Daniela Mercury

Born in Salvador de Bahia, Daniela Mercury has built since the late 1980s a career closely tied to street carnival, dance and Afro-Brazilian music. Trained in dance at the Federal University of Bahia, she first sang with the bloco Eva, joined Companhia Clic and also worked as a backing vocalist for Gilberto Gil before launching her solo career with Daniela Mercury in 1991. Her repertoire blends axé, samba-reggae, MPB and samba and, at times, adopts a more pop or electronic approach, always centered on Bahian percussion, the rhythms of the trio elétrico and a very physical performance style. With O Canto da Cidade (1992), Música de Rua (1994) and Feijão com Arroz (1996) she established herself on the Brazilian scene while opening her work to international stages, notably in Europe. Over the years Daniela Mercury has pursued various aesthetic crossovers, from Sol da Liberdade (2000) to Carnaval Eletrônico (2004), where she drew samba-reggae and electronic music closer together, before returning to a more acoustic or orchestrated writing on Balé Mulato (2005), Canibália (2009), Vinil Virtual (2015), Perfume (2020) and Baiana (2022). Her collaborations with Olodum, Herbert Vianna, Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Carlinhos Brown accompany a career deeply linked to Salvador, its Afro blocos and the evolution of contemporary axé.