Brazilian guitarist bola sete biography

Home » Jazz Musicians » Bola Sete. Sete played jazz with Vince Guaraldi as well as with Dizzy Gillespie. His song "Bettina" was featured on the "Tribe Vibes" breakbeat compilation, as it had been sampled by the musical group A Tribe Called Quest. Bola Sete's name means "Seven Ball". In Brazilian billiards, the seven ball is the only black ball on the table, and Bola got this nickname when he was the only black member of a small jazz group.

He studied guitar at the Conservatory of Rio and he started performing with his own sextet and local samba groups while he was still a student. Then, he returned to Brazil and started touring all of South America.

Bola sete - bossa nova

That's when the manager of the Sheraton hotels noticed him and decided to bring him in the US to play in the hotels Dizzy Gillespie was staying there at the time, so he was listening to Bola Sete playing every day. In the fall of , Dizzy took the talented guitarist to the Ninth Annual Monterey Jazz Festival, where he enjoyed a huge success.

After that, he toured for a while with Gillespie and finally he returned to San Francisco where he joined The Vince Guaraldi trio.