Born Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira in Salvador, Bahia, Gilberto Gil began playing music professionally as a teenager when he joined his first band. Although he grew up listening to the forró music of his native northeast region, he started out making music in the Bossa Nova music genre. He later became a pioneer in the […]
Axé Music
Axé (pronounced ah-SHAY) music is a pop music genre originating in Salvador, Bahia around the mid 1980s out of the samba-reggae sound of the afro-blocos and trio elétricos of Carnaval. It mixes different Afro-Caribbean genres such as reggae, calypso, merengue, and marcha with Brazilian sounds such as forró, frevo, afoxé, and carixada. Some of the […]
Mestre Giba Gonçalves, Founder of Batala
Batala in Washington, D.C. is part of a larger Batala family created in 1997 by Mestre Giba Gonçalves. Born and raised in Salvador, Bahia in Northeast Brazil, Giba was living in Paris when he first had the idea for creating the band. He opened the band to anyone with an interest in learning the samba-reggae […]
Margareth Menezes
Born Margareth Menezes da Purificação, on October 13, 1962, in Boa Viagem, the Peninsula region of Itapagipe in Salvador. She is an internationally known, award-winning Brazilian pop star, but her music genre is predominantly the axé, samba-reggae, and samba-funk music of Bahia. From an early age, Menezes was surrounded by music, through her family’s love […]