Mike block & Biribá union

Borrowing its name from a Brazilian wild sugar-apple, Biribá Union features Mike Block (cello, vocals), Christylez Bacon (beatbox, guitar, rhymes) and Patricia Ligia (electric bass, vocals). The trio met through Silkroad’s Global Musician Workshop, initially bonding over their shared love of Brazilian music. They quickly began co-writing new music that draws on the freestyle theatrics of hip-hop and Go-go music; the effortless beauty of Brazilian forró and choro; the earthiness of American roots music, and the improvisational spontaneity of jazz.

Mike Block is a Grammy Award-winning cellist, singer and composer with a passion for cross-cultural collaboration. Hailed as “one of the bravest, most intriguing musicians on the American fusion scene,” (Gramophone) he has been a member of the Silkroad Ensemble for nearly twenty years, and directs Silkroad’s Global Musician Workshop. Yo-Yo Ma calls Block “the ideal musician for the 21st century,” saying, “I’m always struck by his unique perspective on the world and his relaxed and confident approach; he takes on new music and new things fearlessly.”

Christylez Bacon is a Grammy-nominated songwriter, storyteller, rapper, beat-boxer and guitarist from southeast Washington, DC. With a tall antenna and wide curiosity, Bacon loves exploring music in different cultural contexts and has collaborated with Hindustani, Arabic and Brazilian musicians. He was the first hip-hop artist to be featured at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and has composed for and performed with the National Symphony Orchestra and Princeton Symphony Orchestra.

Patricia Ligia is an electric bass player and composer from Montevideo, Uruguay. In addition to playing in Colombian pop superstar Karol G’s touring band (with whom she has performed on Saturday Night Live, NPR’s Tiny Desk, The Today Show, and stadium shows around the world), Ligia is co-founder of Mestizas, a band that fuses flamenco and jazz with folkloric music from Latin American and the Caribbean. For her, Uruguayan culture makes it feel “easy to be alive, spread joy and share music.”

Biribá Union makes a unique rhythmic cocktail with Bacon’s inner-city DC hip-hop and go-go rhythms entwined with Ligia’s subtropic bass lines. “Everyone feels safe to switch roles and go to unknown places,” Ligia explains. Block agrees. “We all have a lot of room to breathe,” he says. “We can each shapeshift yet magically never get in each other’s way.” Bacon says that meeting Block was “like finding a twin spirit.” “He’s an emcee in the original sense of the word. A true master of ceremonies who can take the crowd on a mission with him.” Biribá Union is certainly on a mission — to embody cultural acceptance and unification through music — but always with an infectious groove to hook audiences in. Take their rendition of “Lamentations,” a well-known classical cello composition, is a case study in experimentation and integration. The piece was written by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, an African-American composer who wrote arrangements for Marvin Gaye and Harry Belafonte. Biribá Union bends the piece into radically new shapes with beat-boxing, freestyle rapping and collective vocal lines harmonizing the cello. Or their take on “Santo Antonio,” a tune by Hermeto Pascoal based on rural forró rhythms that gets elevated with three-part harmonies and extended improvisations. Their debut album will be released on the Bright Shiny Things label in Fall 2025.