Elza da Conceicao Soares(nee Elsa Gomes da Conceicao; b. June 23, 1930, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – d. January 20, 2022, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), known professionally asElza Soares, was a Brazilian samba singer. In 1999, she was named Singer of the Millennium along with Tina Turner by BBC Radio.
Elza was deemed dangerous by the military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985), and in 1970 her house in the Jardim Botaniconeighborhood, in Rio de Janeiro,was machine-gunned by regime agents. Inside were her partner, the Brazilian soccer star Garrinchaand their children. The living room, where the young children were, was destroyed by the blasts. Elza and Garrincha had to flee to Italy, where they were received by Chico Buarque de Hollanda who wasalso in exile.
Elza Gomes da Conceicao was born on June 23, 1930, in Padre Miguel, Rio de Janeiro. Her father Avelino Gomes was a factory worker and guitarist, and her mother Rosária Maria da Conceicao was a washerwoman. She was born in the Moça Bonita, a favelain the Padre Miguel neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. During her childhood, Soares played on the streets, spun wooden tops, flew kites, and fought with boys. Despite poverty and having to carry buckets of water on her head, Elza believed that she had a happy childhood. However, when she was 12, she was forced by her father to marry Lourdes Antônio Soares, also known as Alaúrdes, and within a year gave birth to her first child, João Carlos. Soares liked to sing, and when she needed money for medicine for her son, she participated in a vocal contest presented by Ary Barroso at Radio Tupi. She was given money for participating and was then able to buy the medicine. When she was fifteen, she gave birth to her second child, who died. After her husband became ill with tuberculosis, she began working at the Veritas soap factory in the Eugenho de Dentroneighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. At twenty-one, she was a widow, left alone to raise her children: four boys and one girl. But Elza dreamed of becoming a singer.
When she was thirty-two, Elza had a relationship with the Brazilian soccer star Garrincha, the man who, at the time, was deemed to be one of Brazil's greatest soccer star, second only to Pele. Garrincha was the father of eight children and was idolized by the Brazilian people. Elza was vilified by Brazilian society, with many accusing her of breaking up Garrincha's marriage. She was shouted at in the street, received death threats, and her house was pelted with eggs and tomatoes.
On April 13, 1969, Elza's mother died in a car accident. Garrincha, Soares, and her daughter Sara were also injured in this accident. Garrincha was driving drunk on the Presidente Dutra highwaywhen a truck merged into the lane. Everyone in the car was hurt, and Dona Rosário was thrown from the vehicle and killed. Soares and Garrincha remained married for sixteen years (1968–1982). Garrincha's friends did not accept Soares as his wife, instead calling her a "witch." Soares tried to curb her husband's dependence on alcohol by visiting bars and pleading with them not to serve her husband. The couple had one child, a boy, born in 1976. He was named after his father, Manuel Francisco dos Santos, and received the nickname Garrincha Jr. In 1983, Garrincha died of cirrhosis,which devastated Soares, even though they were already separated.
On January 11, 1986, her son, Garrincha Jr. died when he was 9 years old in a car accident as he was coming back from visiting his father's hometown, Mage. It had been raining and the driver lost control of the vehicle. The door opened and the boy was thrown into the Imbarie River.Soares was disconsolate and considered ending her own life. She left Brazil and toured Europe and the United States.
After many years of searching for her long-lost daughter, they were reunited after Soares returned to Brazil. On July 26, 2015, Soares lost another son, Gerson, when he was 59 years old. He died of complications of a urinary tract infection.
Soares had six children: João Carlos, Gerson, Gilson, Dilma, Sara, and Garrincha. She died at her residence in Rio de Janeiro, on January 20, 2022, at the age of 91.
In 1958, Soares spent eight months touring Argentina with Mercedes Batista.She became popular with her first single "Se Acaso Voce Chegasse", on which she introduced scat singingà la Louis Armstrong,adding a bit of jazzto samba, however, Elza said that she did not know American music at the time. Elza moved to Sao Paulo,where she performed at theaters and night clubs. Her husky voice became her trademark. After finishing her second album,A Bossa Negra, she went to Chile to represent Brazil in the 1962 FIFA World Cupand met Louis Armstrong.
From 1967 to 1969, Soares recorded three albums with the record label Odeon, partnering with singerMiltinho. The albums were titledElza, Miltinho e Samba (Volumes 1–3). The songs in these albums were mostly in thepotpourristyle with duets. The albums were produced by Milton Miranda andHermínio Bello de Carvalhoand re-released on CD in 2003 by EMI-Odeon.
