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Daniela Mercury
Biography
Brazil is rich with musical heroes, past as well as present, and Daniela Mercury is one of them, for she was the premier axé performer of the 1990s, with a goddess-like standing in Salvador da Bahia. This is because that northeastern capital city is ground zero for axé, a uniquely Bahian style that is generally described as a fusion of samba, reggae, and rock, with some Caribbean rhythms thrown in for good measure. It's a relentlessly upbeat, highly percussive style of music that is the open-air soundtrack of Carnaval da Bahia and that came to be in the mid-'80s, with Luiz Caldas' "Fricote" cited as its dawning moment. Mercury, more than anyone, popularized axé internationally. Her breakthrough hit, "Swing da Cor," from her self-titled debut album, was one of the most popular songs in Brazil during 1991, and her follow-up effort, O Canto da Cidade (1993), was a national phenomenon. The first Brazilian album to top a million in sales, O Canto da Cidade continues to sell today, regardless of its outdated production standards. Following massive hits such as "Swing da Cor," "O Canto da Cidade," and "Musica de Rua," which established her as perhaps the most popular Brazilian performer of the early '90s -- and certainly the most popular Bahian, rivaling only Marisa Monte nationally -- Mercury eschewed the synthesizers and other such commercial glitz from her early albums, and she proceeded to record what is generally agreed upon as her masterpiece, Feijão com Arroz (1996).
Selected Discography
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