•The CD

•His Life

•The Concert

•The BandDownload the text below



The Grammy

On November 3rd, 2005 the song “Ninguém faz idéia“ – a collaboration 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 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, which 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 a distinct character, but related to the history of popular music. It's a very original blend of Brazilian tradition and modern urban music – every song contains a lot of surprises in its arrangements and interpretation.

Everyone who listens closely can easily identify with the different facets of the compositions which are enriched by elements “from the pop music of the last century and the grooves of the millennium”. Therefore it never sounds unfamiliar to the listener. 

Someone said: “with his music, Ivan Santos updates 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 is music for “body and brain”. 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, and Elba Ramalho have recorded his songs.

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


The Concert

Santos is an inventive guitar player who gives each song he plays a particular touch – he never uses the same idea twice. This is what gives the foundation to his style along with the percussive yet calm nature of his down-to-earth voice. In a live concert the band plays the repertoire from the CD's, and in addition other of Santos' compositions as well as cover versions of tradional Brazilian music. Entertainment and innovation are the main ingredients of his concerts.

Baião and Coco, rhythms of North East Brazil, are almost always part of the concert, but there is so much more to discover. Funk, R&B and oriental grooves are blended naturally and almost as a matter of course 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
Valery Brusilovsky: Drums, Percussion