In the 1970s, she toured the U.S. and Europe. In 2000, she was named Best Singer of the Millennium by theBBCin London, where she performed a concert withGal Costa,Chico Buarque,Gilberto Gil,Caetano Veloso, and Virgínia Rodrigues. During the same year, she played a series of avant-garde concerts directed by José Miguel Wisnik in Rio de Janeiro.
Soares scored a number of hits in Brazil throughout her career, including "Se Acaso Você Chegasse" (1960), "Boato" (1961), "Cadeira Vazia" (1961), "Só Danço Samba" (1963), "Mulata Assanhada" (1965), and "Aquarela Brasileira" (1974).Elza Pede Passagemproduced no major hit singles but it was considered representative of the samba-soul of the early 1970s.
In 2002, her album Do Cóccix Até O Pescoçoalbum earned a Grammy nomination. The album was recorded with Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, Carlinhos Brown, and Jorge Ben Joi. In 2004, Soares releasedVivo Felizwith the single, "Rio de Janeiro", a homage to her city of birth. While not as successful in sales as her previous release, the album carried on the theme of mixing samba and bossa nova with modern electronic music and effects. The album included collaborations with Nando Reis, Fred 04 (former leader of the mangue beatband Mundo Livre S/A), and Ze Keti.
In 2007, Elza was invited to sing a cappella the Brazilian National anthemat the opening ceremony of the 2007 Pan American Games.
Soares joined Jair Rodrigues and Sen JorgeforSambistas(2009). In 2016,A Mulher do Fim do Mundowas released internationally with the translated titleWoman at the End of the World.She also performed at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, where she sang "O Canto de Ossanha" by Baden Powell and Vinicius de Moraes.
Her album A Mulher do Fim do Mundo was released in 2015. It was praised by critics as one of the best MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira - Popular Brazilian Music) albums of the past years. She won the award for Best Album in pop/rock/reggae/hip-hop/funk. This album was also nominated for Best Album of Brazilian Popular Music and Best Song in Portuguese at the 17th edition of the Latin Grammy Awards.
Her albumDeus É Mulherwas ranked as the 2nd best Brazilian album of 2018 by the Brazilian edition of Rolling Stonemagazineand among the 25 best Brazilian albums of the first half of 2018 by the Sao Paulo Association of Art Critics.
The follow-upPlanet Fomewas considered one of the 25 best Brazilian albums of the second half of 2019 by the Sao Paulo Association of Art Critics. For this album, Soares planned a cover of "Comida", byTitas, featuring the then current members of the band (Branco Mello, Sergio Britto and Tony Bellotto), but she ended up choosing to save the song for later and it was released in October 2020 to mark the album's first anniversary and to celebrate its nomination for the Latin Grammy Award.
Elza Soares, 91, Who Pushed the Boundaries of Brazilian Music, Dies
She rose from a favela in Rio to samba stardom in the 1960s. But her career was later overshadowed by an affair with a famous soccer player that became a national scandal.
The Brazilian singer Elza Soares during Carnival at the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro in 2020. She was one of the few Black women singers to achieve stardom in Brazil in the 1960s and ’70s.Credit...Silvia Izquierdo/Associated Press
By Michael Astor
Elza Soares, the samba singer whose meteoric rise from the favela to stardom was later eclipsed by a scandalous affair with one of Brazil’s most famous soccer stars, died on Thursday at her home in Rio de Janeiro. She was 91.
With fine features that led to comparisons with Eartha Kitt and a rough voice that was reminiscent of Louis Armstrong’s, Ms. Soares became one of the few Black women singers in Brazil to be featured in films in the 1960s and on television in the ’70s.
Her first album, “Se Acaso Você Chegasse” (“If You Happen to Stop By”), released in 1960, introduced scat singing into samba. Her second, “A Bossa Negra” (1961), was conspicuously lacking in bossa nova. Instead, it featured the kind of samba popular in the favelas, thus reclaiming the African roots of a sound whose international success stemmed from taking away samba’s drums and adding complex jazz harmonies.
As her fame grew, she remained true to her roots. “I never left the favela,” she liked to tell reporters, and she often finished shows thanking audiences for “every scrap of bread that my children ate.”
Such talk was almost unheard-of in the 1960s in Brazil, where — despite a yawning gap between rich and poor, and despite a larger Black population than any other country outside Nigeria — publicly discussing issues of poverty and race was considered inelegant.
