Rita Lee, Brazil's long-reigning Queen of Rock, dies at 75 | World News

Rita Lee Jones, Brazil’s million-selling “Queen of Rock” who gained a world following through her vibrant and candid vogue and such hits as “Ovelha Negra,” “Mania de Você” and “Now Solely Missing You,” has died at 75.

In every other case known as Rita Lee, she died at her residence in Sao Paulo on Monday evening, based mostly on an announcement posted to her official Instagram account.

Her motive behind demise wasn’t immediately disclosed. She had retired from stage performances inside the early 2010s in what she later attributed to bodily frailty, and was acknowledged in 2021 with lung most cancers, though her son launched a yr later that she had defeated the illness.

With a career spanning six a very long time, the Sao Paulo native left a long-lasting mark collectively along with her irreverence, creativity and compositions containing messages that helped introduce Brazilian society to feminism, whereas moreover candidly addressing her struggles with drug abuse.

Although she regarded her voice as “weak and a bit out of tune,′ like a sparrow’s, she cherished a long run of top-selling albums, along with “Rita Lee” and “Rita Lee & Roberto de Carvalho,” and dozens of her songs had been featured in broadly watched telenovelas in Latin America. The behemoth television group Globo used her rendition of the music “Poison Weed” (Poison Ivy) in three of its purposes.

“I was not born to get married and wash underwear. I wanted the equivalent freedom as a result of the boys who used to play on the road with their toy autos,” she knowledgeable the Brazilian model of Rolling Stone in 2008. “After I obtained into music, I seen that the “machos” reigned absolute, far more in rock music. ‘Wow’, I discussed, ‘that's the place I’m going to let my fangs out and, truly, give them a troublesome time.’”

She was a singer and songwriter praised for her versatility, participating in a minimal of 5 gadgets: drums, guitar, piano, harmonica and autoharp. She was moreover one among many first Brazilian musicians to make use of electrical guitar.

Lastly, her repute extended previous Brazil. She carried out in Portugal, England, Spain, France and Germany. In 1988, the British newspaper On daily basis Mirror revealed that then-Prince Charles admired her music “Lança Perfume” and considered her his favorite singer. She obtained a Latin Grammy inside the Best Portuguese Language Album class in 2001, for her album “3001.”

Rita Lee rose to fame with the group Os Mutantes (The Mutants), starting in 1966. Colors and creativity, along with irony and irreverence, had been Lee’s logos from the start, evident inside the flamboyant costumes she carried out in her reveals. By the mid-Nineteen Seventies, after selling 200,000 copies of the album “Forbidden Fruit,” Lee began to be known as the “queen of rock” on the music scene. Hits on “Forbidden Fruit” embrace “Now Solely Missing You” and “Ovelha Negra,” prolonged carried out on radio stations and Brazilian cleansing cleaning soap operas.

In an interview with the music site I Have Further Data Than Mates! in 2017, Lulu Santos, select of the Brazilian mannequin of The Voice, recalled seeing Rita Lee play autoharp at a stay efficiency.

“She launched that issue on stage, in these clothes… it was absolutely mythological,” the musician talked about. “There truly is a lineage of ‘ladies’ tied to rock in Brazil, of which she is a good marketing consultant. Nevertheless I see her as a part that distances herself from the clichés of rock.” She, from her feminine standpoint, sees the clumsiness of the worn-out cliché of the male rocker, the one who performs alongside together with his legs open. She seen correct through him.”

She was one among many first public figures in Brazil to popularize feminist themes, akin to infusing the lyrics of her 1979 music “Mania de Voce” (Mania for You) with female sexuality and pleasure. Associated songs adopted, akin to “Amor e Sexo” (Love and Intercourse) which contrasted the two intimately and “Lança Perfume” (Spray Perfume), an ode to unbridled hedonism.

Later in life, she turned a vegan and animal rights activist. For a few years, she saved her hair vibrant purple and sometimes wore matching lenses, a most well-liked look that she discarded these days as she allowed her gray to develop out. She resolved in 2015 to reinvent herself as a white butterfly.

In her autobiography, revealed the following yr, she didn’t shy from describing the sexual abuse she suffered as a child by the arms of an individual who had come to restore her mother’s stitching machine.

She moreover referred to herself as a “rebel” and “hippie communist,” and wrote of sneaking out the house home windows of her house as a teen to play, being arrested in the middle of the dictatorship for possession of marijuana, and her various stints in rehab clinics for medication and alcohol.

“I acknowledge that my best songs had been written in an altered state, and my worst too. I solely regret my delay in realizing that the ‘medicine’ had prolonged since expired,” she wrote. “My period suffered the claustrophobia of a brutal dictatorship, and using medication was a method to breathe airs of freedom.”

In an interview with the television program Fantastico in 2020, she outlined that bodily frailty had prompted her to depart the stage eight years earlier.

“Getting outdated, for me, was a shock, because of I’ve not at all been outdated in my life,” she knowledgeable the current. “I was left wanting to reside my outdated age away from the stage, with out sharing it with most of the people.”

A public wake could be held on the planetarium in Sao Paulo on May 10, based mostly on the Instagram publish.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared three days of mourning and lamented the dearth of “one among many largest and top names in Brazilian music.” He praised on his official Twitter profile “an artist ahead of her time,” and her humorousness.

She is survived by her three children and her husband, with whom she shared a 44-year musical partnership. In 2021, they launched a model new music, Change, collectively, and a remix of various the singer’s largest hits.

Years sooner than, she imagined her future demise, as if prophesying:

“I could be in heaven,” she wrote, “with my soul present participating in my autoharp and singing to God, ‘Thanks, Lord, lastly sedated.’ Epitaph: She was not at all a superb occasion, nonetheless she was good of us.”