The music video shows a young woman, with flaming curly and long red hair, dancing like a wild woman in the jungle. Her hair, clothes with long strips of big threads, arms and legs and her radiance swirl into the air. The song is a mix of tribal music, Aurora, pop and Kate Bush. The lyrics are about sisterhood and fighting to be strong, mixed with an ecological message about nature. The song is called Savage Daughters and it has millions of streams on YouTube.
Except for the red hair, you would think we were writing about Aurora. But this is about Alexia Evellyn from Brazil. For now, a pretty unknown entity in Norway, despite the fact that she is signed to the Norwegian company Made Records, who were also the ones who signed Aurora in the first place. Now Alexia is out with her first EP, Dark Side , which includes songs that have been streamed millions of times, as well as a few new and so far unheard tracks.
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Highasakite
She appears on my screen on a a slightly bad Zoom line from a Brazilian coffee shop. I’m sitting a few hours north of the Arctic Circle in Norway, and she gets really excited about my background, which shows the Northern Lights. She has just as much charisma as in the videos and is full of passion and life. During the conversation, she talks both while inhaling and exhaling, laughs a lot and smiles all the time. And when she occasionally breaks out into song, with a voice that has an enormous range, it’s easy to feel honored.
I just have to get the comparison with Aurora out of the way first, especially since she has also made her own interpretations of Aurora songs on social media.
– I love Aurora, says Alexia.
– But it wasn’t until after I had written several of my songs that someone said I should listen to her. And when I saw her videos, I realized that we had a lot in common, not only musically, but also in what we sing about. Sisterhood. About the planet. About the fight we are in. She’s just amazing, and she has inspired me a lot. We have also met, and she is just the sweetest person.
Alexia says she has loved Norway for a long time.
– My big dream is to come to Norway and see what you have behind you now, namely the northern lights. In addition, I love many Norwegian artists.
She mentions several of them, but places particular emphasis on Highasakite, which she posts a cover of on her social media a few days after our conversation.
– Ingrid [vocalist and songwriter in Highasakite] just has a fantastic voice. I love their music. And not least, I have signed with a Norwegian label and I have used a Norwegian mixer on some of my music.
Fire and water
She says she feels that music from Brazil is like fire, and music from Norway is like water.
– In Brazil, we have a great African heritage when it comes to music. I try to bring this out in my music, not least in the way we use rhythms and drums. Through the rhythms, I feel like the goddesses are here, that I bring them out through my music. While Norwegian music flows like water. I think that’s why so much Norwegian music is doing well all over the world. It flows.
She laughs a little at herself.
– Sorry, but now I’m rambling, ha ha!
Assault
Her first song was published on Spotify and social media in the summer of 2024. But by then she had already gained millions of followers on Instgram and Tik Tok, with her colorful videos and her voice. And now the EP Dark Side is out.
– Let’s talk about my favorite song on the EP, Hold On .
– It was one of the first songs I wrote, and I used it to learn English. I am completely self-taught when it comes to English, and I learned it all on my own. When I was working on it, I traveled abroad for the first time in my life. I wrote it with Michelle Leonard in Germany [who has also worked with Aurora], and I imagined a planet where justice truly existed. But first, to get there, you have had to go through a war. In my case, my war as a woman, because that is my point of view. As a man, you will have a different point of view. The same goes for LGBT people and indigenous peoples. We all have our struggles. But here in Brazil, women have always experienced abuse, violence, and a culture that holds us down, regardless of our orientation or origin.
She says that she has experienced a lot of trauma in her life and that she was on the verge of giving up on music several times.
– I thought that I couldn’t trust anyone and that I didn’t really understand why I was doing this anymore. So the whole song comes out of this pain, but with a message that you have to fight for what you believe in. You have to fight for the world to be a better place for all of us.
– A political song?
– Maybe, but then from the political standpoint that Brazilian and Latin women must not give up life and freedom and not least that we must have our voices.
The instrumentation shows that she is from Brazil. There is a lot of percussion and she also sings «oh hey hooo» and the type of phrasing that is typical of traditional Brazilian music.
– I also go very high in the chorus, and it took a long time before I had the confidence to try it.
Ireland, China and Japan
– I think the last track, Scars , sounds very Irish-inspired.
– You think so? Hmm, maybe. It does have a harp and… you know, I haven’t thought about it. It’s very interesting that you say that. Because I’ve never studied that type of music. But when I was a child, my mother listened to Enya all the time, so I grew up with her music, so it’s not inconceivable that I’ve had a bit of Celtic influence on what I do. I have a friend who studies Japanese music. He told me that a lot of what we consider Celtic music originally comes from Japan. And it makes a lot of sense to me when I listen to Japanese music. But I don’t know if that’s true. It just makes sense to me, because I love Japanese culture. I grew up when anime and manga culture was spreading around the world, so I’ve also been very inspired by that. And the big drums they have in China reminded me a lot of the way we use drums in Brazil. Or maybe I was just Celtic in a past life, ha ha!
