Carlinhos Brown began drumming as a child. No, there weren't any drum kits. As many children in Bahia do, Carlinhos began selling bottles of water on the streets. His first drums were the empty water bottles he carried back at the end of each day. As a teenager. after falling in love with the music of James Brown, he changed his name from Antonio Carlos Santos Freita to Carlinhos Brown. He began playing music from all over the world, Angola, Cuba, America, and Brazil, taking tunes of Elvis Presley, James Brown, and Roberto Carlos, and transforming the music with an Afro-Bahian sound. In the early 1980s, he was hired by Salvador's radio station WR to compose advertising jingles and pop tunes with that Afro-Brazilian drum beat. They became instant hits. This led to collaborations with Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Djavan, and others. Brown rose to prominence in the 1990's, leading Salvador da Bahia's mega percussion ensemble Timbalada. The one constant: the Bahian sound, a mix of Afro-Brazilian percussion with a touch of a reggae beat. Carlinhos Brown is one of the leaders of a movement that takes the traditional Afro-Brazilian drumming, and sets it to a pop beat, with electric guitars and a brass section. A decade ago, Brown launched the band Timbalada.(See section on Timbalada)

In 1996, he took that Bahian samba reggae in a completely new direction when he recorded the landmark album, "Alfagamabetizado", a virtual "Sgt. Peppers" of Bahian music, bringing together rock, MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira), funk, and samba reggae with Brown's unique percussive inventiveness. While many are familiar with the album from the catchy pop hit "A Namorada" (featured in the "Speed 2" soundtrack), it only alludes to the vast spectrum of Brown's talent displayed on "Alfagamabetizado". On the song, "Bog La Bag", he uses his voice as a percussion instrument. The song begins with the trademark Bahian beat: countless drums with a touch of reggae. Then the vocal percussion kicks in. "Bog la bag la bog la bag la bog la bag la bog la bag la bo bla bla". This exchange repeats every two seconds, and sets the base rhythm of the song layered with Brown's irreverent sense of humor, percussive talent and Lenny Kravitz-esque guitar riffs. With songs like "Covered Saints", Brown demonstrates that he is a master of the Brazilian ballad as well, exquisitely balancing his dynamic vocal range with a restrained bloco-afro chorus. Perhaps the album's greatest achievement is "Seu Ze". The song opens delicately with Brown's a capella version of a cuica (a squeeky sounding percussion instrument prominent in Rio's samba). Seconds later, Brown's vocals and acoustic guitars enter, later to be joined by layer upon layer of sound, from Marisa Monte's haunting chorus to a salsa style piano, building and building to an all out finale complete with a Timbalada style 100-plus drum and chorus climax. "Alfagamabetizado" is destined to be considered the standard by which the next generation of Afro-Brazilian albums will be measured.

Contributed by: Dan Rosenberg