A Brazilian-Indian concert in Mumbai

A concert reveals how Brazilians and Indians both share a love for music, song and dance.
India and Brazil have a lot of cultural similarities. The way people relate with music and percussions is just one of them,” says Carlo Alexandre Teixeira Da Silva, the founder of Kabula, a troupe that practices traditional Brazilian art forms.
Kabula has been teaching capoeira in London and that’s where director of the concert Ruchika Tikus first heard about them.
Tired of organising gigs for Bollywood, Ruchika wanted to make it as a singer/songwriter only to realise that India was too difficult a market to breakthrough. Her search for fresh creative grounds led to London. That’s where she met Carlo. Kabula will perform samba, macumba, capoeira and jongo, four Afro-Brazilian styles that have either already made a mark on pop-culture or are in the process of doing so.
Samba and capoeira aren’t new to the city. Macumba is a religion that is practiced in Brazil and has characteristic rhythmic beats and dance moves that are associated with it. Jongo is an “older form of the samba”.
Ruchika says, “Brazil is very different from a lot of South American countries. It’s one of the biggest examples of how music has evolved from the Africans who were brought as slaves. They have preserved that culture and unlike how people perceive the country only for the samba and the carnival, there is much more to it.” India has different music for different deities and so does Brazil. This will be showcased at the concert today.
The gig is an experiment for Ruchika who plans to bring the whole Kabula troupe next time. This time around it is just four of them. “The response has been fascinating. After our gig in Goa, a few people came up to them and started jabbering away in Portuguese.
I had no idea what they were saying, but you could see that they obviously connected with what was being performed,” she says. The concert promises to have the sensual sensibility of samba and the glorious African rhythms. Carlo describes the gig as a cultural exchange. If this concert works out, classes for the dances may even be conducted. Today at YB Chavan Auditorium, Nariman Point.
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