November 09, (THEWILL) – Influential Brazilian singer, Gal Costa, who was one of the principal figures in the Tropicália movement of the 1960s, is dead.
According to her public relations agency, the singer died on Wednesday at the age of 77.
However, no cause of death was immediately provided. The singer, who lived in São Paulo, had recently cancelled a concert at a local music festival on advice from her doctor, after surgery in September to remove a nodule from her right nasal cavity.
She had been expected to return to the stage in São Paulo in December, according to tour dates listed on her website.
Costa was a muse of Brazil’s booming popular music scene in the late 1960s and sang with some of the biggest names in Brazilian music, including Tom Jobim, Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento and her close friend, Caetano Veloso.
Born on 26 September 1945 in the city of Salvador, the capital of the state of Bahia. Costa began her professional singing career in 1964. She released her first album, ‘Domingo’, in 1967, before joining the Tropicália artistic movement, which melded Brazilian artistic styles with foreign influences. Her eponymous solo debut in 1969 is now considered a Tropicalismo classic.
“I was born wanting to sing, wanting to be a singer,” she said in a 2020 interview. “I always thought I would be one – I had this intuition and I wanted it. I knew it from when I was born”, she added in the interview.
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