Daniela Mercury

The demo of the most famous song in Brazilian carnival was recorded on a borrowed cassette, and the beat was kept by a hand slapping the door of a refrigerator. It was made by Tote Gira —Antonio Jorge Souza dos Santos, born in 1961 in Nordeste de Amaralina, a neighbourhood of Salvador—, and when the tape reached Daniela Mercury's team they came close to throwing it in the bin. Someone played it. She heard it, wanted it immediately and asked permission to change one thing in it.

That one thing is the whole article. Gira had written an intensely local set of lyrics, with references to the Pelourinho, the old quarter of Salvador. Mercury deleted them: she took the neighbourhood out of the song so that the song would work in Fortaleza, in São Paulo and in Porto Alegre just as it worked in Bahia. That is why the official credit on "O Canto da Cidade" does not say only Tote Gira: it says Mercury and Tote Gira. And that is, literally and not figuratively, the gesture by which axé stopped being a Bahian music and became a Brazilian one.

The cassette that almost ended up in the bin

Tote Gira was no amateur: he has more than three hundred and fifty compositions and some twenty albums recorded, and he had written "Romance do Ilê" for the bloco afro Ilê Aiyê in 1988. What he did not have was a channel. A composer from Nordeste de Amaralina with a home demo and percussion improvised against a household appliance does not get into a record company through the front door: he gets in through a tape that came close to never being played at all. Mercury has described the song as a song about discrimination, a song of blackness speaking about itself.

She recorded it in July 1992 and the single came out on the fourteenth of August. It was the third most listened-to song in Brazil that year, behind "The One" by Elton John and "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men, according to the count kept by the music historian Arthur Menezes. It took the Prêmio Sharp for best song of 1992 and the Troféu Imprensa for best song of 1993.

The album O Canto da Cidade arrived on the twentieth of September 1992, on Sony Music Brasil and Epic, produced by Liminha: twelve tracks, forty-two minutes, a diamond disc from Pro-Música Brasil, more than two million copies in Brazil alone, four number-one singles and the top spot on the Brazilian Nopem chart in 1993. In March 1993 Epic released it in North America and Europe. And the album's list of writers says on its own where it came from: Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque on the third track, Herbert Vianna of Os Paralamas do Sucesso on "Só Pra Te Mostrar", Carlinhos Brown on "Rimas Irmãs", Moraes Moreira on "Monumento Vivo". She is credited on three songs out of twelve. The rest is a map of Bahian music in those years, sung by the person who had the microphone.

Before the album, a midday on the Paulista

What launched her, in any case, was not the album: it was a free concert at lunchtime. In 1992, inside a city-council project called "Som do Meio Dia" —young artists, Fridays at midday—, Mercury played on the open forecourt of the MASP, on São Paulo's Avenida Paulista. Between twenty and thirty thousand people gathered, the crowd overflowed the forecourt and spilled onto the avenue, and she had to cut the concert short after forty minutes because the structure was at risk. She compares it to the Apoteose parade: it was the whole MASP surrounded by people, she said, invading the Paulista. Sony Music signed her after that.

Nor had she come out of nowhere. She started singing in the bars of Salvador at fifteen, around 1980, with Elis Regina as her reference point; she gave up music for lack of work, entered the degree course at the Escola de Dança of the Universidade Federal da Bahia in 1984 and graduated in dance; she taught classical ballet, jazz and modern dance. She went back to singing in 1986 as a backing vocalist for the carnival blocos of Salvador —the sources do not agree on which ones—, in 1988 she joined Gilberto Gil's band as a backing vocalist and recorded two albums as the singer of Companhia Clic. Her first solo album is from 1991, on the independent label Eldorado, and her single "Swing da Cor" —by Luciano Gomes, with Olodum on percussion— was already a number one in Brazil. Which is to say: the phenomenon of 1992 does not begin the run. It confirms it.

