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- country:Brazil
- artist posted by:Tempest Entertainment
DANIELA MERCURY - BIOGRAPHICAL RELEASE
Revolution and reinvention are in Daniela Mercury’s blood. At sixteen she began performing in bars in Salvador da Bahia and discovered that her calling in life was music. Her passion for Bahia’s Carnaval led to the ultimate challenge of singing in a trio elétrico. Mercury took to the rolling, amplified bandstand that lumbers down the avenue among Carnaval revelers at a time in which only men sang in blocos. Since then the festa barroca has become her milieu of choice for redefining her artistry. A performer of exceptional magnetism who emphasizes creativity, responsibility, and social commitment, excellence and originality in her work, Mercury comfortably navigates musical diversity with the infectious energy and joy of being a Baiana. Her tours and concerts around the world have transformed her into an ambassador for Brazilian music
Career/Discography
In 1989 Daniela Mercury formed the pop group Companhia Clic and recorded her first two albums. Pega que Oh! and Ilha das Bananas became hit singles in the late 80s. Mercury’s first studio efforts paved the way for her incursion into electronic music, placing her at the forefront of what lay ahead.
Her first solo project (1991), released by independent record company Eldorado, announced the arrival of a sound that conquered Brazil. The single Swing da Cor became the most played song on Bahian airwaves. From there it rippled into the rest of the northeastern region and resonated in southern and southeastern Brazil. Today Swing da Cor is synonymous with samba-reggae, a genre rooted in the Afro-blocos of Bahia (Dancing groups that act as afro-centric vehicles of racial identity) and directly influenced by the ceremonial drumming used in the African-derived religious rituals of Candomblé.
Daniela Mercury’s first live concert (1992) in São Paulo’s Museum of Art consolidated her popularity onstage. The midday performance attracted more than twenty thousand people who spilled into the avenue, interrupting the flow of traffic.
1992’s Canto da Cidade (Sony) emerged just as Brazil was experiencing the enthrallment of having discovered a new star. The single that gave the album its title became a number one hit and stayed in that position for months. The LP broke sales records, giving Mercury the distinction of being the first artist to receive a diamond record for having sold a million copies. Its success is so impressive that many years have passed since its release, yet Canto da Cidade continues to sale, having already surpassed the three million mark in Brazil and abroad. Canto da Cidade sparked a special on Rede Globo, shows throughout Europe and the United States, magazine covers, and hundreds of interviews. Its success was crowned by shows throughout Brazil boasting a record number of attendants that reached more than two million concertgoers.
Mercury’s next album, Música de Rua (1994-Sony), proved that the singer was no fleeting sensation. The record established her versatility as a composer and arranger and more frequent domestic and international tours consecrated her as a top-notch performer. Singing in Portuguese for an international audience was not a setback for Mercury. In response to the perceived language barrier she once countered: “Perhaps I’m a Brazilian artist who has less difficulty expressing what I do on an international level. While my audience may not understand what I sing they certainly feel the joy and energy coming from my music and sing along.”
Two years later, Mercury continued to delight audiences with Feijão com Arroz (1996-Sony), and won over critics for good. Given her unabated popularity with audiences, skeptics recognized the artist’s musical consistency. Feijão com Arroz explored the range of Samba music in its sundry phases, paying homage to Brazil’s musical and ethnic roots with arrangements that showcased the modern pop sensibilities present in the most traditional of rhythms. Feijão com Arroz was a landmark album in Mercury’s career, especially in the international market.
Finally in 1998 Mercury released her first live album, Elétrica (Sony), in response to the public’s overwhelming demand of having the electrifying atmosphere of her shows preserved on disc. Recorded in her stronghold, Salvador, Mercury blended the Bahian guitar typically used in the trios elétricos during Carnaval with electric rock guitar. The album’s repertoire included hits from previous records, including Swing da Cor, O Canto da Cidade, Música de Rua, Rapunzel, Nobre Vagabundo, among others, and songs she had performed live but never recorded. Additionally Mercury included five new songs on the album, four of which were either penned solely by the artist or in partnership with other songwriters.
Sol da Liberdade (2000-BMG) reaffirmed Mercury’s affinity for the samba-reggae hybrid. The single Ilê Pérola Negra registered as one of Mercury’s most beautiful renditions. The artist’s newest challenge, hailed as her best album yet, surprised fans and critics alike. Joining forces with Suba (an acclaimed producer in Brazilian electronica), Mercury mixed the drumbeats of samba-reggae with sounds extracted from electronic music (rap, funk, lounge, house), in a harmonious, if unlikely union.
