Olga Coelho Biography

Brazilian-born Olga Coelho began her singing career at age three when, while traveling with her parents by boat on the Amazon River, she wandered away and took up with a German band singing the “Merry Widow Waltz.” From that beginning, she seemed destined to enjoy a long career in music and subsequently studied at the Conservatory of Rio de Janeiro before setting out professionally as a singer. At one point she was concerned enough about the level of support that she was receiving from friends at home, so she traveled anonymously to Argentina, where she was unknown, and, starting from scratch, became even more renowned there. After that there was no stopping her success in South America and subsequently in Europe and the United States. She became a walking ambassador for South American music, with a special interest in folk songs that led her to a parallel career collecting and arranging them — she was proficient on the guitar and a serious musicologist, and traveled in circles that included the likes of renowned composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. The composers who inscribed compositions to her included Nelson Araguarí, Vladimir Bobri, Ernani Braga, Elsa Calcagno, Lorenzo Fernândez, Lily y Meche Pérez Freire, Mercedes Pérez Freire, Pedro E. Gutierrez, Adolfo V. Luna, Francisco Mignone, Mercedes Orrego, Luis R. Sammartino, Maria Luisa Sepúlveda, Hekel Tavares, Floro M. Ugarte, and Manuel Yañez. She was also, along with Carmen Miranda and her sister Aurora Miranda, one of the major participants in the World War II-era “Good Neighbor Policy” between the United States and Brazil, which brought her even more exposure in the U.S. After the war, Coelho was for many years one of the best-known interpreters of Brazilian and South American folk songs in the United States. Vanguard Records issued her first U.S. album, Olga Coelho Sings, in the early ’50s, devoted primarily to music from Brazil but also including songs in French and Spanish.