Alissa Sanders

Alissa Sanders is a singer, composer, and researcher of the African Diaspora whose artistic path is deeply woven with her ancestral journey. Born in Los Angeles and based in Salvador, Brazil, since 1996, she defines herself as sotero-americana — a hybrid identity that pulses between two continents, two languages, and two legacies of music.

Her arrival in Bahia marked a rebirth. Immersing herself in Afro-Bahian traditions — from sacred drums to street festivals, from terreiro chants to secular songs — Alissa discovered a living mirror of her African-American roots. In this terrain of resonance and return, music became her tool for healing, resistance, and reconnection. For her, Bahia is a living crossroads of the African Diaspora — and music is the thread that stitches these heritages into a single sonic body.

Since 2009, Alissa has built a solid career in Brazil’s music scene, performing at festivals such as Batuka Jazz, Oxê é Jazz, SESC SP, Virada Cultural, and numerous venues in Salvador and beyond. Her debut album, Beginning (2012), reveals a bilingual, multifaceted artist effortlessly blending jazz, bossa nova, and samba.

Pushing her creative boundaries, Alissa founded the project Finding My Voice, collaborating with artists from Ethiopia, India, Israel, Senegal, and Mali through artistic residencies focused on empowerment, vocal expression, and dialogue among cultures of the African Diaspora.

This vision took full form in the acclaimed 2023 project Vozes Ancestrais, created in partnership with Afro-Brazilian multi-artist Sérgio Pererê. Through a nine-show tour across three major Brazilian capitals, Alissa fused African-American spirituals, vissungos, jazz, samba, and Candomblé chants into one living body of music. The audience cried, sang, healed. The visceral response confirmed the power of this meeting of traditions — a space of memory, listening, and belonging.

Her latest project, Sotero-Americana, is the next chapter of this journey. It is an album that blends samba de roda and blues, Afroblocos and spirituals, terreiro chants and jazz harmonies — all crafted with the nuance of someone who has lived between two worlds for decades. The work invites ancestral listening and proposes a shared future.

More than a performer, Alissa is a bridge. Her voice carries the weight of historical crossings and the shimmer of a reimagined present. In times of rupture and disconnection, she sings to remember, to heal, to unite — offering each song as a portal back to where we all come from: the luminous crossroads of the Diaspora.

Alissa is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Ethnomusicology at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), where her research focuses on African diasporic vocal traditions and the role of music in the construction of identity and belonging.