Transcript
Daniela Mercury
Hello, I'm Leila Cobo. Welcome to Estudio Billboard. We will spend an entire hour learning about the musical career of an artist who will share some of her music with us. We feel obligated to do this show because we believe that music is the most universal language we have to express ourselves. You can also be a part of this show with your questions on the show's website. Estudio Billboard starts now.
I want to introduce to you a Brazilian singer, composer, dancer, and musical producer. Following her success in the 90s, she became one of the most popular Brazilian singers. She has sold more than 11 million albums around the world. She has become the singer with the most #1 songs on the Brazilian charts. Her music is a fusion of Axé, Samba-reggae, Rock, Electric Trio, and even Electronic music. Let's hear some of her story.
This singer takes control of musical arrangements, and she is continually searching for new ideas. She has been an Ambassador for Unicef and also for the Ayrton Sena Foundation since 1985. She embraces these roles with pride and responsibility. Stay tuned. We are about to have an interesting conversation with this unique artist, Daniela Mercury.
Do you know how to dance merengue?
I dance merengue like a Colombian woman would.
Dance, please. Show me a little.
[laughing]
[clapping]
She was born on July 28, in Salvador de Bahía, Brazil, as Daniela Mercury de Almeida. Her mother, Liliana, is Italian descent. Her father, Antonio Fernando de Abreu, is Portuguese. She was eight when she started taking classical, jazz, and afro dancing lessons. When she was thirteen, she discovered that she wanted to be a singer. When she was sixteen, she was already singing in bars. At eighteen, she was part of an electric trio. She recorded her first album in the 90s, and it was named after her. O Canto da Cidade was the album that would sell more than two million copies, and it would make Brazil take notice of this singer. Dynamic performances and endless energy surround her name. She is synonymous with samba-reggae. She has also created fusions with electronic music in her recordings, and she has invited several DJs to collaborate with her. She has been part of the world of music for seventeen years. She has recorded 10 albums and 4 DVDs. Today, she is the most internationally known Brazilian singer, and she is still chasing the dream of making the whole world dance samba. Let's give it up for Daniela Mercury!
[clapping]
Daniela, welcome.
Thanks.
Two?
Two kisses.
Two kisses?
Yes.
Why two?
We kiss more in Bahía.
[laughing]
In Sao Paulo, sometimes two, sometimes three.
Three in Sao Paulo?
One or two in Río. We like kissing.
So people are more loving in Sao Paulo than in Salvador. That's not possible!
Three in the south as well. We say that three kisses are necessary for getting married. Not everyone likes kissing three times. Not everyone wants to get married.
[laughing]
We were saying that you want the whole world to start dancing samba. We are not over exaggerating, are we? You are going to the Latin Grammys to sing in the tribute to Juan Luis Guerra. You are the only Brazilian singer to perform there. Why?
Well, he has said to me that I am a merengue loving Bahian.
He said so? Ha, ha, ha.
We became friends. I recorded a Portuguese song for his album La Llave de mi Corazón that is to be launched in Brazil. I had met Juan before. He says he likes my music, so I have had the great honor and pleasure of performing with him.
You have sung with him, with Alejandro Sanz, with Paul McCartney, with many other artists. This is very unusual because you sing in Portuguese. What is the secret behind introducing Portuguese to all of these artists who sing in other languages?
From the moment I became successful in Brazil, my goal has been to make my music more international. The music I make is samba-reggae.
Samba-reggae is specifically from Salvador, right?
Yes, it is. It was created 20 years ago, but it was only recently that Michael Jackson went to Bahía and recorded...
Ok.
Maybe you know tu du, du, du, du pra, pra, tu du, du, du... Percussionists. The music I create is very basic. I have had the chance to meet important people and artists. I have created networks, and I had the opportunity to sing with them. I sang "Let It Be" with Paul McCartney.
In a samba-reggae rhythm?
No.
[laughing]
That wasn't possible. It was at the same party where I sang "Perla Negra", which is a samba-reggae. The queen of Norway danced and sang. Paul McCartney was also having a good time there in the back.
What makes Salvador different from other cities in Brazil or from anywhere else in the world?
We have three different carnivals with different atmospheres. Río and Sao Paulo mean samba and... a fast samba. I am going to show you... [humming] That's where Mulatas is, right? The samba school. Salvador is in the northeast. We have a completely different culture there.
From the rest of Brazil.
