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MIAMI — Of all the great female singers Brazil has produced, perhaps none is more beloved, or more identified with her homeland, than Gal Costa. Since she emerged in the late 1960s as the muse of “tropicalismo” used her unique, silvery voice and serene, joyous persona to embody a quintessentially Brazilian spirit and musicality that still enrapture audiences and critics.
Costa has no explanation for her phenomenon.
“Other people have to talk about that, not me,” the 64-year-old diva explains from Los Angeles. “I just have to work and love what I do. And I still love very, very much to sing and to play music. This is my mission on this planet — to give comfort, to give good feelings with my voice and my music.”
Always, Costa brings her artistic authority and distinctive interpretation to whatever music she chooses.
Songs “just have a little more life” when Costa sings them, says Gene de Souza, host of “Cafe Brasil” on radio station WDNA-FM. “They penetrate deeper with her singing them. No one has that voice, that tone she has.”
“Warm and quiet and cathartic,” is how a New York Times review described Costa’s concert at the famed Blue Note jazz club in 2006. “She owned the music, easily and contentedly.”
Born Maria da Graca Costa Penna Burgos in Salvador, Bahia, Costa first captured the public eye as one of four Bahian artists who, with Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Maria Bethania, were leaders of “tropicalismo” (also known as Tropicalia), a radical musical and cultural movement that merged modern, global music with traditional Brazilian styles, challenging not just musical, but also social and cultural, conventions. The oppressive military dictatorship of the time considered the “tropicalistas” so subversive and dangerous that Gil and Veloso were jailed, then exiled for four years.
Costa remained in Brazil and continued singing her compatriots’ songs.
“I stay standing there, to defend ‘tropicalismo,’ saying, ‘Look, ‘tropicalismo’ didn’t die. It’s still here,’” Costa says. “I was lucky God put me there. God didn’t let ‘tropicalismo’ die.
“I wasn’t afraid. Because I believed in what I was doing. I believe in everything.”
In “Tropical Truth,” his memoir of the period, Veloso notes that of the four, Costa was the one who most wanted to sing. Whereas he, Gil and Bethania dabbled in other creative or professional endeavors, Costa “had never wanted to do anything else in her life besides singing.”
The daughter of a single mother, Costa grew up in Salvador, the cradle of Afro-Brazilian culture, and sang in her bathroom or into the pots and pans in her kitchen the better to hear and correct her voice.
“I never had a teacher,” she says. “So I used my intuition to learn everything I needed to know technically. My dream was always to be a singer, so I used the pots, because I could hear my voice back when I sang. And there are very good acoustics in the bathrooms in Brazil.”
Costa first became nationally known — and internationally beloved — as a pop singer. Hits such as Veloso’s shimmery “Baby” and the ebullient “Festa do Interior” were unabashed celebrations. She may have been the muse of “tropicalismo,” but she also inspired the great bossa nova composer Jooo Gilberto, who wrote songs for her and mentored her as an artist. And her hippie-goddess beauty and sensuality (the government censored the cover of her 1973 album “India,” which featured a provocative photo of Costa’s hips in a tiny red bikini) didn’t hurt either. She was always pictured smiling.
“Her smile combined with her voice seduces people,” Souza says. “Even when Gal Costa sings sad love songs, it’s hard for you to feel sad, because there’s an inherent lightness and joy in her voice. You can’t help but feel a kind of joy when you hear her sing.”
As she has grown older, and other female singers have moved into the pop spotlight, Costa has returned to classic songs. But she still seeks out new composers and still finds inspiration in music she’s sung for years, looking for something that moves her.
“I have to really have an identification with a song. It has to be part of me,” Costa says. “My essence is classic. Just being a singer, singing perfectly — that is what I like most. I did many things in my life, and that’s very good, very rich. It’s wonderful. But now I’m really doing what I want to do.”
