A City to be visited again and again.
Salvador is a place of strong contrasts, having passed through good times and bad, caught between beauty and misery, enchantment and disappointment, where all becomes intermixed and recreated, but never the less, a place where, for those who approach and see it through the eyes of love, there is hope to be reborn.
Although it was the Portuguese that gave the city form, it was the slaves that by imprinting another lifestyle on the city, breathed soul into Salvador.
History tells us that it was in the 16th century, following great economic growth, the city grew, with the construction of churches, public buildings and imposing mansions. Close by to the doors of Convento do Carmo, is the sad place where slaves were punished, the “Pelourinho”, now demolished. In the following century, several fortifications were constructed, such as Forte de Sao Marcelo and Fortaleza de Santo Antonio, better known as Farol da Barra. From 1594 until 1763 the fortress city of Salvador was the capital of Brazil, and the intermixing and melding of indian, negro and white made we Brazilians what we are today. On the steep sided hills, the poorer workers lived in shacks, whilst the fishermen lived in the Lower City, but it was only at the end of the eighteenth century that Salvador started to develop at two levels: the upper city which includes Sao Bento, Se, Desterro, Saude, Santo Antonio and Carmo and in the lower City, the beach area.
In 1873, at a time when the port was being extended, the Conceicao hydraulic lift, (now known as Elevador Lacerda), a world leading feat of engineering in its time, brought modernisation and development to the area. There, in front of the Cubana, inaugurated in 1930 and situated within view of the beautiful bay, you may watch the spectacular “Capoeira”( the local mock combat–dance) whilst tasting any of over thirty flavours of delicious ice cream. The most popular are Cacao flavour, coconut or tapioca, accompanied by a type of cake sprinkled with nut flakes.
Salvador through the eyes of strangers.
In 1946, then aged 44, and having travelled the world, the historian and photographer Peirre Verger disembarked in Salvador, and discovered what was, for him, “a new world”. He was captivated by the land, the customs, beliefs, narrow alley ways, the ups and downs of what he named this “wonderful land”. He did not merely record all that he saw with his magical photographs, but showed us a Bahia that we ourselves had not perhaps perceived. Such was his love of Salvador, that he renamed himself Pierre “Fatumbi” Verger, “Fatumbi” meaning, in the Ifa language, “re-born”.
The German engraver Karl Heinz Hansen felt a similar experience. Prior to arriving in Salvador in 1955, he had been both sailor and sculptor and had fought in the Second World War. As proof of his love for the place where he was “re-born”, and remembering the horrors of the war that almost killed him, he added to his name “Bahia”, thereafter becoming Karl Heinz Hansen Bahia. History repeated itself with the Argentine artist Hector Bernabo, the “Carybe”, whose fine lined paintings capture, in a way that few others have achieved, the sensuality and the spitefulness, the joker and the rascal, which combine to create the “baiano” personality (resident of the Bahia State).
According to Jorge Amado (a famous Brazilian author from the State of Bahia), all of these artists are fundamentally “bianos” since a true “baiano” isn’t born in Bahia, he is re-born there.
However, of those that were born in Bahia, it was Assis Valente, Riachao e Batatinha who conquered Rio de Janeiro with their music. In 1950, the musical duo Adolfo Antonio Nascimento, “Dodo” and Osmar Alvares de Macedo, “Osmar” became famous. They crisscrossed the streets of Rio aboard a vehicle playing music amplified through loudspeakers, thus creating the revolutionary Carnaval parade float. The origins of Carnaval go back to the Lusitanian colonisers’ own festivities.
From the upper city, the view, which is in total contrast to that which the first Portuguese sailors had on arrival in the 16th century, is of the bay ringed by the golden light of the setting sun. The horizon, the clouds and the sky are aglow, perhaps enabling the traveller to better understand why the bay is known as “the Bay of all Saints”, which include all of the gods and pagan African deities. These are Gods that bless all of those who possess the freedom to describe in word and song or who paint or portray all of the divine natural and man made creations.