From the rest of Brazil. We have a carnival in the streets with huge trailers and a very powerful sound system. It is powerful enough for a football stadium. There are two million people dancing in the streets and more than a hundred trailers with renowned artists singing their songs on top of the trailers.
Which are called electric trios.
The famous electric trios.
We were talking about the Cuban sounds, right? It is "ta, ta, ta, ta, ta". Many people know it. There are many different sounds in your work. If you had to mention one as the most common, which one would it be?
One that is very close, almost the same as salsa... is cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha, cha...
Can you do it or not?
Cha, cha, cha...
[clapping]
Latin people are great!
[clapping]
That sound is a mix of samba, afro samba. It is not exactly samba-reggae.
Why samba-reggae? Why is it called that? What does it mean?
Samba-reggae is the essence of the sound. It is a mix of samba and merengue... Very slow merengue. Du, du, du, du, du... du. Tu, tu, tu, ta. Du, du, du, du, du ta, ta. Tu tu, tu, ta, tu, tu, tu, tu, tac, tac, tu, du, du, du, du, du, tac, du, du, du, du, du. We dance reggae. That is why...
Ok.
…it is called samba-reggae. People dance it almost the same as reggae... tu, du, du, du, du... [humming]
You made it faster, right?
Not much.
You haven't?
Not much. Sometimes I play very fast music, and it is not always samba-reggae. It is...
[singing in Portuguese]
Galloping...
[singing in Portuguese]
It is jumping. Eh, ah... It is more like merengue.
Yes, yes.
I was playing with Juan Luis Guerra and he said, "Can you please teach me how to dance that merengue? I don't know how to dance a Brazilian merengue".
Is he a good merengue dancer? He says that he is not a very good dancer.
Do you know how to dance merengue?
I dance merengue like a Colombian woman would do it.
Dance, please. Show me a little.
[laughing]
Please, I need some lessons.
I'll teach you later.
Ok, ok, ok.
You were a dancer, in the beginning.
Yes. I am a dancer who became a singer. I don't know...
Why?
I don't know.
Daniela, can you remember the moment when you were dancing, and you said that you also wanted to sing?
I always loved it. My music is very cheerful and I am like that, too.
Ha, ha, ha. No!
I used to have very deep feelings because of what was written about love in songs... I was always crying about love, right? We are Latin... so love is important. I used to sing very sad music. I am a fan of Elis Regina, who is an extraordinary Brazilian singer. She used to sing very sad songs. I was usually singing...
[singing in Portuguese]
I was all alone at home, and I thought to myself, "You sing beautifully. Could you be...?"
[laughing]
I was thirteen. When I was fifteen, I was invited to sing in a bar owned by two French people. It was a small restaurant, a pub.
Ok. What did you sing? Was it music by Elis Regina, bossa nova or samba?
I used to sing bossa nova... classical Brazilian music, quieter.
After the music evolved, it became more up beat. It invited people to dance...
Later, I was invited to sing in the trios, in the trailers during carnival. I became the queen of the carnival.
Ha, ha, ha.
I was the first woman to ever sing there. Well, me and another woman were the first singers because only men used to sing during carnival.
Yes.
We sang eight hours, non stop.
Non stop?
Yes. Eight hours during five or six days.
Ok. We have to take a break. When we come back, I want you to tell me how Daniela Mercury gets physically prepared for a performance and for singing for eight hours in a row in an electric trio. Don't move. We'll be back with more about Daniela Mercury.
Eight hours in a row.
[humming]
Oh, oh. Ha, ha, ha.
[clapping]
We continue with Daniela Mercury, one of the most internationally known voices from Brazil. You were telling us that singing in an electric trio means singing eight hours in a row.
For at least four or five days, sometimes six or seven.
Every day?
Yes.
How do you get ready for that? Besides praying...
Sometimes, ha, ha, ha. That's the main part. It is like being an athlete, an athlete with your voice. You do it so much that your vocal chords get used to performing for long singing times. I have to drink water all of the time, a little bit at a time. I also take lots of liquid protein. But I have a lot of practice nowadays...
Ha, ha, ha. Daniela, what was the public reaction the first time you were in a trio and people in Salvador saw a woman was there?
You mean... What did we show them?
Yes.
We showed them that it was also possible for us to do whatever we had to do. First, we are wives. And we can be even better wives than men can be husbands. We try not to use a very high pitched tone, but rather a low tone.
Yes. That is your natural voice, isn't it?
For example... men will obviously have lower voices. So the problem for us as singers was to perform for six or eight hours with a high pitched tone. So, we needed to sing in a lower tone.
