The historic Na?ao Zumbi (Zumbi Nation) was a renegade community of escaped slaves in the remote jungles of northeastern Brazil in the last decade of the 17th Century. The modern Na?ao Zumbi is a renegade band of escaped students and freestyle musicians that rose up from the concrete jungles of Recife in northeastern Brazil in the last decade of the 20th Century.

Led by a musical rebel known as Chico Science, Na?ao Zumbi challenged the standard definition of Brazilian music with a radical mix of nordestina forms such as maracat? and baiao and "foreign" styles like punk rock, dub and hip-hop.

With their 1995 debut album, Da Lama ao Caos, Chico Science & Na?ao Zumbi initiated a new movement in Brazilian music: mangue beat. Mangue is Portuguese for "mangrove," and like the mangroves of northeastern Brazil, mangue beat emerged from underground and spread in all directions, consuming everything it encountered. The band's second album, Afrociberdelia, won loud acclaim from admirers such as David Byrne, Arto Lindsay, DJ Goldie and Oasis, and brought Chico Science & Na?ao Zumbi to the verge of international recognition.

Then calamity struck: in 1997 Chico Science was killed in a car accident. Most groups are undone by the loss of such a strong leader, but not Na?ao Zumbi. It took three years, but the band came back with a new album, Radio S.amb.a, in 2000 and an itinerary of high-profile shows kicking off with a tribute to Chico Science at Central Park Summerstage, New York City.

All the mangue-beat elements that made the first two albums so explosive are present, but on that occasion Na?ao Zumbi also took on that most Brazilian of Brazilian forms, samba. Arracando as tripas do samba is how songwriter Pixel 3000 puts it in one momentous track: "ripping the guts out of samba"

R?dio S.Amb.A (Stern?s Brasil STCD 2015, 2000)