Bala Desejo is a Brazilian musical group formed in Rio de Janeiro in 2020, during the Covid 19 pandemic, when musicians and former Escola Parque schoolmates Dora Morelenbaum, Julia Mestre, Lucas Nunes and Zé Ibarra (the latter two also members of the group Banda Dônica) decided to spend the quarantine together in an apartment in Copacabana. Shortly later they started performing in web shows, often appearing as support band for singer Teresa Cristina in her Instagram live concerts. Their style mixes various genres and reprises the Brazilian avant-garde music of the 1970s.
Producer Gabriel Andrade noted them and offered them an album, whose composition and production took 11 months. Their debut album Sim Sim won the Latin Grammy Award for Best Portuguese Language Contemporary Pop Album. The band was also nominated for Best Group of the Year and Revelation of the Year at the 2022 Multishow Brazilian Music Awards.
‘Sim Sim Sim’, which translates into English as ‘Yes Yes Yes’, weaves through a fusion of genres, taking twists and turns as it progresses. There is Tropicália, MPB, rock, samba-canção soul-funk and reggae in the mix. It possesses many of the qualities of a classic album from Brazilian music’s golden era of the 60s and 70s, but also manages to sound very current, which is not an easy task to pull off.
As solo musicians, they have worked and collaborated with Brazilian icons Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso and Milton Nascimento to name but a few. Bala Desejo feels like a natural extension of what came before, taking the baton from these luminaries, adding their unique spin and moving the sound forward. Lucas is a Caetano Veloso collaborator, serving as tour musician, artistic director and record producer for Veloso.
Their epic theatrical live shows leave audiences stunned. A modern-day Novos Baianos or Mutantes, but definitely not an imitation. They celebrate their influences, but are an innovative group, and consequently, they have created one of the finest records to come out of Brazil in recent years. The band has performed in various important festivals, including Rock in Rio, Primavera Sound and Glastonbury 2023.