Sou de Qualquer Lugar (2001-BMG) brought together prominent songwriters such as Lenine, Gilberto Gil and Carlinhos Brown and showcased a remake of Rita Lee’s Mutante and an electrifying version of the late Chico Science’s Praieira. Electronic samba-reggae frames the album for the most part, though Mercury’s most intimate and feminine side permeates throughout, from the album art to the compositions and her renditions of the songs.
Eletrodoméstico – MTV Live (2003-BMG) was recorded during a show at the Castro Alves Theater’s Concha Acústica in Salvador and released on CD and DVD. By inviting Portuguese singer Dulce Pontes, flamenco pop sensation Rosário Flores, Italian rapper Lorenzo Jovanotti, Bahian percussionist Carlinhos Brown, along with the bands Olodum, Ilê Aiyê, and Hip Hop Roots to join her onstage, the show became a high point on the multicultural scale of Mercury’s career.
In Carnaval Eletrônico (2004), Daniela invited the most important DJs and producers of electronic music in Brasil, as well as Gilberto Gil, Carlinhos Brown, and Lenine, to participate in a commemorative disc celebrating five years of her having formed TrioTechno, the first trio elétrico of electronic music to parade in Bahia’s Carnaval. The album is a fusion of a panoply of electronic musical expressions, including Drum’n Bass, House, Techno, Lounge, and Dub with Brazilian rhythms that result in original song creations. The disc subsequently received a Latin Grammy nomination for best pop album of the year and Mercury was nominated for a Tim award for best female pop/rock vocals. Internet users voted Carnaval Eletrônico the best pop album of the year online in one of Brazil’s most important weekly magazines Revista Isto É.
In 2005 Mercury released Clássica on CD and DVD. Recorded from a show she gave the year before at São Paulo’s Casa de Espetáculo - Bourbon Street the album is a sampler of bossa nova, jazz, and remakes of MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) hits. The recording signaled a new phase for Mercury, who chose independence from multinational record companies to gain full control of her music.
The year 2005 also saw the release of Balé Mulato. Produced by Mercury, Ramiro Musotto, and Alê Siqueira, the album is percussive, vibrant, and contemporary. On it Mercury draws from samba-reggae, rock, frevo (a hybrid of martial polka and African rhythms played mostly during Recife Carnaval), galope eletrônico (the electronic version of a northeastern rhythm that imitates the gallop of a horse), and romantic ballads.
Baile Barroco is the first live DVD of Mercury performing in a trio elétrico during the 2005 Bahian Carnaval. The collection of songs celebrates twenty years of axé-music with quest performers Luis Caldas, Fernanda Porto, Banda Kaleidoscópio and Ramiro Musotto. A highlight that exemplified Bahian Carnaval’s history of diversity was when Mercury opened the parade with a baby grand piano set up on an ample stage. Accompanied by Ricardo Castro on piano, Mercury sang Ary Barroso’s Aquarela do Brasil, Villa Lobos’ Bachianas n.5, and some Bach, in a performance that enchanted millions of revelers at the Barra-Ondina circuit and demonstrated the singer’s boldness and inimitability.
Today Mercury has sold more than ten million albums around the globe. She was the only Brazilian artist invited to participate in the recording of a DVD celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Cirque de Soleil. In 2004 she was invited to commemorate the Montreal International Jazz Fesitval’s 25th anniversary and was a special guest on Alejandro Sanz’s latest DVD, with whom she sang a duet in a bullfighting ring in Madrid. Mercury has sung with the greatest names in Brazilian music and in popular music abroad. Legends such as Tom Jobim, Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Paul McCartney and Ray Charles stand out.
The artistic vitality of Daniela Mercury’s musical trajectory is reflected in the fact that all of her albums have produced national hits and many of her songs have been included in soap opera soundtracks.
Carnaval
Bahian Carnaval is characterized for being a collective bachannal. It began to evolve from the gap between social classes- street carnaval vs. private clubs- resulting in an inversion of the social order, a utopic celebration of equality in which the social divide is temporarily suspended. Carnaval represents a paradisic ideal – similar to what the Portuguese laid their eyes on upon discovering a new land- that materialized through social constructions. It is how an entire people of mixed heritage show the best synthesis possible of their hybridity. In this celebration, all skin colors and implications of a mixed identity translate into the grandeur of a multidimensional encounter.
Two million people participate in the annual festivities that last nearly a week, immersing themselves in music and dance. During sixteen hours a day Brazilian popular culture reaches its maximum expression and Salvador’s local economy gets a boast of unequivocal proportions.
In 1950 Dodô and Osmar created the fobica, an open float adapted for musical presentations and the trio elétrico was born. With it the participatory potential afforded to the public during Carnaval multiplied.
