Status: 01/21/2022 07:48 a.m
She mixed samba, jazz, hip hop and funk and released more than 30 albums. She is considered by many to be the “singer of the millennium”. Elza Soares has died at the age of 91.
It was a special honor: in 2020, the Brazilian singer Elza Soares got her own parade in the sambodrome at the carnival in Rio de Janeiro from the samba school “Mocidade”. She sang into old age and was a feminist icon.
Soares died on Thursday in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 91, according to relatives on the singer’s official Instagram account. She moved the world with her voice, her strength and her determination and will forever be part of music history.
Soares has long held the title “Queen of Samba”. Later she mixed different styles of music: samba, jazz, hip hop and funk. She has released more than 30 albums, most recently the album “Planeta Forme” in 2019.
The title is reminiscent of a radio interview at the beginning of her career in which she was asked which planet she was from and she replied: “From the starving planet”. At the presentation of “Planeta Forme” in Rio, she criticized social structures and racism.
Elza Soares performing in Rome in 1970
Image: dpa
Soares was born in June 1930 in a poor neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. She was married at the age of 12, a mother at 13 and a widow at 21.
Her breakthrough came in 1959. In the 1960s she shaped the samba with her rough singing style. In 1999 she won the title “Singer of the Millennium” in a competition organized by the British broadcaster BBC.
Brazilian samba icon Elza Soarez dies at 91
Diana Hörger, ARD Rio de Janeiro, January 21, 2022 at 8:17 a.m