North (Brazil) meets South (U.S.) in Nation Beat: An interview with drummer Scott Kettner
The Sunday Concerts on Guthrie Green series continues this week with free performances by the Brazilian-American band Nation Beat, New Mexico’s Felix y Los Gatos and Tulsa’s own The Claptet on September 23.
Sunday’s music headliner, Nation Beat, draws its inspiration from the Maracatu rhythms of Northern Brazil and mixes it with American funk, country and blues. The result is an original and extraordinary sound. Nation Beat musician Scott Kettner was studying under Jazz drummer Billy Hart when he first came across a rhythm called Maracatu. Intrigued with the sound, Kettner eventually moved to Northeast Brazil where he began learning Forro and Maracatu music. In a recent interview, Kettner recalled, “As I was living there, I noticed there were a lot of strong connections or strong parallels with the music from the Southern United States like bluegrass and New Orleans Second Line music and the Mardi Gras Indian music…Cajun music and zydeco music.” Kettner, who grew up in Florida, concluded that the music and culture of Northeast Brazil had some commonality with that of the Southern U.S. “It’s mostly an agricultural area…a lot of farmland and hard working people…so the music has a lot of similarities. For instance in Maracatu, it’s processional music, just like in the New Orleans Second Line brass bands. It’s all processional music. In Forro music from Brazil, you have the accordion and the triangle and sometimes you have a fiddle and a triangle, just like in zydeco and Cajun music.”
The similarity extends to other areas, as well. “The dances are very similar, and most importantly, the main root of it all is indigenous, and African and European because the way that the Northeast of Brazil was colonized is very similar to how Louisiana was colonized, so there are a lot of strong connections there,” noted Kettner.
Kettner eventually met Brazilian singer Liliana Araujo who was featured on Nation Beat’s first release and is now a full time member of the band. According to Kettner, the two have a lot in common, “We have a lot of respect for the traditional music, but we also have a lot of contemporary influences, as well.” Kettner and Araujo collaborate on music for the band. “She brings to the table her Brazilian background, and I’m bringing to the table my American background, as well as my influences from living in Brazil. There’s a strong common ground between Liliana and myself that really shapes the sound of Nation Beat.”
Other members of the band add to the mix. “Our guitarist Mike Marshall, he’s deeply rooted in blues music. He’s really, really deep into the blues like Mississippi John Hurt blues stuff…then our bass player Mike Lavalle, he’s coming from more of a jazz, pop background. He plays a lot of hip hop, as well. For this gig, we’re using our original fiddle player, Skye Steele, who has a strong background in jazz and world music,” Kettner explained.
Nation Beat’s latest release is Growing Stone. “It’s dedicated to family farmers all over the world,” Kettner said. Nation Beat performed with Willie Nelson a few years back at Farm Aid. “I hung out with Willie a bunch, and he hung out with us and talked to us a lot about the struggle of the family farmer and what’s happening with the farm bills that our government is passing that’s just harming the small family farmer every time. It encouraged me to write a song called ‘Growing Stone’, which is basically about the struggle of the family farmer.” For more information about the show, visit Tulsa Roots Music.
– With thanks to La Semana.