History

The power of samba lies in the fact that people of all abilities can come together and make something that is energising, entertaining and fun. Samba is a fusion of African, Portuguese and Amerindian cultures and traditions born in Brazil.

Brazilian Carnival is a fantastic sight that can be made up of hundreds of drummers and several thousand dancers. Sambando performs a broad mix of rhythms, including Rio-style batucada, a storming maracatu (from North East Brazil) and Afro-Brazilian influenced samba reggae.

Samba first arrived in the UK in the 80’s. Since then this high energy acoustic dance music has inspired people throughout Britain and Ireland.

Sambando was conceived in 1998 as a community arts project. Fuelled by the enthusiasm generated by a series of workshops, a core group of members formed the Leicestershire School of Samba, which has now evolved into sambando.leicestershire. We have been running independently since January 1999. A Regional Arts Lottery Programme enabled us to further develop our music and visual art forms.

The band is run by committee and is currently based at The Charles Wilson Building, Leicester University. Rehearsals are held from 5pm-7pm on most Sunday afternoons, and we put on special workshops for beginners. It’s fun, infectious and can be played by anyone who can count to 4! We are particularly interested in developing dance and brass sections, so email us if you want to give it a go!

Instruments

Do you know your agogos from your ganzas? Some of the instruments we play are: bass drums (surdos), bells (agogos and cowbells), high-pitched drums (repiniques), hand-drums (timbas), snare drums (caixas) as well as small hand-held drums hit with sticks (tamborims). We also play various shakers (ganzas, chocalhos and shekeres) to name but a few!