The art of Mazzim Mazamba

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Photo: Danilo Sergio

September 2019

Mazzim Mazamba's art happens naturally and is a result of his life, like everything he does. Rooted in the culture of his homeland, Rio de Janeiro, Mazzim portrays in his painting and musical compositions his own daily life. A memory of the visible. Of what marked and marks his trajectory as a human being attentive and sensitive to the movement of life.

Carioca from São João de Meriti, he brings art in his blood. Between music and visual arts he parades with mastery.

As a composer he experienced the splendor of being a champion. He is one of the authors of the samba plot “The creation of the World According to the Nagô Tradition”, which guaranteed victory for the samba school Beija-Flor de Nilópolis in 1978. "A sensation that cannot be explained" says Mazzim.

As a plastic artist, he exhibited in Brazilian and North American galleries. He was awarded at the 1st National Salon Zumbi dos Palmares held at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro; participated in the event “Celebrate Brazil: 500 Years of Art and Music in New York, exhibited at the Capitol East Graphics Gallery in Washington, DC; participated in the exhibition Afro-Brazilian Cultural Expression in a Past-Modern Era, in Minnesota; exhibited at The African American Museum of Nassau Country in New York ...

He grew up following the artistic movement of his parents. While her mother was the pastor of Ataulfo Alves, composer and samba dancer, teaching and inspiring her with her singing; the father painted for pleasure and the paints were part of his childhood and youth.

We are a family owned and operated business.

Listen to the music of Ataulfo Alves with the Pastoras

At the age of 16, Mazzim is going to live in Nilópolis and the samba school starts to be part of his daily life. The curiosity of knowing how to create a samba enredo took him among the composers.

It was in a samba circle, broken high, making improvised verses that the learning of a composer began.

Mestre Nicanor de Oliveira, president of the Beija-Flor composers wing, aware of the young Mazzim's potential, invited him to do the second part of a composition in honor of the new president of the samba school. And Mazzim accepted. He had two days to deliver the finished service.

Passed the first test. It's not easy. Besides the sieve of the older samba dancers, there was also a popular taste.

He who was a passista was taken to the composers' wing where he spent a year of apprenticeship. The next step was to create three new songs without forming partnerships, present at the composers' meeting and, if approved, sing on the court.

In this way it was gaining public and making itself known.

The first samba enredo he participated was in 1974/1975. The hummingbird was just arriving in the first group.

In 1977, the carnavalesco Joaozinho Trinta passed the synopsis to create the samba enredo that would parade in 1978. Until then, nobody had heard of the creation of the world according to the Nagô tradition. Together with Gilson Dr. and Neguinho da Beija-Flor, Mazzim researches the untold story in formal schools, goes to the avenue to be champion and explodes with emotion in the parade.

Samba and painting go hand-in-hand, as complementary universes of a single artist. One founding the other and transforming the life of Mazzim that brings in his art, too, the memory of Rio de Janeiro from his youth. A portrait of the lived, the experienced and savored in verses, prose and images.

In the work "Zona do Mangue" Mazzim describes the space reserved for flirting, music, dancing and, of course, women, who used to be whores in that environment. They were Polish, French, mulatto ... See in the video below the story told by the artist himself

For each work a piece of Rio's history. The memory of its own trajectory through the city. The dance, the musicians, the spaces, the personalities ...

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