Dr. Geovane Paiva Santos is an Afro-Brazilian guitarist, composer, arranger, producer, educator, and music scholar from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, whose work bridges Brazilian music, jazz, classical guitar, and the cultural traditions of New Orleans. Based in New Orleans since 2015, Santos has built a multifaceted career spanning performance, composition, music direction, arts education and mentorship, cultural production, and interdisciplinary research. He received the American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers 2017 Louis Armstrong Foundation Jazz Composer Award and has been recognized by OffBeat Magazine as New Orleans’ “Best Brazilian Jazz Guitarist” being nominated for their 2023 The Best of the Beat Award in the guitar category.
Santos holds a Bachelors of Music in Classical Guitar Performance and Music Education from Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais, an M.A. in Jazz Studies with a major in jazz guitar performance from the University of New Orleans, and a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies from Tulane University with a focus in music history and anthropology of sound, completed in 2026. His scholarly and artistic work examines race, cultural appropriation, transculturation, jazz diplomacy, and the ways musical histories are constructed, with particular attention to Afro-Brazilian contributions to bossa nova the relationship between Brazilian music and U.S. American jazz.
As a performer and composer, Santos has appeared at major New Orleans cultural institutions and festivals, including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, New Orleans International Guitar Festival, New Orleans Jazz Museum, Snug Harbor, French Quarter Festival, Marigny Opera House, New Orleans National Historic Jazz Park, House of Blues, and many others. He has composed and arranged for ballet, theater, orchestral formations, jazz, and interdisciplinary productions including works for the Marigny Opera Ballet Company, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and the National WWII Museum’s music Carmen Miranda: Samba in Technicolor.
A committed cultural organizer and educator, Santos is the creator of New Orleans Brasil Day and The Griot Series, a multimedia project centered on the musical histories, memories, and cultural contributions of Black New Orleans musicians, and most recently he has joined Jazz Generation Initiative (JGI) as the organization’s local oral history project coordinator. Through his artistic and community-based work, he connects Bralinian and New Orleans musical traditions while creating spaces for dialogue around heritage, identity, and cultural equity.
Beyond the stage and the monotonous research rooms of Tulane’s Latin American Library, Santos is deeply committed to music education, youth mentorship, and language rights advocacy, through working as a Gifted and Talented instructor for the New Orleans Public School system for over a decade, providing Portuguese to English interpretation services to families navigating the Jefferson Parish school system, and teaching classical and jazz guitar as well as Brazilian music ensemble playing at a as an adjunct professor at Tulane University.
