Gullah music and Brazilian jazz combine for Spoleto show

If he’d wanted to do so, Charleston drummer Quentin Baxter could certainly have made his Spoleto performance all about his own music.

After all, Baxter, a founding member of the award-winning Gullah-based jazz group Ranky Tanky. He’s been nominated for five Grammy awards and won two. He’s also received the South Carolina Governor’s Award for the Arts. Heck, he even got his own “Quentin Baxter Day” courtesy of the Holy City.

But Baxter and his main collaborator, Brazilian guitar virtuoso Chico Pinheiro, had a different plan for their May 30 performance at the Charleston Music Hall.

This year, Baxter, Pinheiro and an eight-piece ensemble will pay tribute to Moacir Santos, with an emphasis on his beloved 1965 album “Ouro Negro,” meaning “Black gold.”

Afro-Brazilia

Few figures loom larger over modern Brazilian jazz than Moacir Santos, a visionary composer, arranger and saxophonist whose work fused Afro-Brazilian rhythms, hard bop, orchestral grandeur and restless harmonic invention into something wholly his own.

“I’ve wanted to pay tribute to Moacir for a long time,” Baxter told The Post and Courier. “With this ensemble, it’s actually possible to get even closer to the orchestration of Moacir’s music.”

Baxter’s set with Pinheiro features 12 songs, a combination of tunes from “Ouro Negro” and other selections from Santos’ catalog.

“Ouro Negro” feels less like a genre exercise than a living ecosystem of sound. Lush horn voicings unfurl against intricate percussion, melodies drift and collide like tropical weather systems and every passage carries the pulse of both street carnival and conservatory precision.

Decades later, Santos remains a towering influence on jazz and Brazilian music alike, a musician whose arrangements still sound startlingly modern, elegant and alive. And his music certainly had a huge influence on Baxter, who discovered it back in 2004.

Gullah crossover

“At the time, I was playing a lot of music that aligned with my Gullah heritage, but still able to be myself,” Baxter said. “But coincidentally, I was speaking with an executive from Adventure Records, who was telling me about the artists on his label, and he gifted me this bag of music from the label. And that’s how I came upon Moacir Santos and his music.”

Baxter became obsessed with that music quickly.

“I put that music on, and I could not listen to anything else for quite a while,” Baxter said. “I was trying to figure out how it aligned and what was happening. I’d already been playing a bit of Brazilian music, or perhaps I was just playing at Brazilian music. And when you’re learning and becoming a student of the music, you really want to find authentic representations of the music. And Moacir represented that for me.”

Baxter said it unlocked something in his brain and connected the rhythms of Gullah to the rhythms of North Brazil.

“They’re like twin sisters,” he said.

The next best thing

Baxter was so taken by Santos’ music that he intended to travel to Los Angeles to study with the composer, but Santos passed away at 80 before Baxter could go. If there was a “next best thing” to studying with Santos, though, it was working with guitar virtuoso Chico Pinheiro.

“Chico not only met Moacir but he took a lesson with him,” Baxter said, adding with a laugh that, “This is as close as I’m gonna get.”

Baxter met Pinheiro in Napa Valley a few years back, and they immediately started talking about Santos. Now, they get to dedicate a whole Spoleto show to their influence.

I really want to get into the songs and create a vibe,” said Baxter. So I called some of the best musicians in the region. And you’re going to hear a lot of soulfulness coming out.”

Other jazz tributes

Other jazz tributes this Spoleto season include Terence Blanchard + The E-Collective: Miles Davis & John Coltrane at 100 on May 26 at Charleston Music Hall and Jason Moran: Ellington in Focus on June 1 at the Sottile Theatre.