Batutas

The Batutas project was born from a double historical coincidence. Firstly, the year of 2022 marks both the bicentennial of Brazil's independence and the centennial of the first international tour of a Brazilian popular music ensemble, the Oito Batutas, a band led by Pixinguinha and Donga, which, in February 1922, traveled to France, enchanting the Parisian audience with their choros, maxixes, and sambas. The second coincidence is the fact that at the beginning of the process that gave birth to these Brazilian musical styles, we find an Austrian musician.
It is generally accepted among specialists that the birth of choro, considered the first urban Brazilian musical style, is one of the many consequences of the arrival of the Portuguese royal family in Brazil. The contact of European musical styles and instruments with the music of African origins played in Brazil, especially the percussive batuque and lundu, was the musical root for many Brazilian genres, including choro.
Among the European artists who lived in Brazil during this period was Sigismund von Neukomm, an Austrian composer born in Salzburg, who was a student of Joseph Haydn. Neukomm's work was of great importance in laying the technical and instrumental foundations of the new music that resulted from the contact between Europe and Brazil, contributing to the process that sometime later would lead to the birth of styles such as choro.
The album pays tribute to this history and those who, for the first time, showcased this new music outside Brazil, making choro, maxixe, and samba known to the world, thus initiating a process of diffusion that explains why, today, so many people in so many places in the world listen to and play Brazilian music.