At the age of 80s, Dona Onete presents the Pará music to ten european countries in her tour
Dona Onete, a singer born in the State of Pará, in the Northeast region of Brazil, is touring Europe to promote her most recent work, the album “Rebujo”.
The carimbó chamegado diva performed for the first time at Womex, in Tampere, Finland, with the support from Brasil Music Exchange (BME), a Brazilian music fostering project carried out by means of a partnership between Brasil, Música & Artes (BM&A) and the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil).
Dona Onete said she was very grateful for such opportunity: “It was wonderful. It was very important to me and a privilege to go there and find such a huge crowd. I believe now is the time for Brazilian music, especially the one from the Northeast region. We worked very hard and went to that festival, and being there was super important to my career and to the producers. We hope to go further and I’m sure we will”.
According to the singer, Pará music is a huge mix, so she started creating songs about love in a slower and very sexy rhythm: “That’s how the carimbó chamegado was born”, says Onete, who has already recorded with Daniela Mercury, Gaby Amarantos and Aíla, among other Brazilian music major artists.
And her agenda has been always full. Despite of being on a wheelchair, she continued taking the carimbó to the entire world. Besides performing in Finland, she also had shows in ten other European countries, such as France and Belgium, for example.
“Rebujo” held the 1st position in the World Music Charts Europe (WMCE) and in the Transglobal World Music Chart (TWMC) in September and the 2nd position in October.
This year, Dona Onete ran the new and unique show Pará Pop on the Sunset stage at Rock in Rio.
Watch Dona Onete’s presentation at Womex:
About the singer
Dona Onete is the newest breakthrough artist of the Pará music scene, but it took her a long time before showing her talent to the world. Her hobby became a career only when she was already in her sixties.
The Brazilian singer, song writer and poet is deemed as the “diva of carimbó chamegado”, a rhythm created by her that is, in her words, “carimbó with a pinch of pepper”.
Ionete da Silveira Gama, known as Dona Onete, was a teacher of History and Pará studies and worked in the Municipal Secretariat of Culture before taking her stage name and being discovered by the audiences thanks to a collaboration with band Coletivo Rádio Cipó.
She is the author of the song “Mareia, mareia”, winner of the Mestre Lucindo Trophy in the “Traditional Carimbó” category in the 3rd edition of the Marapanim Carimbó Festival, in 2016. In 2011, the singer performed at the Terruá Pará festival, in São Paulo, and in 2012 she recorded her first album, “Fetitiço Caboclo”, a musical record of over 70 years of a life dedicated to the music and culture from Pará.