Mestre of the bateria

It is a great pleasure to introduce Gabriel Policarpo as the Mestre of festiva’s bateria this year. We’d like to thank Сontemporânea for supporting this.

Gabriel Policarpo is a musician famous in the world of samba not only for his masterly playing the repinique but also for his unique musical arrangements. Gabriel was born in 1984 in the city of Niterói (Rio de Janeiro). And since childhood, playing in carnival blocks, he became interested in percussion. At the age of thirteen, he joined the school of his district Unidos do Viradouro and two years later he became the first repinique and soloist of bateria. Together with the musician Bernardo Aguiar Gabriel created the project Pandeiro Repique Duo. The duet not only put together two instruments that are characteristic for Rio and highly loved in Brazil, but also spread their sound and popularity beyond the world of samba. The duet became famous far beyond Brazil, it successfully performed in America, England, Denmark. In 2014, together with the French bassist Brice Soniano and the Danish pianist Carsten Ker they created the instrumental group «Strafe» and recorded the album “Strejf”.

Gabriel works a lot as a teacher, teaches musical groups from different countries. For four years, he was a special guest at the Canadian Festival Folklorama, the largest multicultural festival in the world. In Rio de Janeiro, Gabriel has founded the school “Batuquebato”, an educational project introducing Brazilian rhythms and instruments, and then “The Batuquebato Orchestra of rhythms”, the original idea of which is the enrichment of original rhythmic compositions with harmonic and melodic instruments. The album “De bem com a vida”, recorded by Gabriel along with Martinho da Vila in 2016, won the Grammy Latino award as the best disc in the samba genre.

Gabriel performs a lot and records with the great names of Brazilian and world music, including Alcione, Marcelo D2, Chico César, Hamilton de Holanda, Marcos Suzano, Carlos Malta, Roberta Sá, Xangai, Gabriel Moura, Cátia de França and Guns’N’Roses.