Gal Costa she was a singer from Bahia who is considered one of the great icons of Brazilian popular music. She released dozens of successful albums and recorded songs that marked generations. She started her career in the 1960s. In the following decade, she became one of the great representatives of the tropicalism and was also considered a hippie muse.
She performed works in partnership with renowned Brazilian musicians, such as Gilberto Gil, Tim Maia, Caetano Veloso, Maria Bethânia, among others. In 2018, she released the 40th album of her career. And she passed away, in 2022, victim of a heart attack.
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Topics of this article
- 1 - Summary about Gal Costa
- 2 - Origin of Gal Costa
- 3 - Gal Costa's musical career
- 4 - Personal life of Gal Costa
- 5 - Death of Gal Costa
Summary about Gal Costa
Gal Costa was born in Salvador, in bahia, in 1945.
She began her professional career with recordings made in 1965 for Maria Bethânia's first album.
She had in Caetano Veloso one of her great friends and professional partners.
She participated in the manifesto-disc of the tropicalista movement.
She passed away in 2022 at the age of 77.
Do not stop now... There's more after the publicity ;)
Origin of Gal Costa
Maria da Graça Costa Penna Burgos, popularly known as Gal Costa, was born in Salvador, on September 26, 1945. She was the daughter of Mariah Costa Penna and Arnaldo Burgos, and was raised exclusively by her mother, as Her father was absent during Gal's childhood and part of her adolescence (he died when she was 14). years).
Reports say that Gal's mother would have spent part of her pregnancy listening to classical songs so that her daughter would be born with musical abilities. Gal's appreciation for music meant that her first job was as a clerk at a record store in the capital of Bahia.
Gal Costa's musical career
Gal Costa began his musical career in the early 1960s, although her stage name had not yet emerged at the time. At that time, people called her Maria da Graça, Gracinha or Gau. One of the great musical influences on Gal Costa was João Gilberto, a singer she first heard in 1959.
In 1963, Gal Costa was introduced to Caetano Veloso by a mutual friend named Dedé Gadelha (future wife of the singer from Bahia). Gal Costa and Caetano Veloso became great friends and began their musical careers together when they participated in a show featuring amateur musicians in 1964.
In 1965, Gal Costa made her first recording by participating in songs from an album released by Maria Bethânia, friend of the singer and sister of Caetano Veloso. Gal Costa participated in three songs, one of them singing along with Caetano Veloso. At this point in her life, Gal had already moved to Rio de Janeiro to invest in her artistic career.
In 1967, Gal released her first album, Sunday. It was on the release of this LP that her stage name officially became Gal, and that happened because of a suggestion by producer Guilherme Araújo, who found the name Maria da Graça unattractive artistically. The most successful song from that first album was “Coração vagabundo”.
In 1968, the album that inaugurated the tropicalist movement in Brazil, the Tropicalia or Panis et Circencis. The album is considered the musical manifesto of this movement and had the participation of other singers, such as Tom Zé, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. A hit song performed by Gal on this album is “Baby”.
Throughout the 1970s, Gal Costa became the most relevant tropicalist in the country because Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil went into exile due to the Military dictatorship. During this period, she recorded hits such as “Índia”, “Barato total”, “Flor de maracujá”, “Desafinado”, “Pérola negra”, among others. She was considered the muse of the hippies, but, at the end of that decade, her musical style changed, approaching pop.
In the 1980s, Gal Costa was a consolidated singer in the music scene, being one of the great names of Brazilian popular music. His musical career at that time was marked as a period of recording very successful records and good reception in specialized critics. Among them are Brazilian watercolor, Fantasy, My voz, profane It is Good Bom.
This last album, released in 1985, is one of the biggest hits of Gal Costa's career, having reached more than 600,000 sales in Brazil. Some of his hit songs are “Sorte”, sung with Caetano Veloso, and “Um dia de Domingo”, sung with Tim Maia.
In the following decades, Gal Costa continued with her musical career, although part of her work was focused on re-recordings or performances of hits from her past. That doesn't mean new albums haven't been released, because she's released records like water mine in my corner It is That one frevo TheX and, for example.
Entering the 21st century, Gal Costa was inducted into the Carnegie Hall Hall of Fame, a music concert hall in New York, in the United States. She is the only Brazilian to have received this honor. Another recent achievement of hers was the release of her 40th album, titled The skin of the future, in 2018.
Read more: Chico Buarque — born in Rio de Janeiro, he is one of the main names in Brazilian popular music
Personal life of Gal Costa
Gal Costa maintained a secretive private life and never officially married, although she has had some stable relationships and was unofficially married to a violinist named Marco Pereira in the early 1990s. The singer, however, had a stable relationship with Wilma Petrillo since 1998. In addition to being Gal Costa's companion, Wilma also took care of the singer's career from Bahia.
The Bahian singer had already assumed, in several interviews, that one of her life dreams was to be a mother, however, she never managed to get pregnant. After years of trying, the singer he adopted a two-year-old in Rio de Janeiro.
Her son was adopted after she found him in a shelter, where he was suffering from rickets. He was named Gabriel after the adoption was completed. In recent years, Gal Costa has dedicated part of her time to taking care of Gabriel, putting her musical career in the background. In 2014, they moved to São Paulo.
Death of Gal Costa
In November 9, 2022, Gal Costa died in São Paulo. She was recovering from surgery to remove a lump in her right nasal fossa. According to the singer's advisory, the cause of death was a heart attack.
Image credits:
[1] commons | Teak Lamboglia
[2] National Archive
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