Rita Lee, Brazil’s long-reigning Queen of Rock, dies at 75
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Her reason behind loss of life wasn’t instantly disclosed. She had retired from stage performances within the early 2010s in what she later attributed to bodily frailty, and was identified in 2021 with lung most cancers, although her son introduced a 12 months later that she had defeated the sickness.
With a profession spanning six many years, the Sao Paulo native left an enduring mark along with her irreverence, creativity and compositions containing messages that helped introduce Brazilian society to feminism, whereas additionally candidly addressing her struggles with drug abuse.
Though she regarded her voice as “weak and a little bit out of tune,′ like a sparrow’s, she loved a future of top-selling albums, together with “Rita Lee” and “Rita Lee & Roberto de Carvalho,” and dozens of her songs have been featured in broadly watched telenovelas in Latin America. The behemoth tv community Globo used her rendition of the tune “Poison Weed” (Poison Ivy) in three of its applications.
“I used to be not born to get married and wash underwear. I needed the identical freedom because the boys who used to play on the street with their toy automobiles,” she informed the Brazilian version of Rolling Stone in 2008. “After I obtained into music, I noticed that the “machos” reigned absolute, much more in rock music. ‘Wow’, I mentioned, ‘that is the place I’m going to let my fangs out and, actually, give them a tough time.’”
She was a singer and songwriter praised for her versatility, taking part in not less than 5 devices: drums, guitar, piano, harmonica and autoharp. She was additionally one of many first Brazilian musicians to make use of electrical guitar.
Ultimately, her reputation prolonged past Brazil. She carried out in Portugal, England, Spain, France and Germany. In 1988, the British newspaper Each day Mirror revealed that then-Prince Charles admired her tune “Lança Fragrance” and thought of her his favourite singer. She gained a Latin Grammy within the Greatest Portuguese Language Album class in 2001, for her album “3001.”
Rita Lee rose to fame with the group Os Mutantes (The Mutants), beginning in 1966. Colours and creativity, in addition to irony and irreverence, have been Lee’s logos from the beginning, evident within the flamboyant costumes she carried out in her reveals. By the mid-Seventies, after promoting 200,000 copies of the album “Forbidden Fruit,” Lee started to be known as the “queen of rock” on the music scene. Hits on “Forbidden Fruit” embrace “Now Solely Lacking You” and “Ovelha Negra,” lengthy performed on radio stations and Brazilian cleaning soap operas.
In an interview with the music web site I Have Extra Information Than Pals! in 2017, Lulu Santos, choose of the Brazilian model of The Voice, recalled seeing Rita Lee play autoharp at a live performance.
“She introduced that factor on stage, in these garments… it was fully mythological,” the musician mentioned. “There actually is a lineage of ‘ladies’ tied to rock in Brazil, of which she is a respectable consultant. However I see her as a component that distances herself from the clichés of rock.” She, from her female standpoint, sees the clumsiness of the worn-out cliché of the male rocker, the one who performs together with his legs open. She noticed proper by him.”
She was one of many first public figures in Brazil to popularize feminist themes, reminiscent of infusing the lyrics of her 1979 tune “Mania de Voce” (Mania for You) with feminine sexuality and pleasure. Related songs adopted, reminiscent of “Amor e Sexo” (Love and Intercourse) which contrasted the 2 intimately and “Lança Fragrance” (Spray Fragrance), an ode to unbridled hedonism.
Later in life, she turned a vegan and animal rights activist. For many years, she saved her hair vivid crimson and infrequently wore matching lenses, a preferred look that she discarded lately as she allowed her grey to develop out. She resolved in 2015 to reinvent herself as a white butterfly.
In her autobiography, revealed the next 12 months, she didn’t shy from describing the sexual abuse she suffered as a toddler by the hands of a person who had come to repair her mom’s stitching machine.
She additionally referred to herself as a “insurgent” and “hippie communist,” and wrote of sneaking out the home windows of her home as a youngster to play, being arrested throughout the dictatorship for possession of marijuana, and her a number of stints in rehab clinics for medicine and alcohol.
“I acknowledge that my greatest songs have been written in an altered state, and my worst too. I solely remorse my delay in realizing that the ‘medication’ had lengthy since expired,” she wrote. “My era suffered the claustrophobia of a brutal dictatorship, and utilizing medicine was a strategy to breathe airs of freedom.”
In an interview with the tv program Fantastico in 2020, she defined that bodily frailty had prompted her to go away the stage eight years earlier.
“Getting outdated, for me, was a shock, as a result of I’ve by no means been outdated in my life,” she informed the present. “I used to be left eager to reside my outdated age away from the stage, with out sharing it with the general public.”
A public wake can be held on the planetarium in Sao Paulo on Might 10, in response to the Instagram submit.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared three days of mourning and lamented the lack of “one of many greatest and most good names in Brazilian music.” He praised on his official Twitter profile “an artist forward of her time,” and her humorousness.
She is survived by her three youngsters and her husband, with whom she shared a 44-year musical partnership. In 2021, they launched a brand new tune, Change, collectively, and a remix of a few of the singer’s greatest hits.
Years earlier than, she imagined her future loss of life, as if prophesying:
“I can be in heaven,” she wrote, “with my soul current taking part in my autoharp and singing to God, ‘Thanks, Lord, lastly sedated.’ Epitaph: She was by no means a great instance, however she was good folks.”
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