Acclaimed Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos has died at age 71. He worked over the decades with well-known musicians such as Milton Nascimento.
Naná Vasconcelos died of lung cancer on Wednesday (March 9th, 2016) in the northeastern city of Recife (a town I adopted as home back in Brazil) where he was born.
He was a master of the single-string percussion instrument known in Portuguese as the berimbau.
The American jazz magazine DownBeat named Naná Vasconcelos percussionist of the year every year from 1983 to 1991.
He started learning music with his musician father and by the time he was 12 he was playing a drum kit, performing at bars with local groups.
Via Barbatuques
