page_title: Brazilian Carnival
section_title: Axé
hierarchical_section_title: Brazilian Carnival / Music / Axé
caption_attribution_description: Português: A cantora Daniela Mercury foi uma das atrações do São João do Pelourinho em 2009. English: The singer Daniela Mercury was one of the attractions of São João do Pelourinho in 2009.
context_page_description: The Carnival of Brazil is an annual Brazilian festival held between the Friday afternoon before Ash Wednesday at noon, which marks the beginning of Lent, the forty-day period before Easter. During Lent, Roman Catholics and some other Christians traditionally abstained from the consumption of meat and poultry, hence the term "carnival", from carnelevare, "to remove meat."
  Rhythm, participation, and costumes vary from one region of Brazil to another. In the southeastern cities of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Vitória, huge organized parades are led by samba schools. Those official parades are meant to be watched by the public, while minor parades allowing public participation can be found in other cities, like Belo Horizonte, also in the southeastern region. The northeastern cities of Recife, Olinda, Salvador, and Porto Seguro have organized groups parading through streets, and public interacts directly with them. This carnival is also influenced by African-Brazilian culture. It is a six-day party where crowds follow the trios elétricos through the city streets, dancing and singing.
context_section_description: Axé is not exactly about a style or musical movement, but rather about a useful brand name given to artists from Salvador who made music upon northeastern Brazilian, Caribbean, and African rhythms with a pop-rock twist, which helped them take over the Brazilian hit parades since 1992. Axé is a ritual greeting used in Candomblé and Umbanda religions, and means "good vibration." The word music was attached to Axé, used as slang within the local music biz, by a journalist who intended to create a derogatory term for the pretentious dance-driven style.
  As singer Daniela Mercury began her rise to stardom in Rio and São Paulo, anything coming from Salvador would be labeled Axé Music. Soon, the artists became oblivious to the derogatory origins of the term and started taking advantage of it. With the media pushing it forward, the soundtrack of Carnival in Salvador quickly spread over the country (through off-season Carnival shindigs), strengthening its industrial potentials and producing year-round hits along the 90s.
  Tested within the height of Carnival heat, Axé songs have been commercially successful in Brazil throughout the past decade. The year 1998 was particularly fortunate for the artists from Bahia: together, Daniela Mercury, Claudia Leitte, Ivete Sangalo, Asa de Aguia, Chiclete com Banana, Araketu, Cheiro de Amor, and É o Tchan sold over 3.4 million records.
caption: The Brazilian axé singer Daniela Mercury.
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