Ananda Brandaõ is a Franco-Brazilian drummer, singer and composer. Trained at the CMDL and the Royal Academy of Music in London, she navigates between jazz, folk, samba and pop, alongside artists such as Clélya Abraham, Alex Hitchcock and Rhoda Scott. Winner of the Prix René Urtreger 2024, she co-leads with Nina Gat the group Ninanda, supported by Paris Jazz Club and winner of the Rezzo Jazz à Vienne springboard. Ananda explores mixed jazz, nourished by her Brazilian roots and multiple influences.

Introduced to the world of music by her parents, Ananda Brandão has showed a passion for singing since an early age. After completing classical piano studies at the Conservatoire d'Antony, she went on to study percussion – an instrument she had become fascinated with as a teenager – at the jazz department of the CRR Conservatoire de Versailles. She completed her studies with a diploma. At numerous masterclasses abroad, she met outstanding percussionists, such as Kendrick Scott and Airto Moreira, and during a trip to Brazil (her mother’s country of origin) she also met Flora Purim: this brilliant singer encouraged her to pursue the path she had chosen. In 2020, Ananda began studying percussion with André Charlier at the prestigious Centre des Musiques Didier Lockwood, graduating with honours in 2023. In the academic year 2023, she began master’s studies in jazz at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Together with her friend pianist Nina Gat, she formed the Ninanda ensemble (ranging from duo to quartet), with which she recorded the album When Homelit in 2024. The artists have been invited to a number of events, such as Sunset Sunside and the great Jazz à Vienne festival. Ananda regularly plays with a number of jazz musicians at Parisian clubs Le Baiser Salé and 38 RIV, drawing on styles ranging from jazz and folk to samba and pop. In 2022, she replaced the great French percussionist Anne Paceo at several concerts of Rhoda Scott with the Lady All Stars programme and has since toured regularly with an incredible band assembled around the legendary Rhoda. She co-creates projects with various eminent musicians, including French pianist Clélya Abraham, Sintia Piccin or Ana Karina Sebastião, and performs at the most important jazz festivals in France (Jazz à Vienne, Marseille Jazz des cinq continents, Duc des Lombards in Paris…) and in São Paulo, Brazil. In April 2024, she played with the great local percussionist Marco Lobo in Curitiba, Brazil.

Ananda also plays traditional percussion instruments with her father Pierre Hamon, a flutist and composer, performing a repertoire based on early music.

In 2018, she sang the theme song Somos la Nueva Tierra in the animated film Pachamama by Argentina’s Juan Antin (produced by Folivari and nominated for the César Awards in 2019).