Admirers by hundreds came to bow to the coffin of the Brazilian singer, dead on January 20, at the age of 91.
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In the lobby of the municipal theater of Rio de Janeiro, two flags were deposited on the coffin of Elza Soares: those of the Flamengo football team and the Samba School Mocidade Independente de Padre Miguel ; Two Rio institutions that she accompanied all her life. Football and samba resting on the body of a black woman and in an image, the life of Elza Soares merges with that of all a Brazil.
The majority of those who bow to his coffin is also black and it is not only to the artist dead on January 20, at the age of 91, that they pay tribute but also to this “Large lady, this voice, serious, almost broken, and who helped us so much,” says Baaba de Oliveira, musician and composer. At his side, Lennom Lense, who scorned several of his concerts, approves of the head and complete:
“Elza was a reference. She struggled against racism, against domestic violence. His voice was listened to, for she spoke of the difficulties she had really known, but she was also the example of success even in a racist country like Brazil. “
Elza’s career forces all the more admiration, which she was marked with tragedies. Born in the misery on June 23, 1930, in Rio de Janeiro, she was married at 12, mother at 13 and widow at 21 years old. When she presents itself to a radiocrochet in 1953 to try to get a price, she has already lost two children of malnutrition and the third is sick. And while the presenter makes fun of his outfit by asking him, “What planet are you coming, my daughter?” She did not hesitate to tell the truth; An answer that will remain engraved in the memory of the public: “I come from the hungry planet.”
Elza sang alongside her laverier mother and liked to say that her way of singing was born by giving himself courage to wear buckets of water. As for his particular tone of voice, she had mentioned it in 2002 in the show “Roda Viva” and attributed it to “[s] are vocal cords, perhaps a little twisted because [s] for life. started through “.
An unprecedented disc in August 2022
After passing on the radio, she still sings for six years in the bars before being spotted by the Odeon record company. Its success is then dazzling in the 1960s, but it will be short-lived. In a very conservative Brazil, Elza shocks the country by marrying the football star, Garrincha, who leaves his family. It is she who carries the stigma of the “couple broker”, then the “career breaker”, while the double dark world champion in alcohol.
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