RCA Records declined to offer her a contract after learning that she was Black, and she spent years singing in Copacabana nightclubs before being signed to Odeon Records in 1960, where she began a long recording career subtly — and sometimes not so subtly — pushing the boundaries of Brazilian music.
But by the 1980s, she was perhaps better known as the wife of the soccer star known as Mané Garrincha — considered in Brazil to be second only to Pelé — than for her music. When Garrincha left his wife and eight children to marry Ms. Soares, it was a national scandal. She was widely disparaged and labeled a home wrecker. Angry fans pelted their house in Rio with stones and even fired shots at it.
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Ms. Soares and the soccer star known as Mané Garrincha in an undated photo. When he left his wife and eight children to marry Ms. Soares, it was a national scandal.Credit...Associated Press
It wasn’t until the early 2000s, long after the death of her husband, that Ms. Soares staged an unlikely comeback, embracing younger composers and producers who were just beginning to discover her music. Her new songs were even more direct than her earlier ones in addressing social issues, as they openly advocated for the rights of Black people, gay people and especially women.
Elza Gomes da Conceição was born on June 23, 1930, in Padre Miguel favela of Rio de Janeiro. Her mother, Rosária Maria da Conceição, was a washerwoman; her father, Avelino Gomes, was a bricklayer who played guitar and liked samba music.
Her father forced her to marry Lourdes Antônio Soares when she was 12; by the age of 21, she was a widow and the mother of five.
She said it was a desperate need to buy medicine for a sick child that led her to take a chance singing in a popular radio talent show when she was 15. She showed up in pigtails and a dress borrowed from her mother and hemmed with safety pins. She was nearly laughed offstage until the show’s host, the composer Ary Barroso, asked her what planet she had come from. She disarmed him with her reply: “The same planet as you — Planet Hunger.”
“At that moment everyone who was laughing sat down in their seats and everyone was quiet,” Ms. Soares said in a 2002 television interview. “I finished singing, and he hugged me, saying, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, at this exact moment a star is born.’”
Her singing career took off, leading to appearances in movies and on TV. She was one of the few Black Brazilian women to rise to stardom at the time.
Her career, however, was soon overshadowed by her fiery love affair with Manuel Francisco dos Santos, known as Garrincha. Their romance began at the 1962 World Cup in Chile, where she was representing Brazil as an entertainer, and where her career might have taken a very different turn: She also met Louis Armstrong, who invited her to tour the United States with him, but she chose instead to follow her heart and return to Brazil with Garrincha. That move would have disastrous repercussions.
Harangued by the public and the press, the couple were forced to move to São Paulo and eventually to Italy, where they spent four years. They married in 1966.
Ms. Soares was pregnant with their son, Manoel Francisco dos Santos Júnior, when the couple returned to Brazil in 1975. By that time, Garrincha’s alcoholism was becoming a serious problem. He had been driving drunk in 1969 when he had an accident that killed Ms. Soares’s mother. He beat Ms. Soares, who became known for visiting bar owners to implore them not to serve her husband. But her efforts proved futile; Garrincha died of cirrhosis in 1983.
When their son died in a car accident in 1986 at age 9, Ms. Soares was devastated and left Brazil. She spent several years in Los Angeles, trying in vain to launch an international career.
She credited the Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso with helping her to return to music when she was ready to give up, by featuring her on his 1984 album, “Velo.”
But her output was spotty throughout the 1980s and ’90s, and it wasn’t until 2002 that she regained her stride, connecting with composers and producers from São Paulo’s samba sujo (“dirty samba”) scene to record the album “Do Cóccix Até o Pescoço” (“From the Tailbone to the Neck”), which was nominated for a Latin Grammy Award.
In 2016, her “A Mulher do Fim do Mundo” (“The Woman at the End of the World”) won a Latin Grammy for best Brazilian popular music album.
Ms. Soares is survived by her children, Joao Carlos, Gerson, Dilma and Sara, and by numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her son Dilson died in 2015.
She continued to find success with younger audiences in the new century, working tirelessly as she approached 90, exploring musical styles like electronic dance music, punk rock and free jazz and recording albums that fearlessly addressed social issues.
The title of her album “Planeta Fome” (“Planet Hunger”), released in 2019, referred directly to how her career got its start on the radio talent show that would forever change not only her life but the course of Brazilian music.
In my slow march through history, every once in a while, I stumble upon a life story that simply is stunning to behold. Such is the case of the life story of Elza Soares
the woman who overcame being made a bride at the age of 12 and a widow with five children at the age of 21 to become a celebrated singer who in 1999 was deemed to be the Voice of the Millennium by the BBC
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