Gabi Guedes

I am alabé -- head percussionist -- in the Gantois house of candomblé in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. I also play non-religious music, currently as head percussionist and percussion arranger for the Afro-Brazilian jazz orquestra Rumpilezz. I've played and recorded with numerous notable Brazilian musicians, and was a member of Jimmy Cliff's band for 10 years (where I learned to speak English).

My recording Pradarrum (recorded together with Ramiro Musotto) is intended to set the old candomblé rhythms in stone, so to speak. They are incorporated into a lot of popular Bahian music by percussionists who have never studied the rhythms as they are played in the houses of candomblé, and so are slowly being changed, diluted, mutated. Pradarrum is intended to remedy this.