Brazilian rock queen Rita Lee dies at 75 | music

Rita Lee, one of many biggest singers and songwriters within the historical past of Brazilian music, handed away on Monday (8) on the age of 75. She was identified with lung most cancers in 2021 and has been present process remedies for the illness.

The singer’s household issued a press release on her social media: “We announce the demise of Rita Lee, at her residence in São Paulo, the capital, late final evening, amid all of the love of her household as she all the time wished.” The occasion will probably be open to the general public, within the Planetarium in Ibirapuera Park, on Wednesday (10), from 10 am to five pm.

Rita helped combine the rock revolution into the tropical metropolis’s artistic explosion, shaped essentially the most revered Brazilian rock band on the earth, Os Mutantes, and created songs in her solo profession with large pop attraction with out dropping her freedom and irreverence.

At all times fashionable, Rita has been a reference for creativity and female independence throughout her almost 60-year profession. The title “Queen of Brazilian Rock” got here virtually naturally, however she thought it was “tacky” – she most well-liked the “patron saint of freedom”.

Rita Lee Jones was born in São Paulo, on December 31, 1947. Her father, Charles Jones, was a dentist and the son of American immigrants. Her mom, Italian Romilda Padula, was a pianist, and inspired her daughter to check the instrument and sing alongside together with her sisters.

On the age of 16, Rita joined an all-female singing trio, the Teenage Singers, and carried out as an beginner at college recitals. Singer and producer Tony Campello found the singers and invited them to take part within the recordings as a backing vocal.

In 1964 she joined a rock band known as Six Sided Rockers which after some lineup and identify adjustments gave rise to the Mutantes in 1966. The group was initially shaped by Rita Lee, Arnaldo Baptista and Sérgio Dias.

Primal to the tropics, by uniting hallucinogenic psychedelia with native rhythms, they turned essentially the most extremely regarded Brazilian group amongst rock musicians on the earth, idolized by Kurt Cobain, David Byrne, Jack White, Beck and others.

The trio was accompanied by Gilberto Gil in “Domingo no parque” on the Música Well-liked Brasileira Competition with the third recording in 1967, and Caetano Veloso in “É Banned for Ban” on the Third Worldwide Competition in Cancú, by Globo in 1968, lecturers from Trupelia.

Os Mutantes additionally participated within the 1968 album Tropicália ou Panis et Circensis, the motion’s seminal recording.

She was a part of the Mutantes through the band’s most related and inventive interval, from 1966 to 1972. She recorded “Os Mutantes” (68), “Mutantes” (69), “A Divina Comédia ou Ando Meio Disligado” (70), “Jardim Electrique” (71) and “The Mutants and Their Comets within the Land of Borits” (72).

The top of the connection with Arnaldo Baptista coincided together with her departure from the Mutantes. The primary solo album was “Construct up”, even earlier than she left the band, in 1970. She additionally launched “Hoje é o Primeiro Dia do Resto da Sua Vida”, in 1972, nonetheless recorded with the group.

Her post-Mutants profession took form with the group Tutti Frutti, the place she recorded 5 albums, specializing in the “Fruto block”, from 1975, which included the only “Now it’s simply miss you”.

From 1979 onwards, she started working in partnership together with her husband Roberto Di Carvalho, without end establishing a solo profession. She has written and recorded pop rock songs with nice success.

One of the profitable albums was “Rita Lee”, from 1979, with “Mania de Você”, “Chega mais” and “Doce Vampiro”. On the album of the identical title the next 12 months, she went in a extra in style route and had greater hits with “Lança Fragrance” and “Baila comigo”.

She was a rock singer earlier than and after the style turned a industrial phenomenon in Brazil within the mid-Eighties. Notable albums embody “Saúde” (1981) and “Rita e Roberto” (1985), two of which featured the primary rock in Rio stage.

In 1991 a interval of 4 years started excluding Roberto de Carvalho. Her comeback was in 1995, on the “A Marca da Zorra” album tour, when she additionally opened for the Rolling Stones in Brazil. The next 12 months, that they had a civil marriage after 20 years collectively.

In 1996, she fell from her farm porch underneath the affect of medicine, fracturing her maxillary hole. Rita started attempting to give up alcohol and medicines, however instructed “Fantástico” she solely managed to take action in January 2006.

In 2001, RIta Lee received a Latin Grammy for Finest Portuguese-Language Rock Album with “3001”. She’s going to nonetheless have 5 extra Award nominations, and can obtain a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022.

In 2012, she introduced that she would cease performing on account of her bodily weak point. “I give up live shows, however I by no means give up music,” she wrote on Twitter.

On January 28 of that 12 months, on the Competition de Verão de Sergipe, she carried out the present that was heralded because the final of her profession, when she had a struggle with a policeman. She was charged with contempt of authority and brought to the police station, then launched.

Rita Lee by no means actually toured once more. However he nonetheless carried out within the Federal District on the finish of 2012, reducing his pants to the viewers, and sang in reminiscence of São Paulo in 2013, being applauded by the viewers in his dwelling metropolis.

His newest New Studios album was launched in April 2012. “Reza” was his first work of recent songs in 9 years. The title monitor was the work track, which I outlined as “a prayer for defense from envy, wrath, and pestilence”.

In all, there have been 40 albums, 6 Mutants albums, and 34 in his solo profession.

In 2016, she launched Rita Lee: An Autobiography. Among the many ebook’s revelations was that she was sexually abused on the age of six by a technician who got here to repair her mom’s stitching machine at dwelling.

Within the ebook, a bestseller, she additionally talks actually about episodes in her skilled life, similar to when she was fired from the Mutantes in 1972, and her private life, similar to her battle with alcoholism.

Along with her resume, Rita Lee has had a protracted profession as a author. The sequence “Dr. Alex” from 1983, however was re-released in 2019 and 2020 and focuses on the singer’s battle for animal welfare and the environmental trigger. In March 2023, she introduced “one other autobiography”, which has been pre-ordered.

She additionally wrote “Amiga Ursa: A Unhappy Story with a Joyful Ending” in Kids’s Literature. “Favorita”, “Droubs”, “Storinas” and “Rita Lyrica” ​​are different books written by the singer.

On tv, Rita participated within the sequence “Prime Mannequin”, “Malo Molher”, “Vamp” and “Celebridad” in specials.

In Could 2021, Rita Lee was identified with lung most cancers. I adopted immunotherapy and radiotherapy.

4 months later, she launched the final single of her profession, “Adjustments”, in partnership together with her husband Roberto Di Carvalho and producer Gui Boratto.

In April 2022, her son, Beto, wrote to me that she had been cured of most cancers.

Lately, she has lived together with her household on a farm within the inside of São Paulo. She left three youngsters: Roberto, Joao and Antonio.