Tiganá Santana is a Brazilian singer in search of his Afro-Brazilian roots, who reveals with his music his own modern and ancestral sight of the universe. He is one of those rare Brazilians who partly composes in African languages, refreshing our ears with airy harmonies.

Tiganá Santana, 28 years old with 12 years of career, is identified by black music experts as an apprentice of the universal masters Dorival Caymmi, João Gilberto, Cole Porter, Pixinguinha, Ali Farka Touré and Habib Koité.

Tiganá grew up in the Afro-Brazilian city of Salvador in Bahia, on Brazil’s Atlantic coast, in a house where he could watch the different moods of the sea. He sings in Kikongo and Kimbundu, but also in Portuguese, English and French. He plays on a kind of experimental guitar with only five strings, tuned in his own way. And so his deep warm voice, a little rough, which hovers over the quiet guitar accompaniment. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.