The birthday that turned into our first show

A note from Juliana and Raphael, Zamala's co-founders.

On September 11 we threw Juliana a birthday party, and somewhere in the planning it turned into a concert. A room on Granville Island, a full house, friends on stage, and the two of us singing together in front of people for the first time.

We had been talking about playing together since before Zamala existed. We're both musicians, we both play in other projects, but the one that was just ours kept waiting for a better moment. Life was full — a growing family, a young company, more to do than hours. The project we wanted most was the one we kept putting last. A birthday finally gave us the excuse to put it first.

The room

Zameen Art House is on Granville Island — one of those places you'd walk right past, never guessing there's a warm little theatre tucked inside. The room holds sixty people for live music: a real stage, good sound, and everyone close enough that you can see who's mouthing the words.

Our contact there was Amir Abdi, and we want to say this plainly: from the first email to the last chord, he made it easy. He answered fast, he cared about the details we cared about, and on the night he was there, quietly making sure everything worked. Thank you, Amir. You made a first show feel like a tenth.

The moment the whole room took over singing Índios.

Oração ao Tempo — one of the most beautiful lyrics I know, true poetry in the shape of a song. Written by Caetano Veloso. — Juliana

The band

The band, that night, was six people. Juliana on vocals and percussion. Raphael on vocals, guitar, piano and percussion. Andrea Lobato on vocals and guitar. Roberta ‘Beta’ Cunha on flute and vocals. Paula Faustino on drums and percussion. Mario Silva on bass and mandolin.

If some of those names sound familiar, it's because most of this band lives in other bands. Andrea, Beta, Paula and Juliana are all part of amarElas, the all-women Brazilian band you may have seen around Vancouver, and so is Mara Li, who came up to sing later in the night. Andrea and Beta are also BC Bossa, the acoustic duo. Mario plays and teaches guitar, bass, mandolin, banjo and ukulele.

Andrea

Andrea Lobato is our singing teacher, and the loudest believer in this project long before it existed. Juliana has been singing for years. Raphael has played guitar on stages his whole life; singing, and playing piano in front of people, started this year in Andrea's classes, and within months she had him doing both on a stage. Her lessons do something we've watched happen again and again: someone walks in certain they can't sing, and forty minutes later the whole room is singing and they're part of it. She does the same at community scale. She founded amarElas, and more than one person on that stage was there because she believed in them first. Without her, this show wouldn't exist — and we wanted that written down somewhere permanent.

Nós (Cássia Eller)— Juliana and Andrea sharing vocals.

What we played

The set was the music we love and the music that made us — a straight line from Caetano to Amy Winehouse, with Djavan, Legião Urbana and a run of forró in between. The sing-alongs were where the room took over, and we let it: on 'Índios', 'O Tempo Não Pára' and 'Esquadros', the best thing we could do was step back and sing along with everyone else. Half the room knew every word; the other half was waiting for Amy Winehouse — and when it came, they sang the loudest. 'Ouro Marrom' was the one that carried the most heart. Then the special guests came up: Mara Li to sing with Juliana, and Dani Matos, who sang and played the xequerê, and the birthday just kept collecting voices until we'd run out of microphones.

Ouro Marrom — Jota.pê's song about ancestry and Black pride. The one that carried the most heart that night.

Back to Black — the Amy Winehouse song the whole room had been waiting for.

The table

A Brazilian party without food is a meeting. The snacks came from Boteco Brasil — Eliane Trovo's restaurant on Nanaimo Street, a Vancouver home for traditional Brazilian food since 2015. Coxinhas, bolinho de queijo, bolinho de bacalhau, the flavours that make a room full of Brazilians go quiet for a second and then louder. The delicious prestígio birthday cake came from Gimme Bakery, Natália and Laís's place on West 5th — the kind of cake that disappears before you get a second slice. We'd love to tell both these stories properly here one day. For now, we'll just say thank you: everything was made with care, and nothing was left by the end of the night.

What it meant

We spend our days building Zamala, so that someone planning a celebration can find the people who will make it. Nobody sees that work, and it decides how the whole night feels. That night, we were on the other side of it: two people who wanted their night to be good, and needed the right people to make it happen.

They did. Amir made sure the room worked so we never had to think about it. Andrea, Beta, Paula and Mario stood behind us and made the two of us sound like a band. Eli's coxinhas and Natália and Laís's cake were gone by the end of the night. Juliana's mother had our son the whole show, which is the only reason both of us were on that stage. And when the last song ended, Steve, and Raphael's brother and sister-in-law, Alex and Maira, were still there, cleaning up and carrying everything out with us.

Standing in a full room, singing together for the first time, we understood our own company a little better than we did the day before: someone planning a night like that should be able to find these people on purpose.

The band has a name, by the way. We call it Nosso Bem — in Portuguese, what you call someone you love. It took a birthday to get it on a stage.

— Juliana & Raphael