The China Mail - Brazilian popular music legend Gal Costa dead at 77

With her mane of brown curls and seductive smile, Costa sang with some of the biggest names on Brazil's booming popular music scene in the 1960s and immortalized many of their songs, including those by Tom Jobim, Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento and her close friend Caetano Veloso.

She recorded a slate of hits including "Baby," "Que Pena," "Chuva de Prata" and "Divino Maravilhoso," across a nearly six-decade career that produced more than 30 albums.

"Unfortunately, we confirm" that Costa died, a spokeswoman for Costa's PR firm told AFP, saying she could not give further details.

Costa, who lived in Sao Paulo, had canceled a concert at the city's Primavera Sound music festival last Saturday on doctors' advice, after having surgery in September to remove a nodule from her right nasal cavity.

But she had been expected to return to the stage, and her website listed her next performance as a concert in Sao Paulo on December 17.

News of her death brought an emotional outpouring in Brazil.

"I'm very sad and shaken by the death of my 'sister' @GalCosta," tweeted celebrated singer-songwriter and former culture minister Gilberto Gil.

Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva posted a picture on Instagram of him embracing Costa.

She was "one of the best singers in the world, one of our foremost artists who brought the name and sounds of Brazil to the entire planet," he wrote.

"The country... lost one of its great voices today."

- 'New kind of singer' -

Costa found her calling early on, as a teenager in the northeastern city of Salvador, where she met Veloso, his sister Maria Bethania and Gil -- all on their way to becoming giants of Brazilian music.

She followed them to Rio de Janeiro in the 1960s, determined to make it as a singer.

"She had never wanted to do anything else in her life," Veloso wrote in his 1997 memoir, "Tropical Truth."

"Her beautiful voice and sweet presence were enough for us to see how she could become... a queen of pop. (But) as she liked to say... she would not be just another commercial singer, but a new kind, with an intelligent repertoire."

In 1967, she released her first album, "Domingo," with Veloso.

The following year, the Tropicalia movement was born, an experimental, politically charged fusion of Brazilian sounds with jazz, pop, psychedelic rock and other influences.

Costa sang on the landmark collaborative album that announced the movement's arrival, "Tropicalia ou Panis et Circensis," along with Veloso, Gil, Tom Ze, the band Os Mutantes and others.

When Veloso and Gil were arrested and forced into exile by Brazil's military dictatorship in 1969, Costa became a leading spokeswoman for Tropicalia and Brazil's counter-culture in general.

But she never had "problems" with the military regime (1964-1985), she said, aside from having one of her album covers censored for baring her breasts -- "India," in 1973.

- Constant reinvention -

Born Maria da Graca Costa Penna Burgos, the singer nicknamed "Gal" was exposed to music from the earliest age by her mother, Mariah, who used to hold the radio to her pregnant belly.

"My daughter, you are going to be a great singer," Ze, her childhood neighbor, recalled Mariah telling Gal.

"She emerged from the womb with a made-to-order voice," said Ze.

Beyond her musical talent, Costa became a sex symbol and icon of the changes sweeping Brazil in those turbulent times, sporting a "black power" hairstyle, colorful, revealing outfits and sometimes showing her breasts on stage.

After Tropicalia disbanded in 1968, Costa constantly reinvented her style, bouncing from samba to rock to soul to disco.

She won a lifetime achievement award at the Latin Grammys in 2011.

She maintained her discreet but persistent political activism throughout her life, criticizing far-right president Jair Bolsonaro's policies on culture and the arts.

She kept her private life largely to herself, but occasionally posted on social media about her son, Gabriel, whom she adopted when she was in her 60s.

"He brought me so much life," she said.

Costa is survived by Gabriel, now 16, her agency said.

G.Tsang--ThChM