Axé was a journalist's insult

Here we have to take apart the sentence that gets repeated without thinking. Daniela Mercury did not invent axé. The genre already existed and already had a name: the founding hit is "Fricote" by Luiz Caldas, from 1985, with the "deboche" rhythm created by Alfredo Moura and Carlinhos Brown and recorded at the WR studio in the Graça neighbourhood of Salvador; the samba-reggae that gives it its backbone was developed by percussionists such as Neguinho do Samba and Mestre Jackson in the blocos afro —Ilê Aiyê, Olodum, Malê Debalê, Muzenza, Ara Ketu—. And the term "axé music" was coined by the Bahian journalist Hagamenon Brito in 1987, in a disparaging sense, to name that danceable music with international pretensions. The word axé comes from candomblé and means positive energy: it is a greeting. The insult ended up on the official Brazilian calendar: on the eighth of August 2025, Law 15.189 created the National Day of Axé Music and fixed it on the seventeenth of February, the date "Fricote" was released on a carnival Sunday. What Mercury did was not to invent the genre: it was to nationalise it and export it.

And it is worth explaining what a trio elétrico is, because the Chilean reader has no reason to know. It is a stage on a lorry: a vehicle fitted out with a sound system and loudspeakers, with the band playing on top, moving down the street. It was born out of a technical problem. In the nineteen-forties, Dodô —Adolfo Nascimento— and Osmar Álvares Macedo built the "pau elétrico", the first electrified string instrument that did not feed back into the microphone. And at the 1950 carnival they took it out onto the streets of Salvador on a 1929 Ford nicknamed "Fobica", with the instruments plugged into the car battery. There were two of them: they were called the "Dupla Elétrica". The trio dates from 1951, when they switched to a Chrysler Fargo pick-up and added Temístocles Aragão on the "triolim", an electrified tenor guitar; by 1952 they were already mounting eight loudspeakers and extra generators. Today the rigs run from a hundred to more than five hundred kilowatts and since 1992 they travel on semi-trailers. Behind the trio marches a bloco identified by the colour of the abadá, the T-shirt, and separated from the street by ropes: whoever pays goes inside, and whoever does not dances outside, and that is the pipoca. Hence the name of the bloco with which Mercury paraded at the Salvador carnival of February 2026, in Campo Grande and on the Barra-Ondina circuit: "Pipoca da Rainha". And there is one detail that closes the circle: Armandinho Macedo, Osmar's son, is credited with "Exótica das Artes" on O Canto da Cidade.

The surname is her mother's

The "Mercury" part is not an invented stage name, and it has to be said because everybody assumes the opposite. She was born Daniela Mercuri de Almeida at the Hospital Português in Salvador on the twenty-eighth of July 1965, the daughter of Antônio Fernando de Abreu Ferreira de Almeida, a Portuguese industrial mechanic who emigrated to Brazil at eleven, and of Liliana Mercuri, a social worker of Italian descent. Mercuri is her mother's surname. The only artistic thing about it is the spelling: she changed the final "i" for a "y" because she thought it looked better. Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar and gave himself that surname in the early nineteen-seventies. There is no family connection, no homage, no nod. It is a coincidence.

Another attribution worth fixing is the one involving Carlinhos Brown, and not because it is excessive: because it is in the wrong place. "Nobre Vagabundo" is not Brown's, it is by Márcio Mello, sole author; it was a single in 1997, a number one in Brazil, and its video —by Gringo Cardia, shot in October 1996 with a patch of waste ground recreated in a studio, extras covered in mud and trios elétricos— won the prize for best cinematography at the MTV Video Music Brasil of 1997. Brown's case is more solid than a vague Bahian proximity: he is credited with one song on each of her three key albums. "Rimas Irmãs" on O Canto da Cidade, "Folia de Rei" on Música de Rua from 1994 —double platinum, with two number ones— and "Rapunzel" on Feijão com Arroz from 1996. "Rapunzel" came out as a single in 1997, was a number one in Brazil and a gold disc in France with more than two hundred and fifty thousand copies: it is the biggest international hit in her entire catalogue, and it is Carlinhos Brown's.

What it cost to say it

In late 2005, Mercury —a practising Catholic— was left out of the Vatican Christmas Concert, and it was not a corridor rumour: on the third of December the Jesuit priest Giuseppe Bellucci, the event's organiser, explained it in writing to Vatican Radio. She was not being excluded for her convictions about contraception, even though they did not match the Church's, but because she had announced that during the concert she would openly promote the use of condoms to fight AIDS, in support of a Brazilian Ministry of Health campaign aimed at young people.

The other episode has an order of dates that matters. On the third of April 2013 she announced her relationship with the journalist Malu Verçosa on her social media. They married in Salvador on the twelfth of October 2013, both in white. Something happened between one date and the other: Resolution 175 of the National Council of Justice, of the fourteenth of May 2013, obliged every registry office in Brazil to perform civil marriages between people of the same sex. Which is to say that when she made her announcement there were still forty-two days to go before that was guaranteed across the country. Her first, the law afterwards.

