To understand our origins. To stand by them, defend them, revere them — to anticipate or echo them in a continuous and symbiotic dialogue. From this perspective, composer and music educator João Marcondes presents his new album, Afro-Brazilian Suite – Ancestrality.

Written for a unique chamber ensemble — harp, clarinet, and cello, with an alternate instrumentation that interchanges the violin with the cello — the work is a tribute to the African and Indigenous ancestries that shaped Brazilian identity, often silenced by official narratives. Across five movements, the suite resonates with African drums, Yoruba chants, and native laments, transforming rhythms and symbols into music: ijexás, batuques, aguerês, Oxóssi de São Sebastião, survival, and life itself.

Forged under an artistic and ethical commitment to collective memory, Marcondes’s music confronts historical erasures while celebrating the spiritual strength and resilience of Brazil’s original peoples. In Afro-Brazilian Suite – Ancestrality, the composer translates into sound the heritage of a Brazil “discovered” through invasion and forged in iron, fire, and blood — yet sustained by faith, ancestry, and the enduring presence of its roots.

Once again, João Marcondes reaffirms his sensitivity and artistic rigor, offering a work that is at once music and memory, creation and testimony — a poetic gesture of reconnection with the origins that define us.