HONK NYC and BONK! presents: BABADAN BANDA DE RUA

A new series from the creators of Honk - NYC's own brass and street music festival

HONK NYC presents BONK!
What happens when street band music comes inside? Expect a monthly dose of our favorite brass and percussion artists honking their hearts out with original tunes, slamming solos, and untethered experimentation.

This special HONK NYC! Festival edition features guest artists Babadan Banda de Rua, from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, playing a distinct fusion of local brass & Afro-Brazilian musical traditions from their home state of Minas Gerais.

Since 2018, BaBaDan Banda de Rua (BaBaDan Street Band) has been a vibrant presence in the alleys and streets, theaters, cultural spaces, and carnivals of the great Belo Horizonte area, in Brazil. Their mission is to create an Afro-Mineiro sound while emphasizing the need for aquilombamento (communitarian connection based on the historical model of Quilombos) and reconnecting with our ancestral roots.

Babadan Banda de Rua was born from the desire of musicians to create a sound that blends three important traditions of the State of Minas Gerais: Congado, Candomblé, and the traditional sound of Minas Gerais bands. Babadan Banda de Rua is grounded in the musical practices of the colonial era in Brazil, when wind instruments’ sonority prevailed. The base of their percussion section features instruments like atabaques, djembes, Reinado snares, patangomes, gungas, and reco-recos, used in the Reinado Mineiro and in Candomblé. The repertoire is predominantly instrumental, focusing on original compositions and re-readings of works by renowned Brazilian musicians, with the Band’s own arrangements.

Musical influences span afro-mineiro rhythms, the sacred beats of Candomblé, samba, afrobeat, afro-cuban, jazz, funk, soul, among others. The Babadan Banda de Rua Collective offers a range of artistic products, including stage shows, parades, educational concerts, and workshops/lessons in wind instruments, percussion, and dance.