The singer Gal Costa was a highly respected artist and appreciated by Brazilian music lovers outside the borders of her country. Known for her crystalline voice, she died Wednesday at the age of 77. Gabriela Carvalhão, her press secretary, told AFP “munfortunately, we confirm this information“, without specifying the causes of death.
Gal Costa had to cancel a concert at the Primavera Sound festival in Sao Paulo last weekend after undergoing surgery in September to remove a nodule from the nasal cavity.
Born in Salvador de Bahia, she was one of the leading figures of tropicalism at the end of the 1960s. Her career was launched by a first duet album with Caetano Veloso, domingoreleased in 1967 and home to a song that has become a Veloso classic, coracao vagabundo. The latter, at 80, said on Twitter “I am very touched and saddened by the death of my sister Gal Costa“.
During his career, Gal Costa has released around forty records, between studio and live albums, playing the role of the greatest Brazilian composers: Veloso and Gil of course, but also Ary Barroso, Dorival Caymmi, Tom Jobim, Chico Buarque, Djavan or Luiz Melodia. In 2012, the Brazilian version of the magazine RollingStone ranked the Latin Grammy Award-winning singer as the seventh greatest voice in Brazil.
“Gal Costa was one of the greatest singers in the world, one of the main artists who carried the name and the sound of Brazil all over the world (…) Our country is losing one of its great voices“, reacted the elected president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Instagram.
Intuitive and self-taught, Gal Costa has never taken any singing lessons. His greatest influence was Joao Gilberto, the father of Bossa Nova who died in 2019, also from Bahia.
One day, after an impromptu audition, he said to her: “you are the greatest singer in brazil“. She has even been compared to Janis Joplin because of her rebellious sensuality in the midst of a dictatorship.
Her presence on stage, her colorful and sometimes provocative outfits, her Afro cut in the 70s, made her a sex symbol, far from the image of the shy teenager of her debut.
Winner of a Latin Grammy in 2011, Gal Costa has always been committed, particularly to the feminist cause, although she has remained discreet about her political convictions.
This did not prevent her from strongly criticizing the cultural policy of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Gal Costa assured that he never underwent interrogation during the dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985), even if the cover of his disc India (1973), which shows her topless, was censored.