Shortly thereafter, the sound of the trio elétrico became Bahian Carnaval’s main attraction. In 1969, Caetano Veloso’s song, Atrás do Trio Elétrico (Behind the Trio Elétrico) consecrated the old fobica for good as Bahian Carnaval’s number one draw. By that time the trio elétrico had already metamorphosed into a flatbed truck that doubled as a roving stage for headliners.
Meanwhile, the carnaval blocos began to evolve and branch out into various currents of aesthetic, musical, and even religious manifestations. While the afoxés, whose members brought their Afro-Brazilian religious cosmology to the Caranaval procession by maintaining their African roots with the puxada do ijexá (a rhythm played in honor of the orixás or Afro-Brazilian deities), the flourishing middle class blocos mostly relied on carnaval music styled on Rio de Janeiro’s samba-enrredos. Then the Afro-blocos emerged with an aesthetical proposal extrapolated from the Indian blocos, introducing some fundamental innovations in the process: parades revolved around themes and music was tailored to fit the occasion. During this phase, Bahia’s street carnaval was infused with the glamour and elitism propogated by carnaval clubs, initiating a slight reversal of the egalitarian ideal.
With the emergence of new Bahian talent who continued to popularize regional rhythms, Carnaval became more of an organized affair though it somehow retained its informality and contagious spontaneity. The success of Luiz Caldas, Sara Jane, and Chiclete com Banana, along with the evolution of Ilê-Ayê and the emergence of Olodum played a part in transforming Salvador’s Carnaval into the biggest, longest, most itinerant open air show in the world. The upper and middle classes finally succumbed to the Carnaval –inspired ideal of racial harmony and by the end of the 80s the pre-lent celebration entered a process of irreversible debauchery. Street carnaval came to represent the collective identity of Bahian Carnaval.
By the start of a new decade, Bahia’s Carnaval became an institutionalized talent factory. The success of precursors such as Luis Caldas, Chiclete com Banana, Ilê-Ayê, Margareth Menezes, and Olodum heralded the convergence of Carnaval and commercial music. Slowly the northeastern and national music markets began to open.
Between 1992 and 1993 Bahian Carnaval became the stage for the greatest success in Brazil’s musical landscape yet: Daniela Mercury landed the number one spot in radio stations throughout Brazil with her samba-reggae hit O Canto da Cidade. Her show broke public attendance records from Oiapoque to Chuí and she became the first exponent of the new Bahian sound to have a television special on her musical career transmitted on a national station, Rede Globo. Mercury’s stunning success radically tore down the preconceptions and barriers that Brazil’s musical epicenters had imposed on Bahian music with origins entrenched in carnaval.
Ironically, Mercury’s huge success on a national scale transformed her into Bahian Carnaval’s main artist. She reached that distinction long after having conquered a niche in Bahia and having participated in many carnavals.
Today Mercury is the star of bloco Crocodilo, headlining the Barra-Ondina circuit, which was created as an alternative space in an area in the center of the city that was drawing large crowds during Carnaval. From the time Mercury began parading in 1996 down the Avenue the winds along the seashore, later setting up her own camarote (boxes along the parade route), the circuit became official. Today it attracts hundreds of thousands of revelers in the same way the former Seventh Avenue circuit did in the past.
The celebration of Carnaval is a backdrop to Mercury’s success on stage and in the studio. For many years she was chosen best Carnaval singer and some of her hits were named best Carnaval themed music, sang by other artists and blocos.
Artistic Independence
A need to express her ideas, opinions, feelings, and musicality inspired Daniela Mercury to blossom into a songwriter. Alone or in partnerships with other songwwriters, Mercury penned songs on all of her albums, some of which became huge hits. On her own or in a collective effort with her band and/or producers, Mercury has also been heavily involved in the arrangements on a majority of the songs on her records and live performances. Such deep involvement in every aspect of creation has made her defend each production with the joy of a singer who is committed to her artistic identity.
Mercury’s choreographies project an original style that melds her classic ballet formation with modern dance aesthetics. Her experience in African derived street dances typical of Salvador add in edge of urban primitivism.
Concerned for the integrity of her music, Mercury opted for autonomy, fundamental in establishing her artistic freedom. To assert her independence she founded a production company called “O Canto da Cidade”, created her own studio and Páginas do Mar – a musical publishing house set up so that Mercury could guarantee control over her work, thus avoiding the bad use or vulgarization of her music. Mercury now decides what path her career will take and feels at liberty to make daring or commercially risky decisions.
International Career
The consecration of Daniela Mercury in Brazil with O Canto da Cidade had a strong repercussion in other countries and projected the artist abroad. Number one hits in Latin America translated into commercial success. To date she remains the best selling Brazilian artist in Argentina. In Uruguay more than 280,000 people attended her outdoor concert.
