Rita Lee, the legendary Brazilian musician, composer, and founder of the groundbreaking band Os Mutantes, has passed away at the age of 75, eliciting heartfelt tributes to the undisputed “Queen of Rock” in Brazil.
Rita Lee was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2021, nicknaming her malignancy “Jair” in a sarcastic reference to Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil at the time.
The pioneering artist and feminist icon, who sold more than 55 million records during her six-decade career, went into remission last year but died on Monday night at her residence in So Paulo.
“In this moment of profound sadness, the family thanks everyone for their love and affection,” read a message on Lee’s Instagram account, inviting fans to a public wake at Parque Ibirapuera, the largest park in Latin America.
The news of Rita Lee’s death prompted an outpouring of grief and reverence for one of the most influential personalities in modern Brazilian music.
“I’m a disaster. The Greatest has departed… “There will never be another Rita Lee,” tweeted rock musician Pitty.
Margareth Menezes, the vocalist and composer who serves as Brazil’s minister of culture, hailed her as a “revolutionary woman.”
One of her sons, Joo Lee, wrote on social media,
“The world has lost one of the most extraordinary and singular people who ever lived.” “What an exciting and extraordinary existence you led. admired and adored by so many individuals. So far ahead of time.”
Rita Lee’s massive domestic fan base was matched by an army of international admirers, rumored to include Kurt Cobain and King Charles.
In 1988, the Daily Mirror reported that the then-Prince of Wales requested a Rita Lee record be played during a banquet at the British embassy in Paris.
The British newspaper claimed that the future monarch “already knew the words by heart” when the appropriate LP was placed on the turntable.
Rita Lee Jones de Carvalho’s early musical endeavors provided few hints of her future prominence.
As a young girl born in So Paulo to an American father and a Brazilian mother, she took classical piano lessons but, according to a newspaper account, experienced stage anxiety and wet herself during an audition.
Rita Lee, however, launched herself into music, co-founding the groundbreaking psychedelic-rock band Os Mutantes in 1966 with Arnaldo Batista and Sérgio Dias.
In her first interview with the Folha de So Paulo newspaper, the singer-songwriter stated,
“[The group] has come from another planet to take over the world.”
She was correct. The subversive, LSD-fueled ensemble became an integral part of Brazil’s Tropicália movement, which, led by composers Caetano Veloso, Tom Zé, and Gilberto Gil, fused traditional Brazilian music with foreign instruments and sounds.
Rita Lee recalled in a 2001 interview with the New York Times,
“The bottom line is that we were light years ahead of everyone else.”
Os Mutantes were an instantaneous sensation in Brazil, but it took them several decades to achieve international prominence and recognition; however, this eventually occurred.
During a journey to Brazil in 1993, Kurt Cobain met the band and praised their “revolutionary” sound and “guts” for producing such daring music during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.
Rita Lee departed the group in 1972, but not before contributing to the creation of such classics as Balada do Louco, Baby, and Ando Meio Desaparecido.
As a solo artist, the rocker with red hair released a string of equally successful and irreverent songs, including Amor e Sexo and Lanca Perfume. Her more than 40 albums include the 2001 Beatles tribute Here, There, and Everywhere, which was imbued with bossa nova.
Bolsonaro, whose supporters were purportedly outraged by Rita Lee’s decision to name her tumor after him, has not commented on the musician’s passing.
However, his successor, the leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, paid a lengthy tribute to Rita Lee, describing her as “one of the greatest and most brilliant names in Brazilian music” and “a pioneering artist.”
“She believed the title ‘Queen of Rock’ was inappropriate, but the nickname reflects her trajectory well,” Lula wrote. She inspired generations of female rock musicians and artists. She will be remembered forever.”
Rita Lee included in her 2016 autobiography what she hoped would be her epitaph. “She was never a good example,” the author wrote. She was, however, a decent person.
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