nation beat

Funk. Bop. Forró. Brass.

Pounded by calloused hands, blasted from tightened lips,

It calls across time and continents, uplifting hearts and moving hips and feet.

It’s the force that blew through Louis Armstrong in the twenties.

It’s the power that gets Brazilians dancing in the streets for Carnival.

It’s the freedom that sets the music on fire.

It’s Nation Beat.

When band leader Scott Kettner looks at a map, he sees a direct line that connects the rivers of northeastern Brazil to the parishes of New Orleans and the streets of NYC. It’s a connection that came to him in 1999 amid the swirling dancers, ecstatic musicians, and powerful percussionists parading in the streets during Carnival in Recife, Brazil. He was there at the urging of his mentor, NEA Jazz Master Billy Hart, to study maracatu, the region’s complex, dance-inducing rhythm. He came home with a vision, a vision that achieves its highest, funkiest, and most expansive expression to date with the release of Nation Beat’s latest offering, Archaic Humans. It’s Nation Beat in overdrive.

That day in Recife, Kettner heard the thread that connects the musics of Brazil and New Orleans: “It’s the spirit of the music. It’s uplifting music. This is music that makes people smile and dance and laugh, and it’s bringing people together.” A master percussionist, composer, educator, and the guiding force behind Nation Beat, Kettner has been tracing the similarities between the music and culture of northeastern Brazil and the American South for two decades, through recordings and performances, as well as educational and community outreach programs. “In the globalized music industry, Nation Beat aims to reach into roots-based traditions and bring those voices to the surface by creating new music that impacts the people around us, recognizing and assuring that our similarities are stronger than our differences,” he says.

In 2017, Kettner expanded his conception of the Nation Beat sound to incorporate his background in jazz and hybrid drumming, and he began collaborating with tenor saxophonist and arranger extraordinaire Paul Carlon. “We are throwing some serious jazz onto the dance floor, with some really funky grooves, getting dance back into that music,” Kettner says. With the release of The Royal Chase in 2020, Nation Beat injected the high-octane improvisations of NYC bop into the thunderous grooves of northeastern Brazil and the swagger of parading New Orleans brass, moving hips and feet and setting brains on fire. The Royal Chase marked a new phase in the band’s cross-cultural explorations, and it resonated with music fans worldwide, garnering positive notices from all quarters, from Modern Drummer and the Arkansas Gazette to Jazziz and Sounds and Colours. The album charted on both World and Jazz radio charts and spent over a year on the Roots Report chart, peaking at #1.

With the release of Archaic Humans in 2024, Nation Beat expands its cross-cultural explorations even further and leaves an original mark on the music. “The vision was to create an album of all originals,” says Kettner, “to put our fingerprint on this thread that we’ve been following.” That vision was stunningly realized, and by way of tribute, the album also includes one sweet cover by Tom Jobim. While maintaining the infectious, audacious rhythmic and brass energy of its Brazil and New Orleans roots, the band lights up the afterburners on its jazz chops and reaches into fresh new territory with new collaborators. GRAMMY-nominated progressive hip-hop artist Christylez Bacon from Washington, DC, and soulful South African singer/songwriter Melanie Scholtz braid radically new and uplifting strands into the Nation Beat thread on several tracks. “One of things that I’ve always been trying to do on in all of the Nation Beat albums is bridge the gap between the folkloric and the modern,” says Kettner, “connecting the past with the present while thinking about the future.” It’s a bridge made to dance on.

As only could happen in today’s shrinking world, Nation Beat singularly conjures up an elemental musical mojo, drawing on the wellsprings of rhythm that lit up jazz and got maracatu thundering. Nation Beat takes off with bebop-via-Brazil drumming, propulsive bursts of New Orleans–flavored brass, and hair-on-fire jazz improvisation. With five full-length albums, one EP, and appearances on numerous compilations, Nation Beat has indeed made its mark on the music, collaborating with world-renowned artists and touring the world since 2002.

As exciting, adventurous, and elevating as their recordings are, the band’s live shows have taken on an almost mythological aura for their ability to lift the souls and move the feet of their ever-growing cross-cultural audience. The National Endowment for The Arts awarded Nation Beat a touring grant in 2013 for their project with Maracatu Nação Estrela Brillante (Maracatu Bright Star Nation), titled “A Tale of Two Nations,” which earned raves from The New York Times and from The Village Voice, which called them “globe-spinning, dangerously funky.” Hearing the band live, Willie Nelson added to their rave notices, exclaiming, “Just a fantastic group! I was overwhelmed!” The collective also counts NPR’s and Afropop Worldwide’s Banning Eyre as a fan, who called them “the most original and alluring fusion group I have heard in years.”

Nation Beat is

Scott Kettner: Drums/Bandleader/percussion

Paul Carlon: Tenor Sax/Arrangements

Mark Collins: Trumpet

Tom McHugh: Trombone

Heather Ewer: Sousaphone