Not since the early days of Tina Turner has there been an entrance quite like this. With a giant screen behind her, and a nine-piece band blasting out the samba-reggae fusion that has become something of a speciality in the Brazilian city of Salvador, Daniela Mercury danced her way on stage sporting an expensively minimalist outfit that consisted of a silver bikini top, matching silver hot-pants, high heels and a glittering white cloak over her shoulder. She continued her exhausting dance routines in a flurry of tossing hair and long legs for the next hour and an half - even if she hadn't sung a note, this would have been a remarkable performance for choreography, energy and endurance alone.
This has been a great month for MPB, the new Brazilian Popular Music movement, and if the recent London concerts by Andrea Marquee showed how well bossa nova can be fused with drum'n'bass, then Daniela Mercury has followed up by showing how the new music can be dressed up for the mass market. She has always been something of a show-girl, ever since she first made her name singing on the trucks and floats at Salvador carnival, and her current elaborate show, with its carefully staged dance routines and visual effects, is a carnival dance party with a Vegas veneer though still with a careful eye on Brazilian musical trends. Salvador, in Bahia, is the area of Brazil with the closest musical links to both Africa and the Caribbean, and her frantic dance songs were artfully mixed with a dash of well-performed Brazilian rap, soca, and African chanting, as well as a reminder that she takes attentive note of the best MPB songwriters.
Chico Cesar, who opened the show, is just such a figure - it was he who provided Mercury with her massive hit A Primeira Vista. He's also an entertaining performer in his own right, coming on like a genial, eccentric academic with glasses, a shock of hair and designer tracksuit; singing well, playing guitar, and leading a band in which the expected keyboards and percussion were matched against an accordion. He too reflected Brazil's African links with his songs Mama Africa and Mandela, then veered off to touch on anything from reggae to jazz in a batch of highly varied, his own pieces all notable for their easy melodies. Brazil is back.
