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| Maria Bethânia |
Today, The Grandma has been listening to the greatest hits of Maria Bethânia, the Brazilian singer and songwriter who was born on a day like today in 1946. The Grandma thinks that the best way to homage her is listening to her songs and talking about her life and career.
Maria Bethânia Viana Telles Veloso (born June 18, 1946), known by her stage name Maria Bethânia, is a Brazilian singer and songwriter.
Born in Santo Amaro da Purifição, Bahia, she started her career in Rio de Janeiro in 1964 with the show Opinião. Due to its popularity, with performances all over the country, and the popularity of her 1965 single Carcará, the artist became a star in Brazil.
Bethânia is the sister of the singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso and of the writer-songwriter Mabel Velloso, as well as being aunt of the singers Belô Velloso and Jota Velloso. The singer has released 50 studio albums in 47 years of career, and is among the 10 best-selling music artists in Brazil, having sold more than 26 million records.
Bethânia was ranks in 2012, by Rolling Stone Brasil magazine, as the fifth biggest voice of Brazilian music.
Bethânia is the sixth out of eight children born into the family of José Telles Veloso (Seu Zeca), a government official, and Claudionor Viana Telles Veloso (Dona Canô), a housewife.
The name Maria Bethânia was chosen by her brother Caetano Veloso after the homonymous hit song written by composer Capiba and famous at the time in the voice of Nélson Gonçalves.
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In her childhood, she had aspirations to become an actress. However, her mother was a musician, so music was prevalent in the Veloso household. Though Bethânia was born in Santo Amaro da Purifição, her family moved to Salvador, Bahia when she was 13. The move allowed her to experience the bohemian, intellectual circles of the city as well as to visit theaters.
When she was 16, her brother Caetano Veloso invited her to sing in a film for which he was producing the soundtrack, but she refused. Nevertheless, the film's director, Álvaro Guimarães, liked her voice and invited the young musician to perform in the 1963 Nélson Rodrigues's musical Boca de Ouro. This time Bethânia accepted, and for the first time in her life she went on stage to sing for an audience, opening the play performing a samba by Ataulfo Alves.
That same year, Bethãnia and her sister met singers Gilberto Gil and Gal Costa; Caetano had been invited to put on an MPB show to inaugurate the Teatro Vila Velha. The four artists got together and, in 1964, staged Nós, por exemplo.
The show was a success
and was presented again twenty months later, with the participation of
singer-songwriter Tom Zé. That same year, the group mounted another show
called Nova Bossa Velha e Velha Bossa Nova. Still in that year,
directed by Caetano and Gil, Bethânia performed another musical, this
time on her own, called Mora na Filosofia.
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| Caetano Veloso & Maria Bethânia |
She began performing again with her brother, as well as Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Tom Zé, at the opening of the Vila Velha Theater in the next year. During one of these performances, the bossa nova musician Nara Leão offered her an opportunity to take her place in a series of performances titled Opinião.
She released her first single, a protest song called Carcará, in 1965, the same year that her brother released his first recording. After releasing Carcará Bethânia returned from Rio de Janeiro, where she had gone to attend college, to Bahia. This was to only be a brief visit, as around that time she was performing at nightclubs and other venues throughout Brazil. This song also got her an offer from an RCA Records representative to record for the company. However Bethânia continually changed record labels throughout the 1970s.
In 1973 Bethânia released Drama, Luz Da Noite, in which she performed traditional Brazilian songs, as well as incorporating literary elements.
In 1976, she released a live album with Doces Bárbaros, a Música popular brasileira supergroup. It was recorded June 24 of that year at Anhembi Stadium in São Paulo. Its members were Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Maria Bethânia and Gal Costa, four of the biggest names in the history of the Music of Brazil. The band was the subject of a 1977 documentary directed by Jom Tob Azulay.
In
1977 Bethânia went on tour and released a gold-certified album, both
with the name of Pássaro da Manhã. She released Álibi a year later which
was also gold-certified with over a million copies sold. Around the end
of the 1970s, Bethânia became more artistically conservative, moving
away from the Tropicalismo music her frequent collaborators, including
Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, had been playing.
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During the 1980s and '90s Bethânia continued to record and perform, with 1993's As Canções Que Você Fez Para Mim becoming the year's most successful album in Brazil.
In 1994, they performed a tribute concert to Mangueira school of samba.
French filmmaker Georges Gachot completed a documentary film Musica é perfume about her which was worldwide distributed. In 2008 she recorded an album with the Cuban singer Omara Portuondo which was followed by a Live DVD.
In 2015, her album Meus Quintais was nominated for the 16th Latin Grammy Awards in the Best MPB Album category.
She moved to Rio de Janeiro alone, at age 17, in 1963, where she lives today. Very discreet, she is not often seen in social events. Currently she lives alone in a residence that she bought in a neighborhood far away, close to the nature and bush, far from the bustle of Rio. The singer does not have children, and is adept to Brazilian religions of African origin, such as the Candomblés.
More information: Salvador da Bahia
A branch that grows crooked, or that is crooked
from the beginning, will never straighten out.
If you don't learn right from wrong early on,
or if you don't learn manners when you are young,
you will never learn them later.
Maria Bethania
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