Ivo Meirelles

Ivo Meirelles earned recognition as a leading presence on the samba circuit and as an up-and-coming force in that world after serving as diretor de harmonia at Mangueira, a post regarded as one of the most significant within any samba school. In the 1980s he composed the widely embraced samba “Caymmi Mostra ao Mundo o que a Bahia e a Mangueira Têm.” Rather than maintaining strict fidelity to tradition, he folded pop, funk, and rock elements into his work and released four solo albums between 1986 and 1999. That shift toward a more activist stance produced a partnership with Lobão. Meirelles also assembled the ensemble Funk’n’Lata, which appears with him on several of his recordings. With the group he set out to fuse the overlapping yet distinct spheres of samba-school culture and funk, adopting an aesthetic rooted in poverty whose visual signature echoes the uniforms worn by Rio de Janeiro’s garbage collectors. In 2001 he drew strong acclaim for his appearance at the Rock in Rio III Festival.