About Avila Santo

I am interested in engaging with the liminal and communicative nature of the drum, particularly within an afro-diasporic context. I believe that any person, object, or idea, is a drum and that to be a drum is to be a vessel, cloaked in a communicative concealment, reverberating the unseen.  Whether I am making images, music, or performance,rhythm pulses at the core of my practice. Sound, movement, and objects coalesce to guide my work into life or into inanimate stillness.  In my work, I intend to connect modern and indigenous forms of communication. I perform rhythm, ritual and image-making as a form of transatlantic place keeping, grounded in indigenous practices. My art is made in homage to and in continuation of my ancestors' earth-centered, liberatory and protective practices, sustained in spite of systemic and racial violence.

Avila Santo (b. 1991, Los Angeles, CA) is a multi-disciplinary artist specializing in music and sound. He graduated with honors from Berklee College of Music in 2014 with a B.A in Professional Music and Latin Percussion. He is a drummer and professor of Capoeira through Capoeira Batuque in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil and in Los Angeles. Avila is also an Awo of Isese Ifa, initiated into the Adesanya lineage of Ode Remo in Nigeria. 

He uses rhythm as the foundation and guiding philosophy for his music compositions, writing, image making and performance work. He is interested in the ways that drumming deepens our relationship to the natural world, diasporic movement and to non-linear time.

Avila has had his music commissioned for projects with A24, LACMA, HBO, Sony Music, Ghetto Film School and Creative Capital amongst others. He has collaborated with other artists such as Khalil Joseph, Terence Nance and Allison Saar. He has also been a recipient of multiple grants, fellowships and awards such as the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affair Artist in Residency Grant, Sony Music Emerging Composers Fellowship and was a semifinalist for the Sundance Composer’s Lab. 

In May 2025 Avila will be participating in the Pioneer Works Music residency in Brooklyn, NY.