BrazilBeat mixs up musical genres

DJ Mara and Beto (left) play the Northern Nights Music Festival in Northern California. Pictures supplied

Gisborne-based BrazilBeat will be bringing their signature sound to the winter rave party Ice Block at Smash Palace on Saturday.

Describing their music as Global Bass, it’s a musical style and culture that combines dancehall, dubstep, cumbia, drum, bass and more.

“We will be mixing up genres and doing unexpected things,” says DJ Mara.

“The overarching genre is electronic dance music but Global Bass is a movement across

the world that combines electronic dance music with different indigenous types of music like Brazilian music, Latin music, reggae, Afrobeats, it’s all coming under this moniker that’s called Global Bass.”

BrazilBeat made up of Beto (percussion) and Mara (DJ) have called Gisborne home for the past 25 years.

Hailing from Brazil (Beto) and America (Mara), the duo recently returned from the USA in mid-July, following two festival performances in the western state of California.

They performed at the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival in June, a three-day reggae and worldbeat festival with three stages, headlined by Burning Spear. Sierra Nevada, which has taken place over the summer solstice weekend in Northern California since 1994, is an iconic part of the circuit drawing fans from all over the USA.

BrazilBeat also performed at Northern Nights Music Festival, a three-day camping festival based around electronic dance music with 10,000 attendees, headlined this year by Netsky. The 2023 festival was the 10th edition of Northern Nights, which prides itself in transforming a remote redwood grove into a colourful wonderland of a music festival with five stages, aerialists, muralists, burlesque, yoga, wellness and more. BrazilBeat performed on the River Stage, which featured a shaded, packed-out dance floor on the riverbank.

“It was amazing how the American audiences connected with our music; they were very enthusiastic. We are happy to be back and excited to play at Ice Block this weekend,” said DJ Mara.

“We’re really excited to bring some of these influences we’ve picked up from the California summer — and play out some great new sounds as well as our original music.

“We have a catalogue of our own original music and we’re always putting out new songs and writing new music as well. We’ll be playing some things that haven’t been released yet — so we can test them on people.”

Playing alongside local artists DJosé (Joseph Meredith) and Geeez (Troy Andrews), audiences can expect impressive visuals, and an eclectic combination of house music, drum and bass, Afrobeats, baile funk, and bass music.