Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos died of lung cancer on March 9, 2016 at age 71 in the northeastern Brazil city of Recife, where he was born. He was best known for his mastery of the single-string percussion instrument called the berimbau.

“When I started to play berimbau differently…the idea came into my mind that instruments have no limitations,” he told Modern Drummer magazine in a 2000 interview.

He started learning music from his musician father, and by the time he was 12 he was playing drumset at bars with local groups. Vasconcelos rose to national prominence after he moved to Rio de Janeiro in the 1960s and started playing with Nascimento.

He contributed to four Jon Hassell albums from 1976 to 1980 and in the 1980s he recorded and toured with the Pat Metheny Group and Jan Garbarek. In 1984 he appeared on the Pierre Favre album Singing Drums along with Paul Motian, and he formed a group called Codona with Don Cherry and Collin Walcott, which released three albums. In 1981 he performed at the Woodstock Jazz Festival, held in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Creative Music Studio. In 1998, Vasconcelos contributed “Luz De Candeeiro” to the AIDS benefit compilation album Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon.

DownBeat magazine named Vasconcelos percussionist of the year each year from 1983 to 1991 in its critics poll, and he was an eight-time Grammy Award winner.

In addition to over 25 albums as a leader, he recorded with such artists as Milton Nascimento, Gato Barbieri, Don Cherry, Pierre Favre, Jan Garbarek, Egberto Gismonti, Danny Gottlieb, Pat Metheny, Woody Shaw, Talking Heads, Ginger Baker, Paul Simon, B.B. King, Ron Carter, Chaka Khan, Collin Walcott, Jack DeJohnette, Laurie Anderson, Trilok Gurtu, and many others.