49 f Amazon Delivery

She’s 78 and there ain’t no stopping her brand of ‘folkloric tropical funk’. Jamie Renton gets carried away by Dona Onete, Amazonian icon.

cusp of her ninth decade but she’s only just starting to make a noise. Released earlier this year Banzeiro (Mais Um Discos), her second album, a rootsier affair than her 2012 debut Feitiço Caboclo, is awash with thumping, skipping local rhythms. It’s the perfect antidote for those who think of Brazilian music as the bland sound made by the house band of the cocktail bar in Hell.

D

Back in July, with the album doing seri- ous business in the European World Music chart, Dona and her five-piece band came over for a short tour and I caught up with

ona Onete has got a laugh as wild, infectious and dirty as the music she makes. The musical matriarch of the Brazil- ian Amazon may be on the

her at Nell’s Jazz and Blues, a new venue in West Kensington. She uses a wheelchair and once she’s been carried up the stairs of the venue, we find a quiet-ish corner for a pre-show chat. “I’ve had the inspiration for this album for a long, long time,” explains the singer born Ionete da Silveira Gama, in her smoky croak of a voice. “Some of the songs were written in the 1950s. When I was asked what I wanted to do for my sec- ond album, I remembered that I had these songs in my repertoire and decided I want- ed to do something a bit different. Some- thing about my memories of the ’50s, something about these years.”

The album’s opener Tipiti (pronounced ‘chip-ee-chi’) is all about the cultural mix of her Amazon home in Pará province, north- eastern Brazil. “It’s about the mixture of

African and indigenous people and white colonisers that is distinctive to the region. What we call the caboclo.” The lyrics make this point through the culinary traditions of the region: tapioca crepes and the farina condiment made from the manioc plant native to the Amazon. “I use very simple, prac- tical images and stories to explain the peoples of the Amazon to those from outside.”

“I was born in the town of Cachoeria Do Arari on the island of Marajo at the mouth of the Amazon River. There are these guys we call Majoara. They make impro- vised poetry. They are one of my biggest influences. How to improvise a verse. How to talk about something very common and then make this into a form of poetry. When- ever I’m writing songs I always remember these guys from my hometown.”

Photo: © Judith Burrows