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"We announce the death of Rita Lee at her home
in Sao Paulo late last night, surrounded by all the love of her
family, as she always wanted," a statement posted on the
singer's Instagram account said, inviting the public to her wake
on Wednesday.
Her death brought an outpouring of tributes from artists,
politicians and celebrities who cheered her trailblazing role in
Brazilian rock.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called her "an artist ahead
of her time" and "one of the greatest and most brilliant names
in Brazilian music."
Rita Lee Jones de Carvalho was born on Dec. 31, 1947, in Sao
Paulo, to a dentist of U.S. descent and a Brazilian pianist with
Italian ancestry.
She was central to Brazil's politically charged Tropicalia
movement, which emerged in defiance of a military dictatorship
starting in 1964, and her work at the time was often censored.
With more than 20 albums recorded and 55 million records sold,
her songs touched on issues related to feminism and sex in an
era when such issues were taboo.
Lee gained fame in the 1960s with the band Os Mutantes, formed
with Arnaldo Baptista and Sergio Dias, playing alongside legends
of Brazilian pop music such as Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso
to international acclaim.
Kicked out of Os Mutantes by Baptista, whom she had been married
to, for supposed artistic differences, Lee played with the band
Tutti Frutti in the 1970s.
That band broke up towards the end of the decade, leading Rita
to start her solo career, and she played often with her husband
Roberto de Carvalho, the father of her three children.
Rita Lee was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2021 and had been
undergoing treatment since then.
(Reporting by Steven Grattan and Eduardo Simoes; Editing by
Bernadette Baum and Richard Chang)
(Photo: Brazilian singers Caetano Veloso (L), Rita Lee and
Gilberto Gil (R) stand on the Aguia de Ouro Samba School float
during a carnival at Anhembi Sambadrome in Sao Paulo February
19, 2012. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File Photo)
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