As if declaiming a poem, as if telling a secret. She whispered and paraded her vocal power in different tones. The singer Nora Ney (1922-2003) did what she wanted with that big voice. “She innovated all the time and had a different way of singing”, says researcher Raphael Farias. For him, the artist made a “sambolero”.
Farias, together with other authors, is preparing a dossier to celebrate the centenary of the singer who sang the hit Nobody loves Me (1952), and who became a national idol. The country loved her and would stop in front of a set, at prime time, at 9 pm, to listen to the queen in the National Radio from 1953.
The dossier must be published by Unicamp’s Center for Integration, Documentation and Cultural Diffusion (CIDDIC). The work brings together researchers from different universities who study popular music, or even concert music, and also historians of Brazilian popular music, in different areas of knowledge.
“Nobody loves Me
Nobody wants me
nobody calls me
From “my love”
life goes by
and me with no one
and who hugs me
You don’t like me (…)”
Genres
According to the researcher, Nora Ney was fundamental for the innovation of the samba-canção genre and created a school in Brazilian music. “She was marked by both the samba-canção and the bolero. In my research, I adopted the term sambolero. I have even published some texts using this term”. Nora, according to her assessment, would be in Brazilian music between these two genres.
“She had a style close to the American one. She even started on the radio singing the repertoire in English. She would bring a way of singing closer to the microphone and would whisper some parts.” For the researcher, Nora Ney’s style can be understood as a samba-canção or even a “sambolero”. “In the 1950s, above all, a good part of the production that is called samba-canção is very close to the Mexican bolero.
In the case of Nora Ney, one of her inspirations was the Mexican singer Elvira Rios, who was a bolero singer and had a serious voice like Nora”, says the researcher who developed a master’s degree about these musical genres in the 1940s and 1950s.
Seated, radio stars Nora Ney and Ângela Maria. Standing, radio broadcaster Gerdal dos Santos – EBC/National Radio Collection.
passions
He explains that Nora Ney dealt with themes such as love, passion, abandonment and idealization. “At that time, from the 1940s and 1950s, they were songs that dealt with a lot of these love issues”.
The researcher considers that Nora Ney, in addition to standing out for her love songs, she, in partnership with her husband, the singer Jorge Goulart (1926 – 2012), showed concern for women’s rights. “We talk about cesspool music, but we also find criticism of machismo”.
Concerned with preserving the memory of the artist’s work, the researcher created a group on social networks so that other researchers (and even fans) can exchange files and information about the singer.
“I think this is important so that the memories of artists like her are not buried under other musical genres classified as MPB. The Facebook page and on Instagram have attracted people of different age groups. “They have a more memoirist bias.”
The Queen
Year 1953. Total expectation of listeners for 21:00, prime time on the radio. The wait was for the program to be on the air When Sings Brazilthrough the National Radio. “Now, let’s listen to Nora Ney, with the samba of Lupicínio Rodrigues, Aves Daninhas”. And the voice of the “radio queen” that everyone had been waiting for…
“I don’t want to talk to anyone
I’d rather go home and sleep
If I’m going to talk to someone
The questions will repeat
When I’m at peace with my baby
Nobody comes to ask for him
But knowing that we’re fighting
These evil ones want to torture me” (…)
Listen to the song on the original recording of National Radio
Love or even “the pain of love” was in the voice of the newly hired radio station, parading the samba-canção with the timbre that made her famous. Nora Ney (stage name of Iracema de Souza Ferreira) was a consecrated star at the age of 31. The carioca gave even more success to the compositions of Lupicínio Rodrigues, Dorival Caymmi, Ataulfo Alves and Antonio Maria.
Nora Ney was born 100 years ago (March 20, 1922) in Rio de Janeiro. She died in 2003, at the age of 82. Among so many songs that won her interpretation, Nobody loves Me, by Antônio Maria and Fernando Lobo was remarkable. “Without a doubt, this song is her calling card. When we hear Nora’s name, we think of the song”, said singer Ellen de Lima, in an interview with Brazil Agency.
Ellen, now 83, remembers Nora Ney as an idol and reference. Ellen was a singer National Radio and performed with Nora in the 1950s. “One day she told me I had a lot of talent.” Ellen was moved by the star’s words that she was quite “serious and focused” in everything she did. “She was a very eh person with a very refined taste”.
