In the entrance hall of the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro, two flags were placed on the coffin of Elza Soares: those of the Flamengo football team and the Mocidade Independente samba school of Padre Miguel; two institutions in Rio that she has accompanied all her life. Football and samba resting on the body of a black woman and in one image, the life of Elza Soares merges with that of an entire Brazil.
The majority of those who bow before his coffin are also black and it is not only to the artist who died on January 20, at the age of 91, that they pay homage but also to this “a tall lady of small stature, this voice, deep, almost broken, and which helped us so much”, says Baaba de Oliveira, musician and composer. At his side, Lennom Lense, who scripted several of his concerts, nods and completes:
“Elza was a reference. She fought against racism, against domestic violence. Her voice was listened to, because 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 commands all the more admiration, as it has been punctuated with tragedies. Born in poverty on June 23, 1930, in Rio de Janeiro, she was married at 12, mother at 13 and widowed at 21. When she appeared at a radiohook in 1953 to try for a prize, she had already lost two children to malnutrition and the third was ill. And while the presenter makes fun of her outfit by asking her: “Which planet are you from, girl? », 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 washerwoman mother and liked to say that her way of singing was born by building up the courage to carry buckets of water. As for her very particular tone of voice, she had mentioned it in 2002 on the program “Roda Viva” and attributed it to ” [s]the vocal cords, maybe a little twisted because [s]his life started out wrong”.
An unreleased disc in August 2022
After her time on the radio, she sang for six more years in bars before being spotted by the Odéon record company. Its success was then dazzling in the 1960s, but it would be short-lived. In a very conservative Brazil, Elza shocks the country by marrying football star Garrincha, who then leaves his family. It is she who bears the stigma of the “couple breaker”, then of the “career breaker”, while the double world champion sinks into alcohol.
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