Following the Tiny Desk Brasil premiere with João Gomes on 7 October, the second episode continues the series at Google’s São Paulo office. Produced by Anonymous Content Brazil in collaboration with NPR, it keeps the format’s intimate setup while giving full creative control to the invited artists.
For this session, Metá Metá and Negro Leo share the stage for the first time. Juçara Marçal, Kiko Dinucci, Thiago França, and Leonardo Campelo Gonçalves (Negro Leo) perform “Rainha das Cabeças”, “Bará Bará”, “Sem Cais”, “Eu Lacrei”, and “Obatalá”, treating each composition as a framework for live reconstruction and exchange.
Formed in São Paulo, Metá Metá unite references from candomblé, samba, rock, and free jazz within a raw, improvisational framework. Their music joins electric guitar and saxophone phrasing with rhythmic motifs drawn from Afro-Brazilian ritual and street traditions, using voice as both melodic and percussive force. Negro Leo, from Maranhão by way of Rio de Janeiro, dismantles song form through speech, noise, and irony: a composer who treats language as unstable material.
At Tiny Desk Brasil, the four use the set as a live construction site. “Bará Bará”, written by Metá Metá for Grupo Corpo’s Gira (2017), and “Sem Cais”, from Marçal’s Delta Estácio Blues (2021), are dismantled and rebuilt in the moment, each shift decided collectively. The performance advances through real-time decisions, with phrasing, tone, and rhythm constantly adjusted between the four players.
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