Axe Bahia examines the unique cultural role played by Salvador, the coastal capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia. An internationally renowned center of Afro-Brazilian culture, Salvador has been a vibrant and important hub of African-inspired artistic practices in Latin America since the 1940s. This volume represents the most comprehensive investigation in the United States of Bahian arts to date and features essays by eighteen international scholars. While adding to popular understandings of core expressions of African heritage, such as the religion Candomble, the essays explore in depth...