In the fall of 2024, Alexia was invited to China to perform on a TV show with hundreds of millions of viewers.
– How did you get that invitation?
– Good question. Someone from Chinese TV had seen my videos on Tik Tok and sent an email asking if I could perform only two weeks later. I live like a nomad, and live out in the forest with almost no belongings. Since I move around a lot, it took a while before they got a hold of me. It wasn’t until three days before showtime that everything was finally confirmed. It was an amazing experience. They were so excited about my music, and took such good care of me. I stayed there for two whole weeks and this was right after I had released my first song. So I felt like the luckiest girl in the world! And the Chinese are super cute. It’s like they’ve walked out of my anime dreams and into the real world. I just had to hug every single one of them.
Cirque du Soleil
It is through social media that she has made a name for herself which in turn lead to her music deal.
– How did you manage to get millions of followers on social media?
– I have no idea, ha ha! It was not planned at all and I was just as surprised as everyone else. I started posting videos during the pandemic, because I had to let out all the pain and frustration I had inside me.
She gives me the background:
– I started playing the cello as a child, and even though my sister and I used to sing in duets growing up, there was no way for me to get singing lessons. My family didn’t have money, so I’ve always worked hard. But when I got a scholarship to study at university, I also got to practice singing there. The scholarship also gave me more financial security.
But despite this, the road into the music industry was not easy.
– Especially not in Brazil, where men you work with suddenly want you to do things for them. And when you say no, the contract is terminated and you’re thrown out. There’s a lot of that going on.
In 2019, she got the role as the lead singer in the Brazilian version of Cirque du Soleil, but just as the tour was about to travel to Europe, the pandemic hit.
– Even before I got the role, I had thought about giving up, and when that chance crumbled away, I turned to social media. And then it just grew completely out of my control. I literally cried in several of my videos, but the fact that more and more people watched them, and left comments told me that I had hit a nerve. And that helped enormously. Now I have a contract and have traveled to China and around Europe. If you had told me that a few years ago, I would have said you were crazy, ha ha!
Crying in the studio
– Your videos are very well done, with great filming and editing. Do you do everything alone?
– Everything is my vision and my idea. Often I just film myself dancing, and then we use that. But I also work with my friends. So when you see the finished videos, it’s teamwork. The video for Savage Daughters was made with Anderson Barcellos. For that we set up the black box, where I dance, attached to all the red threads, in the back room of a cafe that a friend of mine owns. We’re a bunch of friends who help each other. And my mom, brother and sister do as well.
– What about the songwriting process?
– It varies a lot. And I think it’s like that for most artists. On Hold On, Michelle had an idea that she started doing on one of my Brazilian drums. And then we developed the song from that. Savage Daughters came out of me coming into the studio crying, because I was struggling with a lot of emotional things. And Michelle and Charlie McLean helped me to get all the frustration out, and we put it into the music. The whole thing was done in three minutes, and then the song was done. I finished it with Glen Roberts.
Other songs have come out of pure improvisation.
– Take Dark Side for example. I played with a lot of percussion, traditional Brazilian instruments, and I just screamed and hollered in a way we do at traditional parties in Brazil. That’s probably the song where I explore Brazilian music the most. It became a bit like They Don’t Really Care About Us by Michael Jackson. He came to Brazil and recorded a new version of it for his music video. And in many parts of that version all you hear are just drums and vocals. So that’s the frame of reference.
Gene Kelly
– How many instruments can you play?
– Oh! I don’t know. Cello and piano are my main instruments. I usually write on my piano. Otherwise, I’m probably best at percussion. That’s why I like to include drums in my videos.
– Have you ever taken dance lessons, or do you just improvise?
– Everything is natural and I just do what I feel like in the moment. I love to move, and I often dance just for myself out in nature. Preferably naked, ha ha. But I would have liked to have taken dance lessons. When I was a child, my biggest hero was Gene Kelly from Singing in the Rain. I wanted to be just like him, he was amazing.
– Is it easier to express yourself in your own language than in English?
– On the contrary. Since I’m self-taught in English, I have to think extra carefully when I write in that language. I use Google Translate and want everyone to be able to understand what I write, so I try to be as honest as possible when I write in English.
– You sing in Portuguese on the song Bailarina
– The title means Dancer and it is about the traumas we can all experience in life. And I try to remind us of our innocence and how we used to experience happiness as children. Because of things I have experienced, I was unable to trust anyone. Not my friends and especially not men. I was deeply hurt, and I hid away and was angry all the time. I’m not unique in that regard, there are many Brazilian women who go through this. Boys too. And such people often behave the same way towards others when they grow up. I decided that I would not be like that. If I was going to survive, I had to become a different person. That is what the song is about.
She says she hopes others can take to heart what she says, both through that song, but also through the other songs on the EP.
– That would be the greatest thing I, as a woman and an artist, can give to the planet.
Alexia Evellyn’s EP Dark Side is out on all streaming services now, and you can watch the video, which was released on Monday, March 3rd, here:
