Gal Costa, the influential Brazilian singer who was one of the principal figures in the Tropicália movement of the 1960s, died on Wednesday, her public relations agency confirmed. She was 77.
No cause of death was immediately provided. The singer, who lived in São Paulo, had recently canceled 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.”
Her last album was 2021’s Nenhuma Dor.
Her death brought forth an outpouring of mourning in Brazil. “I’m very sad and shaken by the death of my ‘sister’ @GalCosta,” tweeted singer-songwriter and former culture minister Gilberto Gil.
Brazil’s recently elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, posted a picture of him and Costa embracing on Instagram. Costa 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 along with the photo. “The country ... lost one of its great voices today.”
Costa is survived by her 16-year-old son.
