(Rio de Janeiro) Rita Lee, Brazilian rock legend, with great hits like Launched Perfumedied Monday evening in Sao Paulo at the age of 75, his family announced on social networks on Tuesday.
The singer, who had been suffering from lung cancer since 2021, died “in her residence in Sao Paulo last night, surrounded by the love of her whole family, as she always wanted”, can we read in a statement posted on Instagram.
The funeral wake will take place on Wednesday at the planetarium in Ibirapuera Park, the green lung of the Brazilian megalopolis.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva paid tribute on Tuesday to one of the “most brilliant artists of Brazilian music”.
“A singer, songwriter, actress and multi-instrumentalist, she was an artist ahead of her time,” he added.
“She was a revolutionary woman”, reacted for her part the Minister of Culture Margareth Menezes, during a hearing in the Senate, where she asked that a minute of silence be respected in her homage.
Crowned during her lifetime the “Queen” of Brazilian rock, she had marked her time by her libertarian spirit, her voice, but also her look: shoulder-length hair with a radiant complexion (often in red) and round glasses with colored lenses.
Born in Sao Paulo on December 31, 1947, in the Brazilian middle class, Rita Lee Jones began her musical career in the 60s, singing covers of the Beatles.
But it was with the rock trio Os Mutantes that she gained fame, at the height of tropicalism, a libertarian movement that revolutionized Brazilian music in the midst of the military dictatorship (1964-1985).
“Rest in peace, my sister, I love you,” said singer Gilberto Gil, one of the emblems of tropicalism, on Instagram in a message accompanied by a video showing him alongside Rita Lee.
From 1972 Rita Lee continued her solo career, with big hits like Ovelha Negra (1975), mania de você (1979), Launched Perfume (1980), and Love and sex (2003).
She retired from the scene at the age of 64, in 2012, and has since lived as a recluse in Sao Paulo with her husband, Roberto de Carvalho, and among his animals, her other great passion.
“My mother, whom I love more than anything, has become a star in the sky. What an intense and spectacular life you had […] Your art will live forever,” one of his three sons, Joao Lee, posted on Instagram.