She was not the one who paid the price. Nine days after the announcement, on the twelfth of April 2013, Malu Verçosa presented her last programme on CBN radio: Salto Alto was cancelled after two and a half years on air. The station cited a recent reshaping of the schedule and never acknowledged any connection with the announcement; the causal link is the press's reading, not an admitted fact. On that last programme Mercury said on air that Malu was an extraordinary woman and that she was very proud to be her wife. Thirteen years later, at the São Paulo Parada LGBTQIAPN+ of the seventh of June 2026, she told it herself: that when she married, people close to her told her it was going to end her career, and that she chose to pay to see.

The political side is more uncomfortable and has to be said with the exact nuance. In 2006 Mercury publicly opposed Lula's re-election —and was accused over it by other artists, which she denied vehemently—; in 2022 and in 2026 she campaigned for him. On the first of May 2022 she performed at the Praça Charles Miller in São Paulo, at a Labour Day event financed by the São Paulo city council with a hundred and seventy thousand reais of public money, of which a hundred thousand went to her, and during the performance she led chants in favour of the then pre-candidate and held up a flag with his face on it. Over that show, in 2026 the São Paulo courts accepted a suit brought by the state deputy Gil Diniz and made her a defendant: there is no verdict, the case remains open and her defence maintains that there was no irregularity in the contracting and that her statement is protected by freedom of expression. In parallel, and from much earlier, she has been a UNICEF ambassador since 1995, an ambassador for UNAIDS and for UNESCO, and in 2008 she founded the Instituto Sol da Liberdade, whose travelling music caravan has reached more than fifty thousand children.

What to remember

Daniela Mercury has sold more than eleven million records and put twenty-four singles in the Brazilian top ten, fourteen of them at number one. But the precise thing she did, the thing that changed the map, fits inside a lyricist's decision: she took a song written by a neighbourhood composer on a borrowed cassette and deleted the name of the Pelourinho from it. What was left served the whole of Brazil. She did not invent axé —that was "Fricote", in 1985, and the name was a journalist's insult—, and she is not the author of her biggest international hit either, which is Carlinhos Brown's. What is hers is the craft of having taken a music out of its province without diluting it, and that of never having kept quiet, with an invoice attached: a Christmas Concert she was uninvited from in writing, a radio programme her wife lost and an open court case.

And it goes on. Cirandaia, her fourteenth studio album, came out on the seventeenth of October 2025 with Alcione, Dona Onete, Zélia Duncan and Geraldo Azevedo, and the title crosses the ciranda —the collective dance of the Nordeste— with artificial intelligence, which is what the album is about. She took it to the Salvador carnival in February 2026 and to eleven concerts in five European countries in July and August, from Arronches to Alcobaça by way of Barcelona, Berlin and the British WOMAD. On the twelfth of November 2026 she receives the Latin Grammy Musical Excellence Award.

When that carnival drumming sounds in a language you do not understand and a whole crowd moves as one single thing, there is the gesture: a neighbourhood lyric from which someone deliberately removed the neighbourhood, so that everybody would fit.

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Sources

Daniela Mercury, born Daniela Mercuri de Almeida on 28 July 1965 at the Hospital Português in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil; singer, songwriter and dancer. Daughter of Antônio Fernando de Abreu Ferreira de Almeida, a Portuguese industrial mechanic who emigrated to Brazil at the age of 11, and of Liliana Mercuri, a social worker of Italian descent: the stage surname is her mother's, with the final "i" replaced by "y" for aesthetic reasons, with no link whatsoever to Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara, Zanzibar, 5 September 1946, who adopted that surname in the early nineteen-seventies). Sources disagree about the surnames added by marriage (Póvoa/Póvoas, from the first marriage to Zalther Portela Laborda Póvoas, c. 1984-1996; Verçosa, from the third); documented marriages: Zalther Portela Laborda Póvoas (c. 1984-1996), Marco Scabia (2009-2012) and the journalist Malu Verçosa (2013-present). Children: Gabriel Póvoas (3 September 1985) and Giovana Póvoas (9 December 1986); with Malu Verçosa, three daughters, according to her own statement of June 2026. She defines herself as of "sexualidade múltipla" / bisexual. Training: dance from the age of 8; entered the degree course at the Escola de Dança of the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) in 1984, graduated in dance and was a teacher of classical ballet, jazz and modern dance. She sang in the bars of Salvador from the age of 15 (1980). In 1986 she was a backing vocalist for carnival blocos in Salvador —pt.wikipedia points to the bloco Eva, later Banda Eva, for two years; the Dicionário Cravo Albin indicates instead Cheiro de Amor: unresolved discrepancy—; in 1988 she joined Gilberto Gil's band as a backing vocalist and recorded two albums as the singer of Companhia Clic (pt.wikipedia: 1989-1990; Cravo Albin: 1988 and 1990), with the hits "Pega que Oh!" and "Ilha das Bananas". First solo album, "Daniela Mercury" (1991, Eldorado), with the single "Swing da Cor", by Luciano Gomes, featuring Olodum: no. 1 in Brazil. Prêmio Sharp 1991 for best regional female newcomer. In 1992, within the city-council project "Som do Meio Dia", she gave a free 40-minute concert on the forecourt of the MASP, Avenida Paulista, São Paulo, before 20,000-30,000 people; the crowd invaded the avenue and she had to interrupt it because the structure was at risk. Sony Music signed her afterwards. The single "O Canto da Cidade" was released on 14 August 1992 and recorded in July 1992; its author is Tote Gira (Antonio Jorge Souza dos Santos, b. 1961, Nordeste de Amaralina, Salvador; more than 350 compositions and some twenty albums, author of "Romance do Ilê" for Ilê Aiyê in 1988 and of "Melô da Escolinha" for Harmonia do Samba), who recorded the demo on a borrowed cassette, marking the beat with a batucada on the door of a refrigerator; Mercury's team came close to discarding the tape. Mercury obtained permission to alter the lyrics, removed the references to the Pelourinho and appears in the official credit as "Mercury, Tote Gira". It was the third most listened-to song in Brazil in 1992, after "The One" by Elton John and "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men, according to the music historian Arthur Menezes; Prêmio Sharp for best song of 1992 and Troféu Imprensa for best song of 1993. The album "O Canto da Cidade" was released on 20 September 1992 (Sony Music Brasil / Epic, produced by Liminha), 12 tracks and 42 minutes, with an international edition on 23 March 1993 (Epic, North America and Europe): diamond disc from Pro-Música Brasil, more than 2 million copies in Brazil and some 3 million worldwide according to pt.wikipedia (the Dicionário Cravo Albin, more conservative, gives "more than a million"), 45,000 copies in Argentina, no. 1 on the Brazilian Nopem chart in 1993 and four no. 1 singles. Its writers include Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque ("Você Não Entende Nada / Cotidiano"), Herbert Vianna, of Os Paralamas do Sucesso ("Só Pra Te Mostrar"), Carlinhos Brown ("Rimas Irmãs"), Armandinho Macedo ("Exótica das Artes"), Durval Lelys, Jorge Portugal and Moraes Moreira ("Monumento Vivo"); "Swing da Cor" is not on this album. For the Brazilian number ones of 1991-1997 it is not appropriate to cite Billboard charts: Billboard Brasil did not exist until 2009 and the reference chart in those years was Nopem. Later studio and live discography: "Música de Rua" (July 1994, Epic/Sony, produced by Liminha; North American edition on 11 October 1994; 2× platinum from Pro-Música Brasil, with the no. 1s "Música de Rua" —by Pierre Onassis and Daniela Mercury— and "O Reggae e o Mar"; includes "Folia de Rei", by