Daniela Mercury
Daniela Mercury started her musical career in Salvador, Bahia, a Brazilian melting pot of Afro-Latino culture. As a teenager she began singing bossa nova in nightclubs, soon after she became the reigning star of the trios elétricos bands that perform on flatbed trucks during Carnaval. After a brief stint in the band of Gilberto Gil, she started her solo career with the popular 1991 single “Swing da Cor” (“Color Swing”). But it was her debut CD, O Canto da Cidade (The Song of the City)—which included songs of love and social criticism—that helped her to become the first artist to sell more than one million records in Brazil. Since then she has released seven albums. In concert, Mercury is a veritable whirlwind of sound and motion. The New York Times has described her as “a dynamo who sings and dances through songs from Bahia, Brazil, taking up questions of race, culture and romance with more live, nonstop energy than a dozen lip-synching MTV acts.”