In February, Brazilian singer Rita Lee was rushed to hospital. She had a cancerous tumor in the lung, which she had baptized Jair, the hated first name of the ex-president of the Republic of the far right, Bolsonaro. She was out of it, and since she was following a previously defined precept (“You either follow the path of the turkeys or the path of the witches. The turkeys pursue the fountain of youth, and their greatest enemy is time. As for the witches, their greatest ally is time”), she had posed on Instagram, skinny as ever, close-cropped hair and a multicolored sweater. The electrifying Rita Lee was quiet, surrounded by plants and animals.
Brazil had been scared, he who lost the Bahian muse Gal Costa in November 2022, then King Pelé less than two months later, as if fate were beating down the legends of his popular culture. And this one was big. Brunette with bangs then flamboyant redhead or exaggerated blonde, a tad crazy, Rita Lee was the Brazilian rocker par excellence. With nerve and romanticism, she had written a string of hits, composed alone or, from 1976, with her companion and father of her children, Roberto de Carvalho. Covered by many of the best artists, Lança perfume, Mania de você, Doce vampiro, Desculpe o auê rocked Brazil for five decades.
Born on December 31, 1947, Rita Lee Jones de Carvalho died on May 8, at her home in Sao Paulo, her city of birth, a multiple, modern city, of which she had become the incarnation. The 75-year-old had often challenged the label of “Brazilian rock queen”, deemed “nerdy”, and to which, she said, she would have much preferred that of “patron saint of freedom”. Emblem of early feminism, hard-hitting, Rita Lee loved love, sensuality, free speech. From rock, she had borrowed the codes and the guitars; from Brazil and bossa-nova, the hushed voice and the cult of the pleasure of the senses.
Black sheep
It was named after an American father, Charles Fenley Jones, who added “Lee” in tribute to Confederate General Robert Edward Lee. Emigrated to Sao Paulo, dentist, a little crazy in stories of flying saucers, he had married Romilda Padula, daughter of Italians, pianist and housewife, and who imposed on her daughter classical piano lessons with the virtuoso Magdalena Tagliaferro .
Being Italian-American in the 1950s in Brazil, even in the megalopolis of Sao Paulo, is not easy, the territories being well marked – she told it in a succulent autobiography published in 2016, Rita Lee. Uma autobiografia (not translated into French). The Lee Jones, father, mother, Rita and two sisters, formed a tribe. She sometimes played the role of black sheep (she made a hit, Ovelha negra, in 1975).
Rita Lee studies at Lycée Pasteur, French compulsory, has fun with the fears of her peers by coating their stockings with red paint, a reference to menstruation, a taboo at the time. As, from adolescence, she had a little grain, she founded underground groups, a female vocal trio, The Teenage Singers, then a trio with Arnaldo Baptista and Sérgio Dias, Os Bruxos, which in 1966 became Os Mutantes (“the mutants “). Overturning the data of Brazilian popular music with daring themes and psychedelic rock arrangements, the group participates in the founding record of tropicalism, Tropicalia. Or panis et circencis, with notably Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa. Opposed to the military dictatorship, Os Mutantes publish a handful of albums that have become cult, arranged by Rogério Duprat, a gifted Beatles lover and ex-student of Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Rita Lee escapes, records solo, and founds her group, Tutti Frutti. “I was the only girl in a bunch of guys who had a mantra that to rock, you gotta have balls. Me, I had my uterus and my ovaries and I felt like their equal, whether they liked it or not,” she wrote in her autobiography.
Addicted to all kinds of narcotics, passed through the psychiatric hospital and rehab, intrepid, she spent time in prison, then children with Roberto. Infinitely free, his texts confront the taboos of the 1980s – sex, homosexuality, queer culture, abortion, the legalization of marijuana and police violence. In the most extravagant outfits, Rita Lee practices “total androgyny” on stage, in her words.
hedonistic appeal
Lança perfume, published in 1980, will ensure him a cross-border celebrity. In 1981, in France, this languidly disco song competed with Alain Chamfort or Michel Berger in the charts. Rita Lee said of this title that it was ideal for ice rinks and nightclubs – seen as places of flirtation and body power. It is a hedonistic call to breathe in launched perfume, a derivative of solvent, pleasantly scented with pomegranate, coconut, floral essences. A kind of poppers, invented in 1906 at the carnival in Rio, and since then used in abundance at parties and balls.
Banned then reauthorized, then banned again, recomposed, the launched perfumes still made everyone agree on one point: it’s very bad for your health. But excellent for enthusiasms of all kinds. Rita Lee writes, “It’s turning my head upside down”, “I’m not going to calm down unless you give me the pleasure of having fun with me”, concluding: “Turn me on. »
In her autobiography, Rita Lee, who has written children’s books and fiction, depicts in an inventive, flowery style, filled with popular expressions, a slightly crazy family. Then she evokes a founding episode, with modesty, in ten lines. She is 6 years old, her mother sews. The Singer machine crashes. A repairman is called. The kid is playing on the floor. The phone is ringing. The mother leaves the room. When she returns, Rita is in a state of amazement, “the handle of a screwdriver stuck in the vagina. The son of a bitch who did this is missing.” We don’t tell the father – “he would have killed him” – and we prefer him free.
But, from then on, her mother and her two sisters will cover up all her follies, considering her “psychologically handicapped”. Then Rita Lee sold around 60 million albums worldwide, performed with the Rolling Stones and so many others. At 75, she observed UFOs and defended the animal cause. In Brazil, she was loved, for having understood the foundations of her people: a people who suffer but know how to enjoy the present like no one else.
