Latterly she had lived in Geneva but she had recently returned to Brazil, where she owned a small hotel near Rio, to be treated for cancer. She was said by friends to be a warm but fragile person who had been taken advantage of by others and who had got herself into financial difficulty despite the money she had made. Braz toured with the group for a decade before embarking on a solo career that included several albums of her own which showcased her knowledge of four languages. Kaoma released an LP, Worldbeat, in 1990 and had several minor hits thereafter without replicating the success of Lambada. In 1985, she moved to Paris, where she married and had two children. Music was in her blood – her father was a dance band leader and her mother a classical pianist – and she began to learn the piano at four.īy the time she was 13, she was performing and in her twenties she worked with some of the biggest names in Brazilian music, including Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and his sister Maria Bethania. Loalwa Braz was born in Jacarepagua, a middle-class district of Rio de Janeiro, on June 3 1953. It has also recently been cited as an inspiration by Clean Bandit, the British group that was at No 1 at Christmas with Rockabye. In 1998, the Spice Girls name-checked it in their hit Spice Up Your Life (“Flamenco/ Lambada/ But hip-hop is harder”) and in 2011 it was sampled by Jennifer Lopez for what proved to be her biggest single, On the Floor. They successfully sued Kaoma and were subsequently credited.Īlthough a one-hit wonder, the Lambada is still firmly embedded in popular culture. This was a little-known Bolivian band, Los Kjarkas, who in 1982 had based their much slower tune Llorando se fue on a traditional Andean melody. Soon after, however, it emerged that (unlike Marcia Ferreira) the group had not sought permission from the original writers of the song. In France, it was No 1 for three months and the bestselling track of the year. It reached No 4 in Britain, with the band appearing on Top of the Pops, but it got to No 1 in 11 other countries, selling more than 4 million copies in Europe alone (a record for its label CBS). The song’s summery feel, and a video which promised – somewhat surprisingly – that music could overcome parental disapproval of interracial romance, made it a global smash. Originally, the woman would let fall a handkerchief which her partner would try to retrieve using only his mouth. This was derived from the lambada, a dance popular in the Amazon region of Brazil and distinguished by its swaying motion and the intertwining of the dancers’ legs. Kaoma retained some of its melancholy air – the lyrics are about a failed love affair – by using an accordion as accompaniment, but what carried the tune was its catchy, lilting beat. Lambada was a cover of Chorando se Foi, a song by a Brazilian singer-songwriter, Marcia Ferreira. It was performed by Kaoma, a French-Brazilian group that played reggae and salsa and which recruited the Rio-born Loalwa Braz when she was singing jazz in Paris nightclubs. Loalwa Braz, who has been found dead aged 63, sang the vocals on Lambada, the Latin dance tune that was a worldwide hit in 1989.
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