Rita Lee

Rita Lee Jones (31 December 1947 – 8 May 2023) was a Brazilian singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. Known as the "Queen of Brazilian Rock", she sold more than 55 million records, making her the most successful female artist by record sales in Brazil and the fourth overall. Winner of eleven Brazilian Music Awards, she built a career that started with rock but expanded to include psychedelia during the Tropicália era, pop rock, disco, new wave, pop, bossa nova, and electronic, creating a pioneering hybrid between international and national genres.

Rita was considered one of the most influential musicians in Brazil, being a reference for those who began the greater use of electric guitars from the mid-1970s. A former member of the group Os Mutantes (The Mutants) (1966–1972) and Tutti Frutti (1973–1978), she participated in important revolutions in the world of music and society. Her songs, often filled with biting irony or a claim of female independence, became omnipresent on the charts. The album Fruto Proibido (Forbidden Fruit) (1975), released with the band Tutti Frutti, is commonly seen as a fundamental landmark in the history of Brazilian rock, considered by some as her masterpiece.

In 1976, she began a romantic relationship with multi-instrumentalist and composer Roberto de Carvalho, who was the partner in most of her compositions. They had three children, including guitarist Beto Lee, who accompanied his parents in live shows. Lee was vegan and an animal rights advocate. With a sixty-year career, the artist transitioned from the innovation and musical underground of the 1960s and 1970s to the very successful romantic ballads of the 1980s and a musical revolution, performing with numerous artists, including Elis Regina, João Gilberto, and the band Titãs. In October 2008, Rolling Stone magazine promoted a list of the hundred greatest artists in Brazilian music, in which she ranks 15th. In 2023, Lee died of lung cancer at the age of 75.

Rita Lee was born on New Year's Eve 1947, in São Paulo, into a middle-class family. She was the youngest daughter of Charles Fenley Jones, an American dentist, and Romilda Padula, the latter of whom was of Italian descent. Lee was of Confederado descent through her father. She grew up in Vila Mariana and attended the Liceu Pasteur, becoming fluent in Portuguese, English, French, Spanish, and Italian. As a child, she took piano lessons with Magdalena Tagliaferro, but originally wanted to become an actress, veterinarian, or follow in her father's footsteps as a dentist.

In 1963, Lee formed her first group, "Teenage Singers," and later merged with another band to form "Os Seis" (The Six). After several members left, she joined forces with the Baptista brothers, and in 1966, they became Os Mutantes. The name was suggested by producer Alberto Helena Júnior after Ronnie Von's fascination with the novel O Império dos Mutantes. Her early musical influences included Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and Brazilian icons like Cauby Peixoto and João Gilberto.

In 1966, Lee formed the band Os Mutantes with Arnaldo Baptista and Sérgio Dias. The band released five albums between 1968 and 1972. In that time, Lee also released her first two solo works, although these records were produced with fellow members of Os Mutantes. When the band reformed in 2006, she refused to join, calling the reunion an attempt to "earn cash to pay for geriatry".

Lee formed a band with two other friends, excelling at vocals so much that they backed stars such as Tony Campelo, Jet Blacks, Demetrius, and Prini Lopez, when they met the brothers Arnaldo and Sérgio Dias Baptista. Adopting the name O'Seis (a pun with "the six" and the Brazilian caipira way of saying "you all"), they recorded the single "O Suicida," which was never released. When the rest of the band left for college, only three of them remained. Picking the name Os Mutantes, they backed Nana Caymmi on her then-husband's composition "Bom Dia" (Gilberto Gil). When Gil met them, he immediately knew Os Mutantes were on the same track as the Baianos, and the band worked extensively with the members of the Tropicalia collective over the next two years, becoming an integral part of the movement. Gil Invited them to accompany him at TV Record's 1967 III Festival da MPB, where they performed Gil's "Domingo no Parque" with the addition of Rogério Duprat conducting an orchestra with his revolutionary arrangements. Gil's friend Caetano Veloso also performed with a rock group (São Paulo band Beat Boys), and although the novelty of electric instruments and the general irreverence of the mixing of western pop and strange orchestral sounds irritated some in the festival audience, both performances ultimately won approval, with Gil coming second and Veloso taking fourth place. Within a year, however, the nascent Tropicalia movement would face strident opposition from both the military junta that ruled Brazil at the time, and from Brazil's student left, who regarded the Tropicalistas' dalliance with Western pop as a sell-out. Soon after, Os Mutantes recorded their single "O Relógio".

In 1968, Os Mutantes performed on the album/manifesto Tropicália ou Panis et Circensis (Philips), with Nara Leão, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Tom Zé. This was also when they recorded their first LP, Os Mutantes, and they also backed Gilberto Gil on his second self-titled solo album. In September 1968, Os Mutantes backed Caetano Veloso during his two notorious performances in TV Globo's Third International Song Festival in Rio. The ensemble was met with howls of disapproval from leftist students in the audience at their first-round appearance, due to their challenging psychedelic music, as well as Veloso's lurid costume, and his sexually provocative stage moves. The confrontation climaxed in the second round of the competition on 15 September, when Veloso performed his newly written psychedelic protest song "É Proibido Proibir" ("It is Forbidden to Forbid"). Left-wing students in the audience (who were strongly opposed to the Tropicalismo experiment) loudly abused, booed and jeered the performers, and pelted the stage with fruit, vegetables and paper balls. A large group in audience showed their disapproval by turning their backs to the stage, prompting Lee and her bandmates to turn their backs on the audience, and Veloso responded angrily to the heckling, haranguing the students at length for their conservatism. The group also performed their "Caminhante Noturno", which won seventh place. In the same year, they participated at the IV FMPB with their "Dom Quixote" and, by Lee and Tom Zé, "2001". At the end of this year, they performed with the Baianos at the Sucata nightclub, Rio, and recorded their second album, also self-titled.