Bahia-Online.net provides facts and information on Salvador da Bahia, Brazil
Title
Bahia-Online: The Online Guide to Salvador da Bahia, Brazil
Description
That's "us" in the royal sense, although "we" make no claim to royalty (much to the contrary rather). Here at Bahia-Online we -- okay, I -- seek to the best of my ability to give an outsider's inside view of Bahia (and more specifically Salvador), this particular inside/outsider having arrived from New York City in April of 1992 and having lived continuously in Bahia (that is, without having left Bahia) since May of 1992. I make no claims to be an expert on Bahia, or anything else for that matter, but I do write what I've seen with my own eyes, heard with my own ears, or have in some way experienced. If I'm not writing from first-hand knowledge then I'm generally presenting my own version of what has been imparted to me from knowledgable first-hand sources, or in the case of history going back more than one generation, gleaned from knowledgeable academic sources.
The impetus behind the website came of a desire to divulge what I believe is a beautiful (in its way) part of our planet (irrespective of myriad faults, failures, imperfections, and irritants) and its distinctive culture (that culture of which Bahia is palpably redolent, born of the struggle to in some essential sense prevail -- and not simply survive -- in the senzalas and quilombos of the region's past).
From 2001 until 2005 Bahia-Online was run out of a back room in the central Salvador neighborhood of Barris (no space, but a great view out over the bay to the peninsula of Itapagipe and the islands of Maré and dos Frades beyond) . Then an epiphany: Pérola Negra (Black Pearl) -- a record store in Pelourinho -- was up for sale. Why not scrape and beg, borrow and buy the place and make it into something of a "headquarters" for Bahia-Online? With lots of great Bahian roots music... And great Brazilian music of all genres (or most anyway, no roqueiros)... Ergo Cana Brava Records! And paperwork and bills and accounting and taxes... Man, as much as I love the music, I miss the simplicity of life in that back room!
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