Rita Lee

Rita Lee Jones (31 December 1947 – 8 May 2023) was a Brazilian rock singer, musician and songwriter.

She was a member of the band Os Mutantes and a popular figure in Brazilian entertainment.

She was also known for being an animal rights activist and a vegan.

She sold more than 55 million records worldwide.

In 1966, Lee formed the band Os Mutantes with Arnaldo Baptista and Sérgio Dias.

Gil Invited them to accompany him at TV Record's 1967 III Festival da MPB, where they performed Gil's "Domingo no Parque" with the addition of Rogério Duprat conducting an orchestra with his revolutionary arrangements.

Gil's friend Caetano Veloso also performed with a rock group (São Paulo band Beat Boys), and although the novelty of electric instruments and the general irreverence of the mixing of western pop and strange orchestral sounds irritated some in the festival audience, both performances ultimately won approval, with Gil coming second and Veloso taking fourth place.

Within a year, however, the nascent Tropicalia movement would face strident opposition from both the military junta that ruled Brazil at the time, and from Brazil's student left, who regarded the Tropicalistas' dalliance with Western pop as a sell-out.

Soon after, Os Mutantes recorded their single "O Relógio".

The band released five albums between 1968 and 1972.

In that time, Lee also released her first two solo works, although these records were produced with fellow members of Os Mutantes.

In 1968, Os Mutantes performed on the album/manifesto Tropicália ou Panis et Circensis (Philips), with Nara Leão, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Tom Zé.

This was also when they recorded their first LP, Os Mutantes, and they also backed Gilberto Gil on his second self-titled solo album.

In September 1968, Os Mutantes backed Caetano Veloso during his two notorious performances in TV Globo's Third International Song Festival in Rio.

The ensemble was met with howls of disapproval from leftist students in the audience at their first-round appearance, due to their challenging psychedelic music, as well as Veloso's lurid costume, and his sexually provocative stage moves.

The confrontation climaxed in the second round of the competition on 15 September, when Veloso performed his newly-written psychedelic protest song "É Proibido Proibir" ("It is Forbidden to Forbid").

Left-wing students in the audience (who were strongly opposed to the Tropicalismo experiment) loudly abused, booed and jeered the performers, and pelted the stage with fruit, vegetables and paper balls.

A large group in audience showed their disapproval by turning their backs to the stage, prompting Lee and her bandmates to turn their backs on the audience, and Veloso responded angrily to the heckling, haranguing the students at length for their conservatism.

The group also performed their "Caminhante Noturno", which won seventh place.

In 1969, following the arrests of Gil and Veloso, Os Mutantes went to Europe, playing in Cannes, France, at the MIDEM, and in Lisbon, Portugal.

Then, they returned to Brazil and presented the show O Planeta dos Mutantes, the first multi-media experiment in Brazil.

With bassist Liminha and drummer Dinho, they participated in the V FIC with "Ando Meio Desligado" (Arnaldo and Rita).

In 1970, Lee recorded her solo album, Build Up, produced by Arnaldo Baptista.

Soon after, they had a stint at the Olympia in Paris.

In that period, during their somewhat frequent tours in Europe, they recorded an LP that was never fully released, Tecnicolor, with the exception of some tracks included on 1971's Jardim Elétrico.

The LP, A Divina Comédia ou Ando Meio Desligado, is from that year and Jardim Elétrico (Polydor) from the next.

In the same year, they participated at the IV FMPB with their "Dom Quixote" and, by Lee and Tom Zé, "2001".

At the end of this year, they performed with the Baianos at the Sucata nightclub, Rio, and recorded their second album, also self-titled.

When the band reformed in 2006, she refused to join, calling the reunion an attempt to "earn cash to pay for geriatry".

Lee formed a band with two other friends, excelling at vocals so much that they backed stars such as Tony Campelo, Jet Blacks, Demetrius, and Prini Lopez, when they met the brothers Arnaldo and Sérgio Dias Baptista.

Adopting the name O'Seis (a pun with "the six" and the Brazilian caipira way of saying "you all"), they recorded the single "O Suicida," which was never released.

When the rest of the band left for college, only three of them remained.

Picking the name Os Mutantes, they backed Nana Caymmi on her then-husband's composition "Bom Dia" (Gilberto Gil).

When Gil met them, he immediately knew Os Mutantes were on the same track as the Baianos, and the band worked extensively with the members of the Tropicalia collective over the next two years, becoming an integral part of the movement.

Her autobiography Rita Lee: Uma Autobiografia was the best-selling non-fiction book of 2017 in Brazil.

Rita Lee was born in Vila Mariana (district of São Paulo), Brazil, to an American-Brazilian father, Charles Fenley Jones, a dentist descended from the Confederates, and Romilda Padula, a Brazilian mother of Italian ancestry and a pianist.

She studied classical piano with the renowned pianist Magdalena Tagliaferro.

In place of the traditional adolescent debut ball, she asked to receive a drum set.

Lee was educated in a French-language school and became fluent in Spanish, French, and Italian, as well as her native Portuguese and the English that her parents spoke at home.

She went to college, with the popular actress Regina Duarte as one of her classmates, but she soon left to pursue her musical career.