Festival de São João

I arrived in Salvador on the cusp of the Festival de São João. We all love holidays, but I think Brazilians, in particular, really REALLY love holidays. With the exception of a few local celebrations, the city was basically a ghost town for 5 days as people traveled to the country to attend festivals of Forro music (pronounced Foh-haw, supposedly from "for all" since it's music for the people). We went to one festival, the Forro do Piu-Piu, about 3 hours outside of the city. This is one of the better known festivals where both Forro and Axé bands played. Both types of music are extremely popular in the state of Bahia--Forro usually involves an accordian and the best I can liken it to is country square dance with an extra kick....there were some serious back-up dancers involved (note buns and thighs of steel, girls)!

Some popular Axé artists played as well---this is another type of music from Bahia that combines rock-ish type styles with more traditional percussion--not typical São João music but it was a Bahian party, what the heck. This is my favorite Axé singer, Alexandre Peixe, giving us a special V.I.P. shout out:

After lots of dancing and drinking, we took a break and went to relieve ourselves at the "Mobile Pipi" (why is this stuff always so funny??) I missed the picture of the "Snob" brand napkins we had with our sandwiches for our "Peeky-neeky"...oh well...until next time.

All-in-all it made for a nice welcome-to-Bahia!!!