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

Cosa Nuestra

Ché Ché Colé

Jerry Masucci Presents: Super Salsa Singers, Vol. 1

Quimbara

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

Mulatu Astatke - Yegelle Tezeta

Siembra

Pedro Navaja

Lifestyle2 - Bar Jazz Vol 1

Penthouse Serenade

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

From The Palace Of Dub

Zion Gate Dub

Singer, songwriter, jazz musician, lawyer, activist, and politician, Rubén Blades pioneered the crossover of Latin dance music into the Anglo-American popular mainstream. The Panamanian-born superstar brought lyrical sophistication, experimental tempos, and politically inspired Nuyorican poetry to the irresistibly rhythmic music, creating salsa that was as intelligent as it was danceable. Blades earned degrees in political science and law at the Universidad Nacional de Panama before moving to the U.S. in 1974 to begin his musical career. He started working in the New York City mailroom of legendary salsa label Fania Records, where his gift as a songwriter soon brought him to the attention of such superstars as Ray Barretto, Larry Harlow, and trombonist/bandleader Willie Colón, with whom he began collaborating.
1978 saw the release of Colón and Blades’ Siembra, which would go on to become the biggest-selling salsa album in history and bring Latin dance music to its widest audience to date.

In 1984, Blades signed with Elektra and assembled his own crack band that he dubbed alternatively “Seis del Solar” and “Son del Solar.” Their label debut, entitled Buscando América, saw Blades expanding his musical horizons to incorporate experimental textures and sociopolitical lyrical content. The following year, Escenas – featuring guest appearances from Linda Ronstadt and Joe Jackson – was honored with a “Best Tropical Latin Performance” Grammy – Blades’ first.

Nothing But The Truth, the first English-language album of Blades’ long career, arrived in 1988. The acclaimed recording featured contributions from three of Blades’ biggest fans in Lou Reed, Elvis Costello, and Sting. Blades’ final Elektra release was 1990’s powerfully funky Rubén Blades Y Son del Solar…Live!

Blades has also pursued a remarkable range of other activities. He has acted in a number of films, including his breakthrough performance in 1985’s Crossover Dreams – which he co-wrote. In 1997, he made his Broadway debut, starring with Marc Anthony in Paul Simon and Derek Walcott’s The Capeman.

Long active in Panamanian politics, Blades put his artistic career on hold in 2004 to serve a five-year appointment as Panama’s Minister of Tourism. Upon the completion of his service, he returned to music in a big way by reuniting Seis del Solar to embark on a major tour of the Americas in celebration of the 25th anniversary of their now-classic Elektra debut, Buscando América.

Pedro Navaja

Ruben Blades

Related tracks