TRIBO DE JAH

Tribo de Jah is a reggae band from Brazil formed in 1986 at the Maranhão's capital city, São Luís is known as the Brazilian Jamaica, by Fauzi Beydoun, who in that time was a multinational CEO coming from Ivory Coast in África, that maintained a successful reggae program on a radio in town. It was in this school where the members met. Four band members are fully blind while the fifth has partial vision. While buying equipment to form a band, Fauzi had a conversation with the leader of a band called "Banda Reflexo", whose musicians are still acquainted with him today. There, they worked as hired musicians, playing in São Luis and nearby cities parties, running a repertoire that held all the successful rhythms from that time, such as reggae, lambada, dance, serestas, meringues etc. As a peculiar feature, the band is formed by four visually impaired men who had met each other still young at Escola de Cegos do Maranhão and awake to music using school's old instruments (a music keyboard with missing piano keys; a guitar missing chords and the drummer used to use the writing desk to set the pace). Then, they agreed to follow together the project to form a reggae music band. Contested by the cultural elite, but embraced by the masses, reggae music became one of the most relevant features of maranhense culture, where it was created a very singular way to listen and dance the rhythm, creating an aspect that is unique in the entire world.