- 1989

🔵 YouTube Playlist: “Lambada“, also known as “Chorando Se Foi (Lambada)“ or “Llorando Se Fue (Lambada)“ (both meaning 'crying, he/she went away' in Portuguese and Spanish, respectively), is a song by French-Brazilian pop group Kaoma. It featured guest vocals by Brazilian vocalist Loalwa Braz, and was released as the first single from Kaoma's debut album Worldbeat. The video, filmed on Cocos beach in the city of Trancoso, in the state of Bahia, Brazil featured the Brazilian child duo Chico & Roberta. The song in Portuguese was a mix cover of the 1986 hit “Chorando Se Foi“ by Márcia Ferreira (with lyrics translated to Portuguese) and the Cuarteto Continental hit “Llorando Se Fue“ (the first upbeat version of the song introducing the accordion), released in 1984 through the Peruvian record label INFOPESA and produced by Alberto Maraví; both songs were adapted from the 1981 Bolivian song “Llorando se fue“ by Los Kjarkas. At the time of release, “Lambada“ was regarded as the most successful European single in the history of CBS Records, with sales of 1.8 million copies in France and more than 4 million across Europe. Overall, “Lambada“ sold 5 million copies worldwide in 1989 alone according to the New York Times. However, the Kaoma group did not credit the original song of Los Kjarkas, turning their version into plagiarism and ending with lawsuits that would be won by the original authors of the song, the Bolivian group and their Portuguese-language co-authors. The lyrics and music of Kaoma's “Chorando Se Foi (Lambada)“ were an unauthorized translation of the song “Llorando se fue“, originally composed, performed and recorded by the Bolivian Andean folk group Los Kjarkas in 1981. The song's lyrics and music had been lawfully registered in 1985 by the founding members of Los Kjarkas – Gonzalo and Ulises Hermosa – in Germany's Music and Authors Society (GEMA), and the unauthorized copy by Kaoma led to a successful 1990 lawsuit by Los Kjarkas against Kaoma's producer Jean-Claude Bonaventure. In 1991, French court ruled that co-writers Márcia Ferreira and José Ari were the authors of the Portuguese translation for Kaoma's version. Nowadays, “Chorando Se Foi (Lambada)“ is credited to the Hermosa brothers (as authors), Alberto Maraví, Márcia Ferreira and José Ari. According to Gonzalo, Los Kjarkas had based “Llorando Se Fue“ on a small, nostalgic Andean melody. Their song was written in a sad and slow Afro-Bolivian Saya rhythm.