Johnny Rodrigues

João Rodrigues was born in Cape Verde. In the beginning of the 1970s, when Cape Verde was a Portuguese colony, Angola fought a war of independence with Portugal. Rodrigues did not want to fight in Angola as Portuguese conscript, so he and his family emigrated to the United States. In 1974, he went on vacation to the Netherlands and adopted the English form of the first name and played as a DJ at the discothèque Ma Belle Amie in Scheveningen. Peter Tetteroo, owner of the disco discovered Rodrigues and chose to make a single. Not long after in 1975, he started producing songs including "Hey mal yo" which would be the first single made by a Cape Verdean to reach the Dutch chart and the Flemish charts of neighbouring Belgium, the single was the adaptation of the Portuguese folk dance O Malhão (pre-1990s spelling Ó Malhão). On the Dutch charts it remained for twelve weeks. When his "orchestra" appeared on stage, he stood along on stage. The second nickname is orquesta which is Spanish for orchestra, the Portuguese name is "orquestra". His two remaining singles were not as successful as his first, Hasbaba (1975) reached number 19 but number 24 in the national Hit Parade and "Uma casa portuguesa" (1977), a cover of a single by Amália Rodrigues reached number 31 and remained for just three weeks.

On december 27, 2019 journalist Leo Blokhuis announced on Dutch television that producer Willem van Kooten had admitted that the song Hey mal yo was plagiarised from the Brazilian singer Roberto Leal and it was actually his original recording.[1]