Salvador gets unprecedented space in honor of Bahia sounds

Salvador is home to an large variety of rhythms and sounds. Music is one of its main cultural assets, encouraging tourism, local production, exportation of songs and a variety of works linked to concerts and events. The city is the cradle of bossa nova, axé and timbalada, among many other rhythms that broke the mold, serving as a reference for both national and international artists.

The 472-year history of Salvador, capital of Bahia state, is also the history of Brazilian music. And now this story can be told and sung in many different ways with the inauguration of Cidade da Música, a new museum opened by the mayor’s office in the historic Casarão dos Azulejos Azuis, in the Comércio district.

USD 2.2 million was invested in the restoration of the old building and financed by CAF through Proquali (Salvador’s Urban Requalification Program), which began in 2019, attracting a total of USD 60.2 million in investments from a variety of sources in the municipality.

“Cidade da Música is the first building in a culture and music complex in the Comércio region. In the coming years, another USD 20 million from CAF will be invested for the restoration of two other buildings in the surrounding area, where various cultural facilities will be installed,” explains Jaime Holguín, CAF’s representative in Brazil. The complex will therefore play a key role in getting the neighborhood back on its feet, attracting businesses and tourists from Brazil and around the world.

CAF and the city of Salvador are negotiating the provision of resources through technical cooperation to develop a management plan for the cultural complex. “The idea is to look for the best way to manage cultural facilities so that over the years the activities are offered in a financially sustainable manner," explains Holguín.

On September 22, 2021, at the inauguration of the space, the mayor of Salvador, Bruno Reis, highlighted that for the first time the Bahian capital is getting a space in keeping with its cultural traditions. “The space uses high technology to offer visitors a real immersion in the past, present and future of Bahia’s sound production. It will also be a center for the production of new musical languages, with technical equipment and studies to promote new movements,” he said. “This is all part of an ambitious project, which is doing justice to one of the most beautiful regions of the city, and which is home to an important part of our history,” he added.

Interactivity

Consisting of four floors, the Cidade da Música has an area of 1,900 m² and features captivating set designs which provide true immersion for visitors through the use of technology. To visit and get all the available information, just use the app and follow each museum attraction.

The first floor houses the entrance hall, reception/ticket office, cafeteria, shop, library, media library, research center and infrastructure and administration area. The upper floors house permanent collections and are under the curatorship of anthropologist Antonio Risério and architect Gringo Cardia. On the first floor, visitors will find “The City of Salvador and its Music” exhibition, with information on its history and new trends, visually presented in different environments as well as in a large interactive model.

The second floor, in turn, has the Tropicália theme on a stage with giant illustrations taken from fragments of modernist painting by Genaro de Carvalho. The site houses the “History of Music in Bahia” exhibition, with nine video booths and three rooms. One of them is entitled “A Magia da Orquestra” and presents content focused on classical music, showing step by step how an orchestra works, what instruments are played and a video recorded with the Bahia Symphony Orchestra.

The top floor of Cidade da Música da Bahia offers educational entertainment. Among them are three recording studios for karaoke clips where visitors choose a graphic background and are provided a recording of the clip to post on social media. A video station displays all the clips that have been recorded so far. The content is cumulative, and visitors can find out who recorded each piece, encouraging the creation of new musical movements.