Artist Portfolio
Marcos
Santana
- Musical Director
- Percussionist
- Educator
- Community Leader
- Founder of Tribo CIC
25 years building music communities through rhythm.
Artist statement
Rhythm as a language of belonging.
I was born in Salvador, Bahia, one of the world's great centres of Afro-Brazilian music. Rhythm there is not a subject you study; it is the way a community speaks to itself.
For more than twenty-five years I have carried that understanding into concert halls, carnival streets, festival stages and classrooms — first across Brazil, then in London, where I founded Tribo CIC. Whether I am directing a percussion section of eighty players or working with a class of seven-year-olds, the discipline is the same: listen closely, hold the pulse, and make space for everybody to be heard.
Portrait
Meet Marcos Santana
- Musical Director
- Percussionist
- Educator
- Founder of Tribo CIC
- London
- Salvador
I have never thought of music as only performance. A drum in the right hands is a tool for leadership, for education and for building community — it teaches patience, responsibility and the confidence to be heard. Everything I do, from carnival direction to a Tuesday morning class in a London primary school, comes from that one belief.
In motion
See the work as it happens.
Direction, ensemble and community — the Tribo project on film.
“Rhythm is memory.”
Salvador, Bahia
25+
Years of professional experience
18+
Years developing music projects in the UK
Founder
Tribo CIC, London
International
Performer, educator, community arts leader
Career highlights
Work that reaches audiences and communities.
London — annual
Notting Hill Carnival
Directing percussion sections on Europe's largest street carnival, arranging rhythm for hundreds of players moving as one body.
Festival stages
Latino Life
Live performance and musical direction across the UK's Latin American festival circuit, from main stages to intimate club sets.
Cultural programming
Sabor Brazil
Curating and leading Brazilian music programmes that bring Bahian repertoire to British audiences with integrity.
Trusted by
“Music creates belonging.”
London
In their words
Testimonials
“Marcos holds a room of thirty children the way he holds a carnival section — with calm, clarity and complete musical authority.”
“He understands that a festival programme is not only a line-up. It is a piece of cultural storytelling, and he tells it beautifully.”
“The work with Tribo has changed how our young people see themselves. That is not entertainment — that is community development.”