With O Canto da Cidade just released, Mercury performed in Mexico’s Acapulco Festival, in the Montreal Festival and in New York. Mercury continued to focus on her international career with the CD and show Música de Rua that took her on new tours throughout Latin America, the U.S., and Europe.
Determined to push the frontiers of her music even further, Mercury embarked on a second international tour on the heels of the album Feijão com Arroz, increasing the number of countries and winning over more audiences compared to previous tours. Once again Mercury broke attendance records at the Festival of Latin Arts in New York’s Lincoln Center. Concerts in Miami and Boston sold out as well. For the first time, the artist included Spain and Portugal on her European tour. The press in these countries lauded Mercury with positive and stimulating reactions to her passage.
While the French market represented a challenge, Mercury’s Parisian show at La Cigale theatre sold out and solicited positive feedback from media outlets. Mercury’s 1997 show, coupled with the World Cup festivities held in the summer of 1998, made her the most successful Brazilian artist in France.
Feijão com Arroz stood as a phenomenon without precedents in Portugal: Mercury became the highest selling artist of all time (among Portuguese, foreign, and Brazilian artists).
The 2000 Sol da Liberdade tour consolidated her success abroad. In the U.S., critics lauded Mercury’s CD and concerts and began demonstrating a clear understanding of the importance of the new sound permeating Brazilian music. A two-month European tour took Mercury to Turkey and in Spain she was honored with the Ondas de Artista Latino Americano prize created by the Spanish mass media.
In 2005, Daniela Mercury commemorated a decade of live shows with the longest international tour in her career. She took Brazilian music and her high-energy shows to twenty cities in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. During the first half of the year she participated in Spain’s Carnaval accompanied by Carlinhos Brown. Together they rounded-up 400,000 people in Barcelona and 250,000 in Bilbao to the beat of their music.
On July 13 Mercury, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Jorge Benjor, Seu Jorge, Lenine and the Ilê Ayiê band were invited to participate in The Year of Brazil in France, as part of the festivites on the eve of Bastille Day in Paris. Mercury’s was the closing act of Viva Brasil and she concluded the spectacle on a high note.
Mercury’s international tours have always been met with critical acclaim. In the U.S. the Brazilian diva of samba-reggae was praised by the country’s leading newspapers, which highlighted the driving force behind her music and the rapterous nature of her shows. She was compared to Carmen Miranda as a Brazilian icon.
Daniela Mercury
Daniela Mercuri de Almeida was born in Salvador, in the state of Bahia, on July 28, 1965. From the age of eight she began developing a bond with the arts, initially through dance while attending the Ana Nery School.
Mercury’s life was always influenced by the city’s culture. At the age of sixteen she embarked on a singing career. Two years later she began studying dance professionally at the Federal University of Bahia’s School of Dance.
The daughter of Liliana Mercuri, a social assistant of Italian ancestry and Antônio Fernando de Abreu Ferreira de Almeida, a Portuguese industrial mechanic who’d transplanted to Brazil as a boy, Mercury spent her childhood in a house with a garden on a tranquil street in the Brotas neighborhood with her four brothers and sisters: Tom, Cristiana, Vânia and Marcos. She had a typical middle class upbringing balanced by playtime, cultivating the arts, and schoolwork.
Artist, citizen, and mother of Gabriel and Giovanna, Mercury’s restlessness has influenced all of her endeavors, notorious for their element of anthropophagy – a cannibalistic approach to art started by Brazilian modernists during the height of the European literary avant guard movement in the 1920s. In Brazil, artistic anthropophagy embraces difference and outside influences that are worthy of being assimilated in the construction of authentic cultural manifestations.
Mercury is a well-rounded musician whose artistry is not limited to her vocal prowess. She values and is involved in each step of the creative process. Samba-reggae was her school and it reflects the impact Salvador and its culture has on her life and career. However her fusions of samba-reggae with electronic music demonstrate that Mercury resists being pigeonholed into any one genre.
As a post-modern citizen of the world, Mercury is committed to the social role she plays in the global community. She is an ambassador for UNICEF’s UNAIDS program, and an ambassador for peace with UNESCO. Additionally she represents various non-profit social organizations.
With eleven CDs under her belt, three DVDs of live performances, and eleven international tours during a twenty-year musical trajectory, Mercury has become the most internationally recognized Brazilian artist today.
Mercury’s artistic expressions are multifaceted. Song, dance, social involvement, coupled with the incomparable energy that fuels her seven-hour long performances atop a trio elétrico during the four days of Carnaval, are ways in which she continues push for her dream of seeing the entire world samba.