Sunday 21 November 2021, 7.30pm
Kiko Dinucci will perform songs from his critically-acclaimed 2020 album Rastilho, joined on-stage by long-time collaborator Juçara Marçal.
Inspired equally by Joao Gilberto and Fugazi, African polyphonic music and his home city of São Paulo, Kiko Dinucci offers an explosive take on 21st century Brazil on Rastilho, an album of apocalyptic samba.
Characterised by his visceral guitar playing and raw vocals - plus guest spots that veer from wild incantations to an earth-rumbling samba chorus - Rastilho is wrapped in reverb and echo with “defects” such as fingernail scratches, crackles, gasps, grunts and the sounds of strings hitting the fret board all part of it’s sonic tapestry.
As part of London Jazz Festival 2021.
“Rastilho is outstanding from start to finish” - Gilles Peterson
“Rastilho explores folk music textures with a chunky, percussive playing… vivid playing, with rhythmic, resonant thrums” - Pitchfork
Born in Sao Paulo in 1977 as a child Dinucci treated the guitar as a toy, progressing to imitating heavy rock riffs as a young teenager on a guitar “held together by sellotape” before embracing the punk and hardcore scene in 90s São Paulo. At the same time he was discovering the city’s roda de sambas – working-class ‘folk’ clubs – and whilst he was initially frustrated by his inability to perform the ‘classical’ samba-choro style: “it was in the Afro-influenced style of Baden Powell and the guitars of Dorival Caymmi, João Bosco and Gilberto Gil that I could see a different way of playing”.
The discovery of Paulista avant-garde musicians such as Itamar Assumpção and Arrigo Barnabé, cemented Dinucci’s idea that the best music from Sao Paulo was that which was characterised by "an inherent defect" seemingly stamped on it by the city. Whether through his work with incendiary post-samba four-piece, Passo Torto, alongside Juçara Marcal and Thiago França in the explosive Afro-punk-jazz outfit Metá Metá, or via his collaborations with Brazilian greats such as Elza Soares, for whom he co-produced her career-definingA Mulher Do Fim Do Mundo, Kiko is now one of the city’s most influential musicians.
After the release of his debut solo album,Cortes Curtos(2017), Dinucci took a step back from the guitar and it wasn’t until summer 2019, during two month’s recuperation for a broken foot (skateboarding) that he returned to his first love - inspired by Brazil's lineage of solo voice & guitar albums he began work on the album that would cement him as one of the most important voices in contemporary Brazilian music.
