Dona Onete first began to sing when she was nine-years-old after a chance riverside encounter.
“I was washing clothes by the river and one day I saw a dolphin and sung for him. I had a loud voice and could be heard from afar. The next day I sang again, and two dolphins came, suddenly there were ten of them, they were my first audience”.
Raised by her aunt, Dona Onete (which translates to Dame Onete) went by the name Ionete Silveira da Gama and grew up in the small Amazonian town of Igarapé Miri in the Northern Brazilian state of Pará.
Those dolphins surrounding her became a worry, Onete tells SBS Portuguese, as according to local folklore, Amazon dolphins are attracted to young girls. On nights where the full moon is high, they transform into young men in order to seduce and impregnate them.
“My auntie believed in these things, and after so many people coming to my house to bless me, even a local indigenous witch doctor, all those visitors, she couldn’t take it anymore and ended up sending me to the capital, Belém do Pará.”
Onete always sang in local bars and community festivals, but an early marriage at 22 appeared to be the end of her fledgling singing career.
“He [my then husband] didn’t like my singing at home,” says the septuagenarian songstress.
She became a history teacher and got involved in Brazil’s Workers Party.
“I used to go on stage, do my speeches and sing some songs too, it was just after the dictatorship [in the 1960s]," she says. "That is my experience with big crowds, always on a political platform fighting for indigenous people and women’s rights.”
Political involvement took her to local government where she became Secretary of Culture of her state. Half a century later, retired and married for the second time, her new husband started nagging her.
“Why don’t you go out? You love singing, why don’t you go and sing your songs? Get out of this house, out of the chair,” she recalls him saying.
Now in her sixties, Onete joined a local rock band, the Coletivo Rádio Cipó (translating to Collective Vine Radio).
“They heard me singing, invited me over and I ended up joining them in a couple of songs and was a guest at their shows,” she says. The group toured Brazil and became well known in the alternative rock scene.
Three years later she decided it was time to restart her solo career and invest in her real passion: carimbo, a Brazilian folk music style that emerged from the Brazilian Amazon. It's a blend of rhythms from native Brazilians, African slaves and Caribbean cultures.
Dona Onete was 73.
Her debut album ‘Feitiço Caboclo’ includes some of the 300 songs she wrote since she was a child. The carimbo sounds and mischevious lyrics became a trademark. The album took her in a world tour.
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"I went to Portugal, Denmark, United States, Germany even Malaysia,"
Her biggest hit came with the album Banzeiro, and the song 'Na Linha do Arco Iris' ('In the Rainbow Line'), a hymn to gay rights.
“I was living in a world that it wasn’t mine and am now out of the cocoon, I didn’t ask to be born but now I fight for my rights,” she sings in the song.
It is from this album one of her biggest online hits also came, titled 'No Meio do Pitiú' ('In the Middle of the Pitiú'). Pitiú is a colloquial term for the smell of fish in Para, and the song's cheeky video clip reached nearly nine million views on YouTube.
The album also contains the song 'Quando eu te conheci' ('When I met you'), a sensuous and lyrical ballad about desire.
"When I met you I loved your crazy way of making love," she sings in the song. "And I, who was adventurous, became your prisoner. Your body, your kiss, the madness, the desires."
Dona Onete will bring her Amazonian sounds, sensuous lyrics and songs to WOMADelaide on .
