Flavia Coelho
Biography Flavia Coelho
Flavia Coelho
is a nomad by nature, a thirst for adventure inherited from her mother, beautician for the first transvestites in the neighbourhood of São Gonçaloin Rio de Janeiro. Growing up she listened, as loudly as possible, to Diana Ross, Nina Hagen and the divas of popular Brazilian songs like Gal Costa and Maria Bethânia, whereas her father collected cassettes of traditional music of the Nordeste. As a little girl she was full of the sound of Forro and the Repente music of Brazilian griots.
Flavia was 8 when her family moved to SãoLuis, also known as the Island of Love, situated between tropical forests, marsh lands and beaches. At this time she wandered through the house singing with a bucket on her head. It was with this homemade echo chamber – an idea of her mother – that she discovered her voice. She was only 14 when she answered an ad to join As Solteirissimas (The Bachelors) a group of girls who were looking for a new singer. A double life began! Secretly she sang in bars working relentlessly on her voice and rhythms, in styles that ranged from grunge to punk, rock to jazz, rap to pop.The pretty carioca was not fainthearted. Flavia experienced all sorts of hell: hanging around some of the most dangerous parts of the town, staying up all night in squats and bus shelters and crossing the length and breadth of Brazil to be heard. She left Rio in 2006, the very moment she was making a name for herself, to start from scratch in Paris, the city of her dreams. It was the period when she sang in the subway, passed the hat in bars, did child-minding, cleaning jobs and even walked dogs.
In Paris, the Cameroon guitarist and bass player Pierre Bika Bika taught her African rhythms and with her wrote the first album, Bossa Muffin, which was produced by Victor-attila Vagh and came out in 2011. That year she obtained the Génération Réservoir Newcomer of the year Award which proved to be a springboard from which she has never looked back; jumping on tours that seemed never-ending, crossing borders and making unforgettable memories like when she opened for Gilberto Gil at Nuits de Fourvière (Lyon) in 2012.
In 2013, the restless Brazilian brought out the ultra upbeat EP Bossa Muffin, Remixes and Inéditos, contributed to the official theme song for Marseille-Provence European Capital of Culture, received the Golden Women Music Breakthrough prize and got dancing around the happy crowd, the well-known Ultra Bal.
Since living in Paris, Flavia finds that “everything sounds Brazilian”. That’s exactly what you feel when listening to Mundo Meu, produced by the same producer as her first album, Victor-attila Vagh and mixed by Tom Fire. She unfolds her inner world like an immense, multicoloured urban map. Her flow resonates to an urban Baile Funk, the Repente of her father becomes Afrobeat, the Forróand Samba find a new life fuelled with Hip-Hop, African roots join Kanak chants, Bolerojoins Raga while East European music becomes tropical via Jamaica.
Flavia is one who builds new aural textures on the memory and culture of Brazilian music. More in touch with her roots in Mundo Meu than in her previous release, Bossa Muffin, she goes back to her past and plunges us into an urban jungle coloured with native slang.
