Weekend Intermission is our regular feature where we look at an artist or band not from the Nordic countries, just to mix things up a bit.
We haven’t had a Weekend Intermission for a while and just as I was wondering where one was going to come from I discovered this cracker from the flame haired Brazilian Alexia Evellyn, ‘theWild seed from Brasil’ as she calls herself.
It’s a couple of days late (it’s Tuesday) but I’m sure you’ll forgive me when you listen to it and watch the exceptional video.
‘Savage Daughters’ is actually quite an old song, four months or longer, but appears to have been released in Europe more recently. It’s her second release and her debut song, ‘Hold On’, only saw the light of day six months ago.
She’s had a chequered history in her 27 years.
A childhood cello player who won a University scholarship to study singing, and who landed a deal as the main vocalist with Cirque Du Soleil in 2019, the Covid pandemic put paid to a world tour and she suffered a depression that almost forced her to quit the music business, like many others.
But with the assistance of a video-making friend she began singing everywhere she could and putting the videos online, many of them featuring natural Brazilian backdrops, which led to her gaining a big social media following.
Believe me, you are about to witness a genuine star in the making.
She’s a dancing, singing advert for vacations in the Amazon jungle, with a side trip to Florianópolis, where she hails from. On a one-way ticket. You won’t want to leave.
In this video, she’s out of control and even puts 1980s heroines like Wendy James of Transvision Vamp and Annabella Lwin of Bow Wow Wow in the shade.
Her vocal control is excellent as you might expect given her qualifications, varying from a controlled alto ballad in the verse to belting rock soprano in the chorus.
She reminds me very much of Norway’s Aurora. Hm. The Savage Daughters meet The Warriors. Seconds Out! Round 1.
And I love the way she makes faces similar to those pioneered by Maddie Ziegler in Sia’s ‘Chandelier’ video. In some shots she even looks like an adult Ziegler.
The video, which opens as ‘Chapter 1’, ends with the advisory ‘to be continued’. Perhaps even a trilogy is in prospect. Oh yes, please. Oh, and a tour in Europe, asap, please.
Frivolity aside, the song’s storyline is deadly serious. It transcends the mere notion of feminism. Every minute, 14 women are physically attacked in Brazil she tells us; and those are just the recorded numbers.
This is something Alexia Evellyn was not going to be silent about but I wonder if she could ever have envisaged how pertinent this song is in the UK right now, when after years of multiple trials of small groups of sexual deviants around the country it is now emerging that as many as 250,000 young girls may have been gang raped over the course of the last three or four decades by what the media conveniently refers to as ‘grooming gangs’ but which more accurately should be called ‘rape & torture gangs’.
It is the worst scandal in modern British history, if not ever, and may eventually bring down not only the present government but all those politicians over the decades that turned a blind eye to its abominations.
Even the ragged dress she wears and tears at in the video is symbolic in that respect as it could be interpreted as the ‘red tape’ that has ensured the true nature and full story of this atrocity has been thus far hidden from the general public.
I would go so far as to suggest, as they seek redress, that ‘Savage Daughters’ should become the anthem of Britain’s own wronged daughters.
“Let me sing louder/for all the voices who can’t sing/I will be a warrior/oh, I will be a sister for you’
“As we fly and fall in cracks of time/there will be truth when we all align.”
She concludes, “‘Savage Daughters’ takes the gold, tears, love and fury of many women.”
Spread it far and wide.
The video was produced by Alexia and directed by brothers Andherson & Anthony Barcellos’.
Note that the audio version on Spotify has the lyrics (click on the small ‘mic’ logo).
Find her on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aalexiaevellyn/
