Born as Maria da Graça Costa Penna Burgos, she became as Gal Costa a mythical emblem of Brazilian music. The singer herself died on Wednesday at the age of 77, while she was recovering from an operation in September to remove a lump in her right nasal cavity. She had canceled at the last minute the performance that she had planned to offer at the Primavera Sound festival in Sâo Paulo, because the doctors advised her to rest until the end of the year. At the time of writing this obituary, the causes of her death were not yet known.
Born in Salvador de Bahía, from a very young age she began to stand out as a singer. After starting to work as a teenager in a record store, she discovers bossa nova. Shortly after, she meets Caetano Veloso thanks to the friendship that united her with his first wife, Dedé Gadelha. She makes her debut as a professional singer in the musical show Nos, por caso, in which Caetano, Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé and Maria Bethânia also participate. In 1967 he published his first album Domingo, shared with the also debutant Caetano Veloso, in which his crystalline voice stands out in some songs that, drinking from bossa nova and starting from folk, anticipate the pop that exploded shortly after at the artistic peak that was the Collective album Tropicalia ou Panis et Circensis, released in 1968 and which includes the great classic Baby. She was considered the muse of tropicalismo, a cultural movement that changed the schemes not only of music but also of the plastic arts, cinema or literature in a country gripped by a military dictatorship that took power in 1964.
His first solo album was Gal Costa (1969), which in addition to Baby includes other great hits such as Divino maravilhoso or Jorge Ben Jor's song Que pena (Ele já nao gosta mais de mim). He presented the record in a highly successful show called Gal!. In 1970 he traveled to London to visit his exiled friends, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, and from there he returned with several songs that would see the light of day on his next album Legal. It is an exuberant work in which he shows influences from psychedelia and rhythm
In 1971 he published a double live album, Fa-Tal Gal at full steam, which would be very important for his career, with hits such as Perola negra by Luiz Melodia. Located at the top, he edits Índia (1973) and Cantar (1974), the latter supervised by Caetano Veloso and which, although it had hits like Barato total by Gilberto Gil, was not so well received by the public given a softness that was a strong contrast with the groundbreaking image created by the post-Tropicalia albums. Success returned when he recorded Modinha for Gabriela de Dorival Caymmi as the theme song for a television soap opera. This motivated her to record Gal sings to Caymmi (1976). This same year he is part of the group Doces Bárbaros, together with Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Maria Bethânia, touring and recording an album of the same title that is considered a classic of the MPB thanks to songs like Esotérico or Chuck Berry fields forever.
In 1977 he published Caras e bocas, which included hits such as Tigresa and Negro amor, a personal version of Bob Dylan's It's all over now, baby blue. His next work was Água viva (1978) which was a gold record thanks to songs like Folhetim by Chico Buarque and Paula e Bebeto by Milton Nascimento. The show that served as the presentation, Gal Tropical, also gave the name to her next album, which had a great impact thanks to songs such as Balancê, Força estranha or Noites cariocas.
Leaving behind her image as a hippie muse, she established herself as a great lady of song thanks to albums such as Aquarela do Brasil (1980), centered on compositions by Ary Barroso, Fantasia (1981), Minha voz (1982) and Baby Gal (1983). . She then leaves Philips, the label of her entire life, to sign for RCA where she continues to shine on a dozen albums that will take her into the new millennium, consolidating an overflowing career that lived its last stage of fullness on the independent label Trama with the outstanding moment by Gal Costa Live at The Blue Note (2006). During the pandemic, he celebrated his 75th anniversary with a concert, broadcast via streaming, which later became the album Nenhuma Dor (2021) in which he revisits his greatest hits together with musicians from the new generations such as Zeca Veloso, Tim Bernardes, Seu Jorge , Rodrigo Amarante, Criolo or Jorge Drexler. She was a free woman, a feminist at all costs and who repudiated Bolsonaro's politics.
