•The CD

•His Life

•The Concert

•The BandDownload the text below



The Grammy

On November 3, 2005 the song “Ninguém faz idéia“ – a cooperation between Ivan Santos and Lenine – won the prize for the Best Brazilian Song in Portuguese Language at the Grammy Latino Awards in Los Angeles. That day many people read the name of Ivan Santos in several Brazilian and some US-American newspapers for the first time. But already before this apparently surprising success, Ivan Santos had enjoyed a long career started in his native state of Paraíba in the north-east of Brazil.


Grampeado - a "World Pop" CD

On his new CD “Grampeado” you will find a kind of music you could call “World Pop”. The CD is a collection of tunes with its own face but related to the history of popular music. A very original blend of Brazilian tradition and modern urban music – every song containing a lot of surprises in its arrangements and interpretation.

Everyone who listens closely can identify oneself easily with the different facets of the compositions that are full of elements “from the pop music of the last century and the grooves of the year zero of the new millennium”. Therefore it is never unfamiliar to the listener. 

Someone said that “with his music Ivan Santos makes an update of a part of the Brazilian musical tradition”. Although he stays connected to other songwriters who work in a similar way, Santos makes his music and expresses his feelings in a still relatively unknown manner in Europe, but also quite unique for Brazil. It’s music for “body and brain” – even those people who don’t dance will feel like dancing. The CD was recorded in Frankfurt, Rio de Janeiro and Recife and was released in January 2010.


Some of the Guests

Lenine: singer
Silvério Pessoa: singer
The Rhythm session of the band PLAP: Rio de Janeiro’s new generation Samba Players
Jam da Silva: percussion player
Flávio Guimarães: harmonica player

His Life

Ivan Santos was born in Paraíba, where the folk culture unites Indigenous, African, Portuguese and Arab heritage. This is where he started to make music before he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he continued his career as a professional musician and songwriter for the next 13 years. During that time, he also wrote music for television and theatre, as well as for a musical. Since then, many renowned Brazilian artists like Ney Matogrosso, Lenine, Silvério Pessoa and Elba Ramalho have recorded his songs.

Ivan has been living in Frankfurt for more than fifteen years now, but during that time he has always been present in the Brazilian musical scene. Among his partners you will find Philippe Baden Powell, Zé Renato and Lula Queiroga. In 2005, two of his compositions in collaboration with his former partner Lenine became very successful: As already mentioned,  “Ninguém faz idéia” won a Grammy, and “Do It” was nominated for Prêmio Tim (Brazilian Music Award) as Best Song.


The Concert

Humorous entertainment and innovation are the main ingredients of his concerts. The band plays the songs of the CD, always a bit differently, and includes other compositions by Santos and some cover versions of traditional music.

Baião and Coco, rhythms of North East Brazil, are almost always part of the concert, but there is much more to discover. Funk, R&B and oriental grooves are blended naturally and almost as a matter of fact with Brazilian rhythms. In doing so, his band not only develops “its own sound” but “many own sounds”. On stage the musicians take turns playing the various instruments, carrying the audience away to the different atmospheres of sound.

This is what happened at the concerts in Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Brazil and others countries.


The Band

Ivan Santos: Voice, Guitars
Geovany da Silveira: Bass, Cavaquinho, Percussion
Márcio Tubino: Acoustic Guitar, Keyboard, Percussion, Sax, Flute
Angela Frontera: Drums, Percussion
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Andreas Neubauer: Drums, Percussion