Samba reggae was born in Salvador, Bahia, in the 1970s and 80s, out of samba de roda and the pull of Jamaican roots reggae. In June 2026 it closed a stretch of Dundas Street West for the fifth year running, in a festival that took one Toronto percussion group fourteen years to make possible. This is what the documented record shows about how that community was built.
On the afternoon of Saturday, June 6, dozens of drummers formed up at Lansdowne Avenue and Dundas Street West, joined by a dance group and more than 20 brass players, and marched west through the Do West Fest crowd playing Bob Marley tunes on Bahian drums. Nobody paid to watch. That parade is the most visible ninety minutes of the Toronto International Samba Reggae Festival, and it is also the least representative, because the work that produces it happens over years, in rehearsal rooms and grant applications.
