Brazilian-born artist and songwriter Frederico7 announces the release of Brasileirôu (Lion’s Lair Records), a new 12-song album rooted in Brazilian soul, rhythm, and lived poetry. Created between Austin and Brazil, the record represents the culmination of a twenty-five-year artistic journey exploring identity, belonging, nature, and the enduring dialogue between two cultures.

Produced and mixed by Latin Grammy winner Beto Martinez at Lechehouse Music, with arrangements and orchestration by Latin Grammy winner Pedro Dom, Brasileirôu brings together Brazilian percussion maestro Luiz Coutinho and an extraordinary community of musicians from Austin and Brazil in a work shaped by deep listening, friendship, and artistic trust.

Where Frederico7’s acclaimed 2019 album Exótico Americano explored life between cultures and the experience of immigration, Brasileirôu comes from a more integrated place. Rather than asking where he belongs, the new album reflects an artist who has learned to carry Brazil within himself wherever life leads.

Many of the songs were written over nearly two decades. Though born during different seasons of life, they gradually revealed themselves to be chapters of the same conversation, exploring belonging, ancestry, memory, resilience, longing, joy, healing, and transformation.

The title itself arrived unexpectedly during a return trip to Brazil with his wife and creative partner, visual artist Vivienne J. Forte. After years away because of life, finances, and the pandemic, the couple returned to the forests, waterfalls, beaches, and landscapes that shaped Frederico’s childhood.

“I didn’t invent the title,” says Frederico7. “It felt more like recognition than creation.”

“Brasileirôu’ literally suggests becoming Brazilianized, but for me it means something much deeper. It’s a state of being. A way of moving through the world with warmth, resilience, creativity, emotional intelligence, and the ability to keep dancing with life despite its challenges.”

Rather than recreating traditional Brazilian music or pursuing fusion for its own sake, Brasileirôu allows Brazilian musical thought to naturally converse with soul, jazz, chamber music, Afro-Brazilian rhythms, and contemporary songwriting. The result is a record that feels deeply rooted while remaining unmistakably personal.

The project was brought to life through a successful grassroots campaign supported by more than 200 backers and years of community-building across Austin’s Brazilian cultural scene. Alongside his recording career, Frederico7 has spent the last decade producing and curating events such as SouthAmericano, Brazil Nights, and Tropicália Nights, while also working in public art and arts education to strengthen cultural connections throughout the Americas.

The album’s visual identity was created by Vivienne J. Forte, whose original paintings expand the music into a symbolic landscape populated by the pantera, Oxumaré, cavalo branco, beija-flor, rivers, forests, sun, and moon, inviting listeners into what Frederico describes as “a musical portal.”

Frederico7’s previous release, Exótico Americano, reached #1 on the North American Independent Radio Chart (World Music) and received coverage from Rolling Stone en Español, Jazz Weekly, PRI’s The World, and numerous international outlets.

With Brasileirôu, Frederico7 hopes to continue building cultural bridges through touring, festivals, performing arts centers, educational programs, and collaborations throughout the Americas and beyond.

In Oman, descendants of the “other” oceanic African slave trade continue to live in the Ash-Sharqiyah region that hosted the main port.

Centuries on, Al-Mudema (“sailor songs”) musicians continue to sing mostly in Swahili and feature music mixing African rhythms and bagpipes. These descendants are referred to as the Zanzabari (or sometimes locally as Khal people). And they sing the songs of those who were brought forcibly by ship centuries before.

Rather than bagpipes (Qurbah) being appropriated from Scotland or introduced by the British colonizers as is commonly claimed, archaeological records demonstrate that the instrument was first found in the Arabian peninsula region more than two thousand years prior to its appearance in England, predating Jesus Christ by a millennium. The other defining instrumental feature of Al-Mudema music is the blown sea conch shell, an indicator of the music’s ties to the sea.

We headed south along the coast from the capital, crossing the Tropic of Cancer along the way. High desert mountains plunged into the sea and asymmetrical rock islands rose like sphinx laid sideways.

Two different groups— Al Ajial (“generations”) and Al Khair (“imported goods”)— gathered beachside for the recording. Both featured eight core members, all of whom other than the bagpipe and seashell conch (jem) player contributed percussion of some sort, including the majur (a belt that is worn around the waist and made of goat hooves). Fishing boats raced past behind them as they played.

The Qurbah (“bagpipes”) in Oman are sometimes referred to simply as “music pipes,” but both groups proudly proclaimed that they are “bagpipe singers.”

Most of the musicians could trace their ancestry in Oman back over a hundred years before losing the thread. They were multi-generational groups incorporating family members.

Zanzibar was united with Oman to create the Omani Empire from 1696–1856. The history of its slave trade is a significant aspect of Oman’s history. Slaves from the Swahili coast were transported via Zanzibar to Oman, and then onwards from Oman to Persia and throughout the the Middle East.

Oman played a vital role in the trade and hosts arguably the oldest port in the world. For certain, it provided the largest slave trading location in the Arabian Sea. Oman didn’t outlaw slavery officially until 1970. Today, it is against the law to refer to someone as a slave, a prohibition which is taken quite seriously and reportedly enforced. That hardly stops the upper-class, though, from barking with derision and entitlement towards laborers and those of a lower-station.

In the universal minimization and denial of oppressors, many locals claim that their brand of enslavement was “different” and “not as bad.”

The region persists in being dubbed the Middle East, but really it is central. The world’s crossroads— where Africa, Europe, and Asia converge.