[singing in Portuguese]
I can't sing in a high tone anymore. Now, I sing in a low pitch. Your voice is lower. You're right. Also, dancing is vital to making yourself be noticed. As a singer on stage, it is. In the trios, we didn't have much space for dancing on top of the trailers. Nowadays, I have my own trio. It is on a trailer with three stages.
Three stages?
It is called triatro. It isn't called electric trio anymore. It is a triatro. We built one stage so I could dance on it... only me. I wanted to dance so much... that I now have my own dance floor. My stage is above everyone so I can look at the musicians and say, "Hi, how are you. Everything ok?"
Ha, ha, ha.
Because they don't look at us.
Besides the vocal training, how do you prepare yourself physically to be able to dance for eight hours? Do you run every morning? Or do you only dance?
When I have time, Leila. I work too much, and I am usually on a plane. So, I can't practice dancing as much as I would like to. I do have a dancing room at home, and I always do yoga, asthanga, and water aerobics, a little bit of everything.
Let's talk about when you were a little girl. You were born to an Italian mother and a Portuguese father in Salvador, Bahía, where the entire culture is black. Do you have a clear picture of the moment that you became aware of the music around you?
My teacher, a black woman, taught me afro dancing at school when I was four. She did fun things. She played with us, and she showed us a little of our black culture. When I was eight, I used to do afro dancing, the dance of Candomblé Saints. Candomblé is a very important religion in the city where I am from.
For those who don't know, Can you explain what Candomblé is?
All Latin people practice a little bit of santería which began in Cuba. And the rhythmical music was born from the Candomblé rhythms. All of those rhythms that I am talking about come from black people, funk, reggae, 'hoke'. It is all black music. Wonderful, right? It is fantastic. So I say I am the whitest black woman in Bahía.
Ha, ha, ha.
On almost all of my albums, I talk about the pride of being black.
Yes.
The pride that my people have about being black. I have a new song. It goes like this:
[singing in Portuguese]
I am a black woman with the skin of a white woman, ok?
Yes.
I sang many of my songs in Spanish, too. And I can remember the Spanish translation for this one...
(La de lo negros que son alma de la avenida, más que cosa tan linda cuando los paso me hacen llorar. Eres tan bello, tan bello, traes paz y riqueza, tienes un brillo tan fuerte por eso me llamo mi perla negra. La de los negros que son alma de la avenida.
No?
...perla negra, perla negra y lea eh, mi perla negra... eh, perla negra... ah, perla negra y lea,
Let's dance, ok? You didn't teach me merengue, but I am going to teach you a little of the Brazilian samba. One, two. One, two. Everyone! There you go! Move your body like this... [humming]
Perla negra, perla negra y lea eh, mi perla negra...
Así. [humming]
Oh, oh.
[crowd cheering]
That type of dancing comes from the Candomblé saints. Every saint has his own style of dancing and his own steps. I learned that when I was little.
Your parents used to tell you, "Daniela, keep taking ballet lessons." Did they finally abandon that idea?
Completely.
[laughing]
When I started to sing at night, being only fifteen, my father said, "How can a teenage girl sing at night? That's dangerous!" My father didn't want me to do it. They had to request permission from the police.
An authorization.
For me to sing, because I wasn't old enough to sing at night. My father not always gave me permission.
[laughing]
So... Run, run! The police, Daniela and I...
Later, I want you to tell me what you sang. I am being told the audience has questions.
Woman: How do you see yourself in five years?
Me? Jumping around at the carnival, with Leila and all of you... in Bahía with me.
In the electric trio. On the upper stage.
It's also possible that you could be here in Miami in five years, with the trios in the streets. And we will be dancing here, as well.
Hopefully. And Mardi Gras. Why not?
Spain and France, too... Mardi Gras too! We can make it happen! Let's work together.
Ok, let's talk about it.
Australia, everywhere. I take my music everywhere in the world to make people feel and understand my culture... to introduce them to samba-reggae and the music of Black people from my country. I travel a lot so that I can bring this music to you, be here with you, and to be at the Grammys. I also travel to Europe every year... Turkey, Israel, Latin America. So that I am able to do everything that I do.
I want you to tell us later on how your music is perceived in other countries. Don't move. We still have a lot to talk about with Daniela Mercury. We'll be back shortly on Estudio Billboard.
Canta conmigo, canta, hermano americano libera tu esperanza con un grito en la voz...
[clapping]
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