World Vibes (Funk, Latin, African, Jazz, Reggae, Blues, etc) - part 2

As sampled by Nas and Damian Marley on the new single ‘As We Enter’

Mulatu Astatke - Yegelle Tezeta

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Legalise It

(12/24) Drink The Fish Tea

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Mission Impossible

Taken from BANZEIRO available on LP /CD /DL via: https://donaonete.bandcamp.com/album/banzeiro & STREAMING

‘Remarkable… an engagingly commanding and feisty singer’ The Guardian

Dona Onete - ‘the grande dame of Amazonian song’ - returns with further tales from the river Amazon on her sophomore album Banzeiro.

Whether she’s championing gay rights, singing about the delights of indecent proposals or praising a former lover for his ‘crazy ways of making love’, Banzeiro is defined by Onete’s honest reflections on life, love, sex as well as her delight in the everyday pleasures of life in the Amazon, whether that’s spicy seasoning, salty kisses or fishy-smelling water.

Formerly a history teacher, folklore researcher, union representative, culture secretary and children’s author - “I never thought I would be a singer” she claims - Onete recorded her debut album Feitiço Caboclo at 73. A cult figure in Brazil and an ambassador for Amazonian culture, the music she sings is a unique mix of rhythms from native Brazilians, African slaves and the Caribbean - epitomised in the joyous carimbós that are her trademark.

Born in the Amazonian region of Pará in 1938, Onete is a mix of native Indian from her mother’s side and African from her father. She first started to sing after a chance riverside encounter: “I was washing clothes by the river and one day I saw a dolphin and sung for him. The next day I sang again, and two dolphins came, then a whole family!”.

A self-proclaimed “teenage-dreamer” who embraced music “because everything was forbidden by my parents”, by the age of 15 Onete was singing in bars, yet her musical ambitions were soon crushed: “I was married at 22 and when I tried to sing at home my husband didn’t like it so I had to stop”.

She became an ardent researcher of the rhythms, dances and traditions of the Amazon’s indigenous and black people, which inspired her to begin composing songs herself. Unable to sing at home, she began to incorporate her compositions in her work as a history teacher.

In the early eighties Onete quit teaching to campaign for workers’ rights and following retirement in 1990 she became a local Municipal Secretary of Culture. In the early 2000s Onete’s second husband encouraged her musical side and it was whilst singing at a friend’s party in 2006 that she was overheard by a local band. She joined them and soon became a local celebrity known for her risque lyrics. A debut album, Feitiço Caboclo, soon followed and her contemporary take on the music of Para was a critical success with Onete touring Brazil playing to crowds of thousands: “Traditional carimbo songs are about nature and tradition - I modernised it by singing about love and sex and taking influence from samba and pagode”.

International critics were next to fall for this sassy, saucy and sexy septuagenarian with Les Inrocks making the album one of their top 5 ‘world’ releases that year. European festival performances followed in 2015 - including a main stage spot at Womad UK - with a US tour taking in Chicago, Cleveland, and New York in September 2016. “Sometimes, when you think you’ve given all you’ve got, you realise that, in fact, you have a lot more ahead of you”, she opines.

Banzeiro is the wave that’s created as boats pass through the water and with it’s pulsating saxophone riff, insistent guitar line, thundering percussion and Onete’s charged lyrics the album title track, a banguê – raucous high-octane ‘Amazonian ska’ – is a musical tsunami. Onete is at her most potent on Na Linha do Arco Iris (The Line of the Rainbow), a rallying cry of support for her LGBT fans: “come out of the wardrobe, cross the line of the rainbow and be who you want to be”. Faceira and No Meio do Pitiú are joyous carimbós with the latter surely the only song to recount the charms of Pitiú - the fishy-smelling water that floods Belém’s legendary fish-market Ver-o-Peso as the ice defrosts.

DONA ONETE No Meio Do Pitiú

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