Dylan Bassett Capitalizes on Faculty Travel Award to Drum Up Partnerships in Brazil

With the help of the Center’s “Faculty Travel Award to Build Latin American & Caribbean Partnerships”, Prof. Dylan Bassett traveled to Salvador, Brazil to record new compositions with internationally renowned percussionists, Giba Conceição and Mario Pam, the latter of whom is the musical director of Ilê Aiyê.  Their newly formed group is called “Conceição, Bassett, & Pam Trio de Percussão.” Bassett also started a new musical collaboration with the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) School of Music. This collaboration includes recording new music with Aquim Sacramento, Professor of Percussion at UFBA, as the Bassett//Sacramento Duo, teaching applied percussion lessons, and providing master classes at UFBA for students, faculty, and community members.   

Thanks to this highly productive trip and his decades of international work in the field of percussion, Professor Bassett has been selected as a Fulbright Specialist for 2023-2026.  His next trip to Salvador, Brazil will be in June and July 2023 and culminate in participation for the week-long “XII Festival De Percussão 2 de Julho”, which will have approximately 1,500 attendees from South America, North America, and Europe.  There, he will perform an evening concert with Tambores do Mundo, Grupo de Percussão da UFBA and the above-mentioned groups of which he is a member. 

Bassett’s course on Drumming Cultures of the World, which includes an in-depth survey of Latin American & Caribbean percussion, has filled every semester over the past two years.  This fall he will introduce a new course focusing on Brazilian and US percussion.