Like the clouds, it comes bringing the rain during the drought.”
[POR] “Um sentimento oceânico que atravessa o oceano. After all, who set the rules?
[POR] Um projeto musical através do oceano. Acredite ou não! Afinal, quem define as regras? Who? "Aquariou" 2021 Album team:
Paulo Costa (BRA/SA) - Songwriting, Production, Lead Vocal, Ac Guitar & Clarinets
Blake Hellaby (SA) - Music Production,
Arranging, Piano, Keyboards & Midi
Augusto Mendonça (BRA) - Songwriting, Visual Art, Vocal & Viola
Sean Sanby (BRA) - Arranging & Bass
Dane Paris (SA) - Drumkit
Lilavan Gangen (SA) - Percussion
Georgia Jones (SA) - Baritone Sax
Anderson Ziemmer (BRA) - Vocal & Electric Guitar
Igor Nogueira (BRA) - Recording Engineer
Lílian Rocha (BRA) - Vocal
Ian Smith (SA) - 1st Trumpet
Justin Bellairs (SA) - Saxophones
Muneeb Hermans (SA) - Trumpet
Lee-Roy Simpson (SA) - Bass Trombone
Live Band 2022:
Paulo Costa - Production, Lead Vocal & Acoustic Guitar
Mana - Vocal & Percussion
Brathew Van Schalkwyk - Piano & Keyboards
Sean Sanby - Arranging & Bass
Dane Paris - Drumkit
Lilavan Gangen - Percussion
Muneeb Hermans - Trumpet
Danél Dippenaar - Saxophone & Flute
OCEANICO is a music project which started through the collaboration between Brazilian and South African artists. Paulo Costa is a musician and composer, who has lived in SA for the past 6 years and ignited the project when – after reconnecting with an old friend, the musician, composer and visual artist, Augusto Castro, in Brazil – invited Blake Hellaby, a South African Jazz pianist and producer to work on a “transoceanic” music collaboration. The first album “Aquariou” was released online in December 2021 and it tells a story of awakening and (re)tuning with each-other’s frequencies and a “new world”, as human and as a creator. Brazilian music genres like Samba and Baião were mixed progressively with Jazz, Ghoema and other African rhythms to be performed by an incredible selection of emerging musicians from both South African and Brazilian music scene like Sean Sanby (SA), Justin Bellairs (SA), Muneeb Hermans (SA), Lílian Rocha (BRA) and Anderson Ziemmer (BRA) to name a few. In April 2022, the group performed their official album launch show in Cape Town, which was supported by Concerts SA and partners, through the “Digital Mobility Fund” and on the same month, part of the band performed 7 shows in a tour along the Garden Route and Kwazulu Natal, having as highlight, a slot at Splashy Fen, one of the biggest music festivals in the country. The repertoire is currently composed by songs from the album as well as new compositions and interpretations of renowned Brazilian composers like Djavan, Gilberto Gil, João Bosco & Tom Jobim. Samba, Bossa Nova & Baião dressed with storytelling, Jazz and African influences. A multicultural transoceanic collaboration turned into an experience hard to forget or stand still. An "oceanic feeling" is a sensation of eternity, a feeling of "being one with the external world as a whole”. It is the preserved "primitive ego-feeling" from infancy, which precedes the creation of the ego and exists up until the infant recognizes that it is separate from the mother's breast, and therefore, that other people exist. (S. Freud & R. Rolland 1927)
