Santa Cruz's favorite Brazilian band has created its own genre of feel-good music.
Fri, Apr 6th 2007

By GRAHAM HAWORTH, SENTINEL CORRESPONDENT For a decade, SambaDa has honed their uniquely California-flavored Brazilian sound. They’ve packed the Catalyst and Moe’s Alley many times over, taken their act on the road and, on their most recent album, “Salve a Bahia,” worked with Grammy-nominated producer Greg Landau. But it’s the connection with their fans and a live audience that the band really thrive on, according to percussionist Will Kahn. So when last week’s Metro Santa Cruz hit the stands with SambaDa being voted Best Band by the community, the members of the group found it to be one of the highest honors they’ve received to date. “It feels so good, man!” said Kahn, his excitement still evident nearly a week after the announcement. “We’ve won silver a bunch of years, so I can’t even tell you how excited we all are. We’ve worked so hard for so long. Our relationship with our crowd is real special.” But don’t expect the band to rest on its laurels after being honored. Just two weeks prior to their award, SambaDa got word they had been accepted to perform at the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival alongside such heavyweights as Toots & the Maytals, Les Nubians and Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars. The event is considered the top world music festival in California. All the recent accolades have only served as motivation for the band to keep striving forward in the difficult corridors of the music business. And it’s made all the more impressive by the fact that the band has basically conjured up their own genre of music. “I think that we’ve had to fend for ourselves a lot,” Kahn said. “There wasn’t a built-in Brazilian music scene in California when we started, so we’ve always focused on doing a show, bringing in a crowd and establishing ourselves.” In that regard, Ozomatli is a big influence on the band. The Southern California band, taking an independent approach, now has multiple Grammy Awards to their name. And SambaDa is friendly with the band, having shared the same stage over the years. In fact, members of Ozomatli are working on remixing a song from “Salve a Bahia” for a remix album due sometime in the fall, according to Kahn. “The remix album will feature the same songs as the original, but remixed and going in a million different directions,” Kahn described. “Chali 2na of Jurassic 5 has expressed interest, and so has RadioActive.” RadioActive, a Bay Area MC well-known for his conscious lyrics and inhuman beatbox skills, will make an appearance at SambaDa’s show at Moe’s Alley on Saturday night. The union happened in a totally organic manner at a recent SambaDa gig. “He showed up at a club we were playing one night, so I walked up to him at the bar, introduced myself and invited him to sit in,” Kahn recalled. “It was magic, incredibly spontaneous. The song he sat in on switches rhythm out of nowhere. We were stretching it out for him to free-style over, and he began beatboxing in the same rhythm we were about to switch to. It was perfect. Since then, we’ve embraced him and he’s embraced us, and that’s what we need in this world. He has a field day with our percussion section.” As for what lies ahead in the future for SambaDa, Kahn said all he knows is the only way is up. That doesn’t mean the band will forget their hometown Santa Cruz crowd, though. “We always do something special at our Santa Cruz gigs,” Kahn promised. Contact Graham Haworth at graham@haworths.org. On to Brazil SambaDa is focused on traveling to Brazil sometime next year, according to percussionist Will Kahn. Group founder Papiba Godinho and Dandha Da Hora are both native Brazilians, and Da Hora has been part of Ile Aiye — one of Brazil’s most important musical and cultural institutions, which promotes racial equality — since she was 6 years old. The band hopes to tour there and Kahn said he’s especially excited to soak up as much musical knowledge as he can in what will be his first trip to Brazil.