Brasil, Brazil kicked off Santa Monica’s Jazz on the Lawn concert series Sunday. Anna Gazzola and Sonia Santos, lead singers of Brasil, Brazil, went through a set that lasted over an hour and spanned an array of songs, both in English and Portuguese. More than one hundred people came out for the concert, many with their families and lawn chairs or blankets. Santa Monica Mayor Richard Bloom introduced the women, who had a four man backing band.
The band’s name is derived from the home nation of the two women as well as the spelling of their names. The two “Z’s” in Gazzola and two “S’s” in Santos’ led the women to call their band Brasil, Brazil. The pair were charismatic front women. Both seemed nearly incapable of standing still, and, when not playing a variety of percussion instruments, or, in Gazzola’s case the saxophone, they were dancing around or waving their yellow scarves. The heavy use of percussion was on display with the duo and their band (featuring three Brazilians and one Argentinean). None of the six musicians ever seemed to lose the beat. All of them seemed to fulfill the notion that people in Brazil are simply born dancing and shaking a percussion instrument.
The band relies heavily on the message of peace and love in their music. The bands moto, “Peace through the arts,” rang clearly throughout the show. Gazzola began one song by offering a prayer to the God of Music and the Goddess of love, and another by reminding the crowd “With all the violence in the world, we are all so fragile.”
Those that came out to see the band, well over one hundred people, got a taste of what a Brazilian summer must feel like. Staged on a sunny afternoon in front of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium as the sun began to sink, the whole event seemed an homage to Brazil. The band closed their first set (before a brief introduction), with “Back to Brazil,” a song which seemed to celebrate all the wonderful things of Brazil and closed with a variety of percussion solos featuring the entire band switching between various instruments. The crowd seemed relatively sedate at first, but as the show went on some began dancing (noticeably many of the Brazilians in the audience) and some began playing their own percussion instruments they had brought along with them.
The band have released two CDs, the Yellow CD and the Green CD. They are currently working on the Blue CD, which will be followed by the White CD, as the band name all their CDs after the colors in the Brazilian flag. Both CDs are available through the band’s website, BrazilBrasilShow.com.
The Jazz on the Lawn Series, in it’s second year, is put on by the Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Committee, with support from the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Recording Industries Music Performance Fund. The series runs through August, every Sunday evening from five to seven. This years concerts are the Jazz Tap Ensemble Quartet (Agusust 12th), Nate Birkley (August 19th) and Maggie Palomo (August 26th). All shows are free to the public.
