1972, July 27 – NELLY OMAR RETURNS TO THE STAGE

When Juan Peron was overthrown, one evening Nelly Omar had her home invaded and ransacked by soldiers; she was considered a Peronist and dangerous and all of a sudden there was no more work for her…the radio stations would not play her music and her public appearances came to a stop…there was a period when she tried to downplay her involvement; that she wasn’t really a Peronist, that she wasn’t political….she downplayed the significance of having recorded the milonga “Soy La Descamisada” a theme song for Peronism….much later in life in a radio interview she claimed to dearly love Juan Peron and Evita and that she was an ardent Peronist…a very proud woman, she once said that she never went hat-in-hand to anyone and that the only one who had helped her had been Evita who as a fan…in any case when the military took over she went first to Uruguay and then to Venezuela and in disgust disappeared from the public eye until Jose Canet, guitarist and composer, convinced to come out of retirement…they recorded and did a series of public performances together

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Nelly Omar was born on September 10, 1911 (Virgo) in the city Guamin…her father an immigrant from Genova, Italy was a ranch foreman who in his spar time loved to sing and strum the guitar…he was a true friend to Carlos Gardel who Nelly remembers seeing for the first time when he was at their home….she began to study music and dance; at the age of 13 she auditioned for a folk group “Cenizas de Fogon” which performed on radio as well and got accepted…she continued developing her career on Radio…she joined the group “Cuadros Argentinos” , a theater company which was led by two brothers Julio and Alfredo Navarrine who wrote many tangos still popular today…there she met and eventually married Antonio Molina…the marriage lasted eight years but she was to say, “I knew it was a mistake after the first few months”…she later had an affair with the legendary lyricist Homero Manzi whose “Ninguna” may have been inspired by her…she appeared in two films “Canto de Amor” in 1940 and “Melodias de la America” in 1942…in December of  1997, at the age of 86 she recorded a CD…incredibly, at the age of 101 she is still going strong; still as feisty and fiery as ever

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