| Background: | solo_singer |
| Nara Leão | |
| Birth Name: | Nara Lofego Leão |
| Birth Date: | 19 January 1942 |
| Birth Place: | Vitória, Espírito Santo, Brazil |
| Death Place: | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| Years Active: | 1963–1989 |
Nara Lofego Leão (pronounced as /pt/; January 19, 1942 – June 7, 1989) was a Brazilian bossa nova and MPB (popular Brazilian music) singer and occasional actress. Her husband was Carlos Diegues, director and writer of Bye Bye Brasil.[1]
Leão was born in Vitória, Espírito Santo. When she was twelve, her father gave her a guitar since he was worried about her being shy. Her teachers were popular musician and composer Patricio Teixeira and classical guitarist Solon Ayala. As a teenager in the late 1950s, she became friends with a number of singers and composers who took part in Bossa Nova's musical revolution, including Roberto Menescal, Carlos Lyra, Ronaldo Bôscoli, João Gilberto, Vinicius de Moraes, and Antônio Carlos Jobim. There are even voices that claim that it was in her room in her parents' home in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, that the new music was born in the fifties.[2] By 1963, after singing as an amateur for a few years, she became a professional and toured with Sérgio Mendes.
In the mid-1960s, the institution of military dictatorship in Brazil led her to sing increasingly political lyrics. Her show, Opinião, reflected her political beliefs, and she had largely switched to political music by this point. In 1964 she even spoke against bossa nova as a movement, calling it "alienating."[3] In 1968 she appeared on the album , performing "Lindonéia."
She later left Brazil for Paris and in the 1970s abandoned music to focus on her family. She returned to music later, and when she discovered in 1979 that she had an inoperable brain tumor, she increased her productivity as much as possible. She died in 1989.
She was known as "the muse of bossa nova."
Nara's sister was Danuza Leão, a model and socialite who was also a newspaper columnist and occasional TV commentator.