Without Carnival, Salvador goes through a post-axé music transformation moment

O Carnival in savior is a kind of thermometer for the party in the rest of Brazil. But two years ago, because of the Covid-19 pandemicthe city has not pulsed the energy that characterizes it every summer for decades.

And even with the restrictions of this period, a cultural ebullience has been changing the face of Carnival in the state, but without the celebration of the street, there is no place to vent this cultural transformation.

One point, however, is central to this transformation: the weakening of an entertainment industry that helped forge the idea that Bahian music is synonymous with Carnival.

Without national hits for many years, axé music continues to move its electric blocks and trios, this time in the format of closed parties, but without the strength it had at the end of the 20th century. And as this format loses importance, other cultural manifestations, more inclusive, are occupying the vacuum left by the mainstream of Bahian Carnival. The pandemic only makes it difficult to perceive a transformation that has been happening for about a decade in the Bahian capital.

“Carnival is really something very connected to the history of our formation”, explains BaianaSystem guitarist Roberto Barreto, splicing the current moment with the history of the party in Bahia. The group, one of the main drivers of the transformation that has been happening in Salvador in the last decade, takes advantage of the second year without Carnival to launch the mini-documentary “Manifestação – Carnaval do Invisível”, made in partnership with the Amazon Music streaming service.

The 23-minute short features testimonies about the importance of Carnival for the city, while bringing together different musical and political moments of the Bahian group.

“It is very emblematic that these two things happened in the 1980s, first with the Afro and Afoxé blocks beginning to constitute themselves and happening as the most important thing in the racial movement until then, followed by the marketing machine that was organized to catch that boom and that song”, continues the guitarist.

“This is a reflection of how society itself uses the raw material, of the mechanisms that it has for those spaces to be occupied by the market and it is explained in an industrial way in this period of axé music.”

The guitarist reinforces that the monoculture of a music scene that is not a musical genre ended up exhausting it.

“The market doesn’t have a cultural thought, it doesn’t have a team, it goes until it dries up and I think that’s what happened about ten years ago. The fountain dried up and with that comes the need for a shout, because Carnival is not that. Carnival is linked to the city and its manifestations. Therefore, I believe that the public power, government and city hall, have an obligation to regulate this, because the market will not do that.”

Bahian pride

O cultural producer, journalist and writer Luciano Matoswho has just released the book “O Canto da Cidade – From the Afro-Bahian matrix to the axé music of Daniela Mercury” (Edições Sesc), associates the rise of axé music to the period in which the then politician Antônio Carlos Magalhães, the ACM, played the cards in state politics.

“He was very smart in using neighborhoodism, the pride of Bahia, to establish himself politically, and he always did it in various ways. Music was one of them”, says the journalist about the relationship between the family of the former governor and state senator and the press and the production of events and artists extolling the state, music and Carnival in Salvador.

“There was no Department of Culture, for example. It was the Department of Culture and Tourism, and those people benefited from it, because they had this idea of ​​selling this festive, joyful Bahia, and axé music did that very well”, continues Matos.

“There was no stimulus to culture or logic of cultural policies, it was a one-stop policy that benefited this group that made a lot of money and benefited in various ways, from Carnival schedules, economic benefits, benefits in spaces, such as places on the radio… The axé music industry no longer has that power, today it is the sertanejo.”

“Axé music encompasses a set of carnival genres among the various musical styles that echo in the soundscape of Salvador in its everyday, profane and religious parties and, in the context of carnival, continues to attract thousands of revelers from Brazil and the world”, continues the anthropologist Goli Guerreiroauthor of the book “A Trama Dos Tambores – Afro-Pop Music from Salvador” (Publisher 34).

She disagrees that axé music is dead, due to the perenniality of her hits, and reinforces: “For most southeasterners, axé music is confused with samba-reggae, the style created by the Afro-Carnival blocks, which was appropriated by the bands trio, led by white artists.”

“No cultural manifestation dies”, continues the sociologist and music critic Pérola Mathias, also with reservations about this death of axé music. “The story has not come to an end, the song has not died, rock has not died, as a musical style, axé music has not died. How to say that he died if the artists are all there, active, recording, releasing, selling? What has been debated and fought – slowly – is the business model between businessmen, record companies, media outlets, artists and the state that it has generated.”

Luciano endorses the way the genre has lost strength over the years.

“I think there is very little left of that today, the artists who remained in the spotlight follow what is in fashion, like funk, sertanejo, this newer forró. The axé music industry is not so strong anymore, but it still exists, especially in Salvador, where it has its strength and much more for a prestige, in quotation marks, of the relations with the public and private powers, which have the power to produce events, raise money and launch artists.”

It is difficult to define what axé music is today. For me, it’s veteran artists trying to keep up, few new artists trying – and failing – a place in this mainstream market and an industry living off the prestige and contacts of the past.

Goli Guerreiro, anthropologist

The strength of the Bahian pagoda

But everyone agrees that Bahia is going through a very rich cultural moment. Luciano talks about the strength of the Bahian pagode, which despite some of its names (such as Harmonia do Samba, É o Tchan and Psirico) entering the cauldron of influences of axé music, has a very unique sound, derived from the samba de roda of the Recôncavo Baiano .

“The pagode is really popular, in the ghettos and popular neighborhoods, and has a more contemporary aspect that mixes with electronics, with trap… In Salvador, basically what you hear most today is this”.

“And there is this sound that comes from the countryside, like the arrocha, for example, which is something that originally appeared in the metropolitan region, in Candeias, and which also derives from the sertanejo and romantic music, with those keyboards, and other things go appearing and disappearing”, continues the journalist, also listing the piseiro as a new musical reference in the state.

Pérola lists names like Attooxxa and Afrocidade, in addition to BaianaSystem, as names that emerge from the vacuum left by axé music, while Goli begins to list a series of artists who are at different levels of popularity.

“Vandal, Trap Funk & Alivio, Ticia, Illy, Rachel Reis, A Travestis, A Dama, Robyssão, O Poeta, Yan Cloud, Nara Couto, Luedji Luna, Giovani Cidreira, Jadsa, Maglore and Teago Oliveira, Melly, the Batekoo label , Larissa Luz, Japa System, O Quadro, Josyara, Jotaerre, there are a lot of people”, in addition to listing people from previous generations who talk to the current moment, such as Lazzo Matumbi, Roberto Mendes, Mateus Aleluia, Mou Brasil, Orquestra Rumpilez, among others. “I can spend a whole day talking,” he jokes.

The BaianaSystem guitarist talks about the past again to explain the present. “This not having Carnival is a moment to bring this discussion to people. Talking about the arrival of the Yoruba in the 18th century to the 19th century, and how this was fundamental in the formation of Salvador, how these people defined this culture.”

I think that Carnival is not a party, it is effectively a social experience that has to be understood in this way, which brings this playful thing, the great magic of history, which is that where Carnival takes place, it is reflected in the city and in the people.

Roberto Barreto, guitarist of BaianaSystem