Carmélia Alves (14 February 1923 – 3 November 2012), a Brazilian singer known as the "Queen of Baião", was one of the country's best-known performers of baião, a folk rhythm popular in

Northeast Brazil The Northeast Region of Brazil ( pt, Região Nordeste do Brasil; ) is one of the five official and political regions of the country according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. Of Brazil's twenty-six states, it comprises ni ...

. Carmélia Alves was born in the Bangu neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. Her family moved to Areal in Petrópolis while she was very young, and she was raised there. Her father was from Ceara, and her mother was from Bahia, and her father was very interested in parties. He formed dance groups and organized blocos for Carnaval and

festas juninas ''Festas Juninas'' (, ''June Festivals'', "festivities that occur in the month of June"), also known as ''festas de São João'' for their part in celebrating the nativity of St. John the Baptist (June 24), are the annual Brazilian celebrations ...

. Her father also sang Northeastern songs as lullabies for Carmélia Alves. When Carmélia was 17 years old, she returned to Rio de Janeiro to study and began taking an interest in music. She was very interested in Carmen Miranda and listened to her music on Rádio Tupi. Alves gained success in the 1950s with the hit "Sabiá na gaiola." She began her career at the Hotel Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro, where she performed covers of hits by

Carmen Miranda Carmen Miranda, (; born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha, 9 February 1909 – 5 August 1955) was a Portuguese-born Brazilian samba singer, dancer, Broadway actress and film star who was active from the late 1920s onwards. Nicknamed "The B ...

. Her friend, baião and

accordionist Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed i ...

Luiz Gonzaga, exposed her to the music of Northeast Brazil and inspired her to devote the rest of her career to baião. Alves was married for 50 years to singer Jimmy Lester, who died in 1998. They had no children. They performed together throughout the world, including

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

, Germany and Mexico. Their success in Argentina prompted Alves to open a branch of her recording company in Buenos Aires. In 2000, she formed a group of professional singers from the 1950s.

Death

Alves died from cancer and

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

at the Jacarepagua Hospital in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

on 3 November 2012, at the age of 89.

Greatest Hits

''Chronological Order'' * 1943 - Deixei de Sofrer * 1944 - Quem Dorme no Ponto é Chofer * 1949 - Me Leva (with Ivon Curi) * 1950 - Coração Magoado * 1950 - Trepa no Coqueiro * 1951 - Sabiá na Gaiola * 1951 - Pé de Manacá (with o Trio Madrigal) * 1951 - Esta Noite Serenou * 1951 - Cabeça Inchada * 1956 - Cevando o Amargo

References

1923 births 2012 deaths 20th-century Brazilian women singers 20th-century Brazilian singers Singers from Rio de Janeiro (city) Deaths from cancer in Rio de Janeiro (state) {{Brazil-singer-stub