whims of their northern neighbors- on this record, the influence cuts both ways. The atmosphere in the studio in Brazil during the recording sessions was one of excitement, shared discovery, and mutual respect. It's a thrill to hear the second-line rhythms of New Orleans morph into the cutting syncopations of the maracatu, and to feel in your dancing feet that the pairing makes so much sense. It's a much maligned word, fusion, but that's what this is, in the happiest sense: all the musicians learning from each other, being turned on, propagating their musical seeds, and creating a new nation, one without passports, or borders.
Why the name "Nation Beat"?........
The word Nação means Nation in Portuguese. All of the traditional Maracatu groups from Recife, Brazil are considered a Nação in reference to the African nations in which they come from. The name of the Maracatu group always starts with Maracatu Nação____________________ (name of group.) For instance: Maracatu Nação Estrela Brilhante, Maracatu Nação Porto Rico, Maracatu Nação Elefante, etc.
The word Baque means Beat in Portuguese. The traditional style of Maracatu that we play is called “Maracatu de Baque Virado”. Which translates into “Maracatu of the Flipping Beat”.
That is why we are The Nation Beat.
Select past performances include:
-NYC Central Park Summer Stage 2005 with Cyro Baptista's Beat The Donkey.
-Midtown Music Festival. Atlanta, GA
-The Georgia Theatre. Athens, GA
-NEKMF Music Festival. VT
-Musik Fest. Bethlehem, PA
-SOB's. NYC
-Joe's Pub. NYC
-Lincoln Center, NYC
-Golapagos. NYC
-BBC Scotland NPR radio feature.
-WFMU live radio performance, NJ/NYC.
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