Carlinhos Brown and Alain Tavares, and "Saudade", by Angélique Kidjo), "Feijão com Arroz" (1996, Epic/Sony; 2× platinum; North America/Europe edition on 14 January 1997; includes "À Primeira Vista", by Chico César), "Elétrica" (1997), "Tropicália 30 anos" (1997), "Swing Tropical" (1999), "Sol da Liberdade" (18 April 2000, BMG; platinum), "Sou de Qualquer Lugar" (September 2001, BMG; gold), "Eletrodoméstico" (2003), "Carnaval Eletrônico" (10 June 2004), "Clássica" (2005), "Balé Mulato" (October 2005, EMI; gold), "Balé Mulato Ao Vivo no Farol da Barra" (2006), "O Canto da Cidade – 15 Anos" (2008), "Canibália" (24 October 2009, Sony), "Canibália: Ritmos do Brasil" (2011), "Daniela Mercury e Cabeça de Nós Todos" (2014), "Vinil Virtual" (27 November 2015), "O Axé, a Voz e o Violão" (2016), "Perfume" (2020), "Baiana" (2022), "Eu Sou o Carnaval" (2023), "40 Anos de Axé" (2024) and "Cirandaia" (17 October 2025, Páginas do Mar), her 14th studio album, of 12 tracks, with Alcione, Dona Onete, Zélia Duncan and Geraldo Azevedo, about the impact of artificial intelligence, the environment, love and politics; expanded edition "Cirandaia Luxo" in November 2025. "Nobre Vagabundo" is the exclusive work of Márcio Mello, not of Carlinhos Brown nor of Mercury: a single from 1997, no. 1 in Brazil, with a video by Gringo Cardia shot in early October 1996 and the prize for best video cinematography at the MTV Video Music Brasil 1997. "Rapunzel", by Carlinhos Brown and Alain Tavares, was a single in 1997, no. 1 in Brazil and a gold disc in France with more than 250,000 copies. Total sales: more than 11 million records (en.wikipedia) or more than 12 million (pt.wikipedia), with 24 singles in the Brazilian top 10 and 14 number ones. Latin Grammy 2007 for best Brazilian regional or roots music album for "Balé Mulato Ao Vivo no Farol da Barra", her only competitive Latin Grammy. Documented concerts outside Brazil: Montreux Jazz Festival, Auditorium Stravinski, on 2 July 1994 and 11 July 1999 (concert no. 1422 in the festival's official database), with an audiovisual record in addition to Montreux 2002; Rock in Rio III on 12 January 2001; Rock in Rio Lisboa on 5 June 2004; the Canibália tour from 7 August 2009 to 3 August 2013 across five continents, with dates in Portugal, Argentina, Paris (13 June 2010), Milan (15 August 2010), Praia (2 June 2010), the United States (2011: New York, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego), Montevideo (27 September 2011), Mexico City (10-11 October 2011), Toronto (20 October 2011), Basel (10 November 2011) and Tel Aviv (10 May 2012); headliner of the first edition of the Montreux Jazz Festival Miami, from 1 to 3 March 2024, at The Hangar in Coconut Grove, alongside Jon Batiste and Daryl Hall. There is no documentary evidence of performances by her at Madison Square Garden or at the Hollywood Bowl, nor of her having sung at any Olympic Games; she did sing "Cidade Maravilhosa" and "Aquarela do Brasil" at the opening ceremony of the 2007 Rio Pan American Games. She appeared on Rede Globo's Criança Esperança for 15 consecutive years (1992-2007). UNICEF ambassador since 1995 —the second Brazilian figure to receive the role, after Renato Aragão—, ambassador for UNAIDS and for UNESCO; she founded the Instituto Sol da Liberdade in 2008, whose travelling project Caravana da Música reached more than 50,000 children and 30,000 teachers. On the genre: the term "axé music" was coined by the Bahian journalist Hagamenon Brito in 1987 in a pejorative sense; the word axé comes from candomblé and means positive energy. The founding hit is "Fricote", by Luiz Caldas (1985), with the "deboche" rhythm created by Alfredo Moura and Carlinhos Brown and recorded at the WR studio in the Graça neighbourhood, Salvador; samba-reggae was developed by percussionists such as Neguinho do Samba and Mestre Jackson in the blocos afro Ilê Aiyê, Olodum, Malê Debalê, Muzenza and Ara Ketu. Law 15.189/25, of 8 August 2025, created the National Day of Axé Music and fixed it on 17 February, the release date of "Fricote". On the trio elétrico: in the nineteen-forties Dodô (Adolfo Nascimento) and Osmar Álvares Macedo built the "pau elétrico", the first electrified string instrument without feedback; at the 1950 carnival they went out onto the streets of Salvador on a 1929 Ford nicknamed "Fobica" as the "Dupla Elétrica", two musicians and not three. The trio was formed in 1951, with a Chrysler Fargo pick-up and the addition of Temístocles Aragão on the "triolim", an electrified tenor guitar; by 1952 they were mounting eight loudspeakers and additional generators. The initial repertoire was Pernambuco frevo, choro, boleros and pasodoble. Current rigs run from 100 to more than 500 kilowatts and since 