Elza Soares, who rose from the slums of Rio de Janeiro and became one of Brazil’s most popular singers of all time by fusing the traditional samba with bossa nova, Afro-Cuban, pop, soul, jazz and even punk sounds, has died aged 91.
Known throughout Brazil simply as Elza, she developed a reputation as an indomitable grand dame of song, a survivor who had been married off by her parents at 12, was a widow who had buried two of her children by 21, had a long, tempestuous and complicated marriage to Brazil’s soccer great Garrincha, and conveyed through music an ever-hopeful, ever-lustful embrace of life.
