Samba cruzado is one of, if not the, earliest forms of playing samba on the drumset, predating the use of cymbals as pioneered by Edison Machado. You can hear this style in the playing of drummers like Walfrido Silva and Luciano Perrone.
Cruzado, which means "crossed" in Portuguese, refers to the way one must cross their arms to play this style. But, rather than crossing our dominant hand over our weaker hand as most of us do with our hi-hat, we cross our weaker hand over our dominant hand. This is because the dominant hand plays telecoteco on the snare drum, while the weaker hand mimics the surdos on the toms.
I've had a more in-depth post on samba cruzado in the draft folder for ages, and I really am hoping to get to it soon, but in the meantime, I've been doing a lot of playing along to this loop I created of Celso de Almeida playing a more modern style of samba cruzado from his self-titled 2014 album.
Here Celso plays a steady stream of 16th notes on the snare drum in his right hand, and uses accents to present a typical bossa nova pattern:
In his left hand, Celso plays the toms to mimic surdos, including a third surdo-like turn of phrase:
And with his feet, he plays what is probably the most common bass drum/hi-hat combination:
