Rita Lee

December 31, 1947 to May 8, 2023

In the early 1960s, bossa nova ruled the Brazilian pop music scene. Then a bunch of hippies came along and threw some electric guitars into the faces of the listening public. This was musical movement was called Tropicalia (whose name was adapted from the avant garde art movement in Brazil that popped up around the same time). The musicians who arose from this movement are among my favorites, but they are all getting quite old. Gal Costa died last year. Caetano Veloso is 80 years old, as is Gilberto Gil. Caetano’s startlingly deep-throated sister, Maria Bethânia, is 76. All the members of the movement’s house rock band, Os Mutantes, are about the same age.: Arnaldo Baptista was born in 1948, his brother Sérgio Dias was born in 1950, and Rita Lee was born in 1947. She died on May 8.

Os Mutantes started performing in 1966, and one of the most famous incidents in their early career was playing with Caetano Veloso at the Festival International de Cançã in Rio in 1968. The crowd of would-be student radicals had very conservative music tastes. Specifically they saw rock and roll music, of the sort Os Mutantes played very loudly, as American cultural imperealism. At the time, Brazil was ruled by a military government, but there was a very vigorous student movement. Veloso was on stage with Os Mutantes and started playing an anthem of liberation, É Proibido Proibir (It is Prohibited to Prohibit), and the crowd started booing and throwing stuff on stage. Veloso launches into an unhinged rant, saying that if you guys are the best opposition we have, then we’re finished! The band keeps chugging along as Caetano gets wound up and the crowd jeers. In December of that year, the military cracked down on those students hard. And Os Mutantes kept on playing.

Here are Os Mutantes playing one of their best songs live. The song is Ando Meio Desligado, which translates to “I’m Kinda Switched Off”. Rita Lee, with impossibly long hair, is playing bongos and singing.