1992 are mounted on semi-trailers. The bloco that follows the trio is identified by the colour of the abadá and is separated from the street with cordas; the audience dancing outside is the pipoca. Dodô died in 1978 and Osmar in 1997; his son Armandinho keeps up the Trio Elétrico Dodô e Osmar, which celebrated 75 years in Campo Grande in 2026. In the schedule for the Salvador Carnival of February 2026, published on 26 January 2026, Mercury paraded with the bloco "Pipoca da Rainha" on 12 and 17 February in Campo Grande and on 13 and 16 February on the Barra-Ondina circuit, plus twelve other appearances. On 3 December 2005 the Jesuit priest Giuseppe Bellucci, organiser of the Vatican Christmas Concert, explained to Vatican Radio that Mercury was being excluded from the event not for her convictions about contraception, "even though they do not coincide with those of the Catholic Church", but because she had announced that during the concert she would openly promote the use of condoms against AIDS, in support of a Brazilian Ministry of Health campaign. On 3 April 2013 she publicly announced her relationship with Malu Verçosa on her social media, the lead cultural news item on Rede Globo's Jornal Nacional; the civil wedding was on 12 October 2013 in Salvador. Resolution 175 of the National Council of Justice, of 14 May 2013 —42 days after the announcement—, obliged every registry office in Brazil to perform civil marriages between people of the same sex and to convert stable unions into marriage. On 12 April 2013, nine days after the announcement, Malu Verçosa broadcast her last programme, "Salto Alto", on CBN radio, after two and a half years on air; the station cited "a recent reshaping of the schedule" and did not acknowledge any connection with the announcement: the cancellation is a matter of record and the causality a press inference. On 7 June 2026, at the São Paulo Parada LGBTQIAPN+, Mercury stated that on marrying, people close to her told her she was going to end her career and that "escolhi pagar para ver". In October 2025 Mercury and Verçosa came out in public defence of the singer Lauana Prado and her girlfriend after homophobic attacks on social media. In 2006 Mercury publicly opposed Lula's re-election and vehemently denied the accusation, made by Zeca Baleiro, of having been favoured by Antônio Carlos Magalhães; she later specified that she opposes re-elections in general and that she had voted for Lula four times. On 1 May 2022 she performed at the Praça Charles Miller in São Paulo at a Labour Day event financed by the São Paulo city council at a total cost of R$ 170,000 of public money, of which R$ 100,000 went to her; during the performance she led chants in favour of Lula and held up a flag with his face on it. In 2026 the São Paulo courts accepted the suit brought by the state deputy Gil Diniz, which alleges misuse of public funds and describes the event as an illegal "showmício", and made her a defendant (ré), along with Dexter, KL Jay, Mateo Piraces and the contracting production company; there is no verdict, the case remains open —with a carta precatória sent to Bahia to take her statement— and the defence maintains that there was no irregularity in the contracting and that the artist's statement is protected by freedom of expression. On 23 September 2026 she took part in an event of artists with Lula in Rio de Janeiro and on 6 October 2026 she publicly called for a vote in the run-off. On 8 October 2026 the presenter Mara Maravilha attacked on her social media a photograph of a kiss between Ivete Sangalo and Daniela Mercury taken in 2023; the public funding figures she asserted in that context are not corroborated and are not recorded here. There are no addictions, criminal cases or documented episodes of violence in her biography. On 30 June 2026 it was announced that she will receive the Latin Grammy Musical Excellence Award (Lifetime Achievement Award) at the 27th Latin Grammy, along with Alaska, Francisco Céspedes, Lila Downs and Chichí Peralta, at the ceremony of 12 November 2026. The Cirandaia Eurotour of July and August 2026 comprised 11 concerts in 5 countries: Arronches (11 July), Porto (12), Barcelona (17), Hamburg (18), Berlin (19), Munich (21), Koblenz (24), WOMAD in the United Kingdom (25), Amsterdam (27), Olhão (15 August) and Alcobaça (23 August). Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipédia in Portuguese, Wikipedia in English, the Dicionário Cravo Albin da Música Popular Brasileira, the Vatican Radio archive, the Montreux Jazz Festival concert database, setlist.fm, Sesc São Paulo, iBahia, Alô Alô Bahia, Anota Bahia, bahia.ba, Jornal Correio, Correio Braziliense, Jornal de Brasília, Diário 24 Horas, Farofafá, G1, Terra and Mixvale.