Samba Já is Eugene’s own bateria – a thirty-member mobile percussion ensemble. They specialize in playing wild, funky, infectious, and incredibly danceable street music from all over Brazil and the Americas, from the sounds of Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro to original adaptations of old-school hip hop. Diverse, playful, and innovative, Samba Já recently celebrated its ninth birthday.

Around the world and in all walks of life, Samba Já has performed at venues such as the Sam Bond’s Garage, The Hult Center, HONK!Fest West, NorthWest Folklife Festival, Oregon Country Fair, Eugene Celebration, Eugene First Night, Saturday Market, Wildish Community Theater in Springfield, the WOW Hall, McDonald Theater, Reser Stadium, Cozmic Pizza and enthusiastically received elementary school concerts. Come dance along in the parade with Samba Já!

In Seattle, amid the waterlogged remnants of squandered old-growth forests, broken-down breweries, industrial warehouses, and labor union halls, a mobile fourteen-piece brass-punk band borrows performative style and Balkan/klezmer-influenced sounds from the greats of the Roma tradition, plunging into crowds and galvanizing joyous derangement in every time signature.

Orkestar Zirkonium’s ten horn players and four percussionists hail from projects including the noir troupes Circus Contraption and Cirque de Flambe, the punk marching units Infernal Noise Brigade and the Anti-Fascist Marching Band, and the experimental jazz outfits Reptet and Empty Cage Quartet. Since its founding in 2003, the group has accumulated players, fine-tuned its scrappy attack, and performed in art-deco theatres, grimy clubs, daylit parks, condemned buildings, busy midnight intersections, and surprised taverns, coffeehouses, and commercial spaces. The band’s on- and offstage perambulations invite onlookers into a participatory role and recalibrate the relationship between performer and audience; its celebratory sounds inspire street parties, traditional Eastern European line dances, and the ecstatic abandonment of reason.