Edmundo Carneiro

Edmundo Carneiro was born in the summer of 1958 in Macaubal, a small town in the north of the state of São Paulo. Among his brothers, he will be the sole heir of his grandfather's passion for music.

Packed by the percussion of the party of Folia dos Reis that punctuated the seasons of its childhood, it will construct its life around a single question: the Rhythm.

While his colleagues played football, he was interested in vinyl records and joined the Fanfarra to study the snare drum and the bass drum.

At the beginning of his 14th birthday, his family moved to Campinas, where he attended the school orchestra and fell in love with Hermeto Pascal, Baden Powell and Jobim. Very quickly, he understands that behind the sound of his percussions what he actualy seeks are his black origins. No matter, he learns to play drums in a Umbanda terreiro, and later plays on ceremonies of the Camdomblé.

The songs of Milton Nascimento, Lo Borges and Tonino Horta accompany him in the music clubs where he acted exerting his talent in different ensembles.

At age 19, he won the award for best instrumentalist at the Campinas Music School Festival led by the great master Benito Juarez. Anna de Hollanda recognizes his talent and invites him to work in São Paulo where she presents him to José Celso Martinez Correia, great director of the Officina Theater.

A recognized figure in the music scene, Carneiro creates the group "Extra" with which plunges into the universe of composition.Zé Edouardo Nazario, his teacher of music, anarchist and original, presents an approach that favors the fusion and exchange of languages, the same philosophy that will develop and deepen later.

In 1985, as a musician and actor he performed at the "Catavento" children's show at TV Cultura in São Paulo and he also had intense activity in recording studios.

Two years later, Edmundo Carneiro lands in Paris, is the shock of the music of the world. For those who were looking for their musical roots, the surprise is immense. Almost all cultures are there:

African, Caribbean, Martinican, Guadalupan, Maghreb, Indian and Brazilian.

The path from the music of your country, opens your mind, excites your curiosity and inspires you.

He then reconnects to his Brazil and his artists who make the Parisian scene ...

The irony of fate will make him play his berimbau - an emblematic instrument of Bahia - at the borders of tropics, on the island of Reunion, in a bar of St. Denis, to meet Jacques Higelin, the most Parisian of the French singers. The passion between the two artists will do the rest.

With Jacques will discover the entire French musical scene and the great names of the song of the time,Leo Ferré,Paco Ibáñez, Brigitte Fontaine and others. But it is in Paris that Edmund is going to do his three "Schools" as he says. Three formative meetings, essential in his own view: The album he recorded with Rosinha de Valença;shared stories with the Brazilian jazz of Tania Maria and the song "Three Friends in Paris" that will symbolize their relationship with Baden Powell and saxophonist Cacau from the Afro-Ssambas era.

Will he finally find his roots?

Whatever it is, with Edmundo Carneiro everything is passion, in turn, he wants to write and compose for new albums, music for movies and how music is also the art of meetings, other great artists will join him on stage or in the studio, Black Art, Ray Lema,De la Soul,Doctor Lonnie Smith and many others ...

Today, it is for the Lyon's Confluence Museum that he finishes two creations he called "Banzo" and "Ritmos & Timbres".

He is preparing an album with Andy Helmer on the piano, because for Edmundo Carneiro, music is a space of total freedom, without frontiers, neither in the heart of men, nor in their breathing, nor in their instrument... Source: Didier Sustrac
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