A Brazilian Swirl of Songs and Ideas

She weaves through the ensemble, a radiant presence in constant motion — joining in group choreography, breaking into leaps and twirls. All the while she sings, with raspy sweetness and syncopated precision. While her productions enlist some of the most gifted choreographers, directors and musicians in Salvador, the concepts, many of the songs and the significant choices are hers.

So is the attitude. Nearly all the lyrics have messages — of nondiscrimination, of tolerance, of women’s rights, of maintaining inner fortitude. Those sentiments resound more deeply than ever as Brazil moves through one of the most politically divided and volatile eras in its history. This month, Mercury, 54, is carrying her messages to the world, as she often does. She is in the midst of her latest U.S. tour, which will bring her to Sony Hall in Manhattan on Tuesday.

But the colder realities of home are always waiting. Speaking in Portuguese by phone from Atlanta, she said, “Brazilian society is fighting for democracy, fighting against authoritarianism, fighting for education. We have to fight to defend nature, the indigenous, minorities. Human rights. It’s very important.”

To that end, Mercury is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and an Equality Champion for the United Nations; she has also been known to cross swords with the political and religious right over their policies. In 2018, she helped spearhead a social media campaign, #EleNao (#NotHim), before the election of Brazil’s extreme right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro. Many of his followers boycotted her with their own hashtag, #ElaNao (#NotHer).

Five years earlier, Mercury, who has an ex-husband and two children, came out as a lesbian when she wed Malu Verçosa, a journalist. The couple adopted three children. “I want to help make the love between these two women be seen by everyone as normal,” the singer told Brazilian magazine Veja, but she chose some daring ways. The cover of her 2016 album, “Vinil Virtual,” is an image her detractors have used against her ever since. Modeled on a famous Rolling Stone cover with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, it shows a nude Mercury wrapped around Verçosa. This year, for the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, the couple spoke out for gay rights at the National Congress in Brasília, the country’s capital. They ended with a kiss.

Whatever the fallout, Mercury retains tremendous support; last year an estimated 1.5 million people saw her at Carnaval in São Paulo. Her U.S. show will scan her whole career, with dancers and musicians from Bahia and elements of “everything that influenced me, that I value,” she said. “I’m translating the culture of my city, the questions of my people. But it’s very joyful, very rhythmic.”

As a child in Salvador, Mercury — born into a middle-class family of seven — was steeped in dance. She learned it from local black schoolchildren; from practitioners of candomblé, the ritualistic Afro-Brazilian religion; and in dance class, which she attended for years. “I wanted to dance with the voice, too,” she said. “I sang samba very young. Fast sambas. I liked the challenge.”

Mercury was entranced by the blocos afro, Salvador’s socially minded neighborhood drum groups. Out of them sprang axé, which merged samba, reggae and other African, Brazilian and Caribbean beats with a force that overwhelmed her. “It’s something very particular, very innovative, that was born in Salvador,” she said. “It was born of the people. People think that the popular arts here are very simple — no. To play Afro-samba, samba-reggae, is quite complex. They are difficult rhythms.”

The lyrics touched her. The word axé “means a blessing,” she said. “A positive energy. Axé is an affirmative way of starting discussions against oppression. Against social exclusion. Against racial discrimination. This for me was a new poetic language.”

After leading her own band, she went solo. Her second album, “O Canto da Cidade” (“The Song of the City”), released in 1992, yielded four No. 1 Brazilian singles and introduced axé to a nationwide audience. Mercury had given it the pop-rock touches and the sex appeal it needed to conquer Brazil’s broader pop market and to dominate the music market in Bahia, which it does to this day.

Her stage extravaganzas became arena-filling affairs, and on a sweltering night in 2010, her epic televised New Year’s Eve show on Copacabana Beach drew an estimated 2 million fans as she brought Salvador to the sea in Rio.

The music has been seen by some as a crass commercialization of the axé of the blocos afro. But singer Vovô, who founded one of the most prominent ones, Ilê Aiyê, holds only admiration for Mercury, calling her “the mother of axé.”

With fans’ loyalty assured, Mercury is experimenting with purer musical forms. Her electropop sound is mostly gone. On a 2016 tour, she even stripped her hits to voice and acoustic guitar, revealing the poetry that was sometimes overpowered by the beats.

Meanwhile, she keeps courting controversy, sometimes unexpectedly. In December, she released a video, “Pantera Negra Deusa” (“Black Panther Goddess”), of a song she wrote with her son, Gabriel Póvoas. Mercury sings of “The only race/the human race,” adding: “Brazil is black/and white is black/and the Indian is black.” She later sings, “The beauty and sounds of infinity are from Africa.”

Weeks later, Larissa Luz, a young black singer and actress from Salvador, made angry accusations of cultural appropriation. Luz told her cheering fans: “Whoever is black is black. Whoever isn’t, isn’t. This music is ours!” While she named no names, internet writers tagged Mercury as the target of those statements, which Luz denied.

Contacted last week, Vovô, who appears in Mercury’s 2018 video, defended her. “Daniela is a partner, a sister, a friend,” he said. “To do things with her bolsters our culture and our fight against intolerance and prejudice.”

On the phone, Mercury discussed the matter sympathetically. “I am privileged because I was never discriminated against based on my color or my hair,” she said. “I am an ally in the fight against racism for over 40 years and will continue to be.”

In all such conflicts, she said, she strives to stay cool. Her work, after all, is about achieving oneness. “I have the spirit of a diplomat,” she said. “I’ve always preferred a dialogue with all sides. The problem is never only government; it’s society. But we need to talk about this in an educated manner. To fight in a civilized way. Anything else is brutality.”

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Event Information:

Daniela Mercury

Tuesday at Sony Hall in Manhattan; sonyhall.com.

This article originally appeared in

A Brazilian Swirl of Songs and Ideas

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