Rita Lee — the late Os Mutantes leader — and her partner Roberto de Carvalho’s “Voanda” has received an official release on streaming platforms.
The song was recorded about five years ago in the duo’s home studio, which was located, “in the middle of the woods” on the outskirts of São Paulo.
The idea was to put the song on the Bossa ‘n’ Movies project, which was set to be an album of the duo revisiting hits that were soundtracks for movies, remixed with traditional bossa nova rhythms.
Check out the previously unreleased track below.
Rita Lee’s huge domestic following was matched by an army of international fans, reputedly ranging from the Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain to King Charles III.
In 1988, the Daily Mirror reported that during a British embassy banquet in Paris, the then Prince of Wales had asked for a Rita Lee record to be played. When the appropriate LP found its way on to the turntable, the future king “already knew the words by heart,” the British newspaper claimed.
Rita Lee Jones de Carvalho’s first forays into the world of music did little to hint at the stardom to come. As a young girl born in São Paulo to an American father and a Brazilian mother, she took classical piano lessons but, according to one newspaper report, suffered from stage fright and wet herself during one audition.
Rather than retreat from performing, however, Rita Lee threw herself into music, founding the seminal psychedelic-rock group Os Mutantes in 1966 with Arnaldo Batista and Sérgio Dias.
“[The group] has come from another planet to take over the world,” the singer-songwriter declared in her first interview with the Folha de São Paulo newspaper.
The subversive, left-field outfit became a key part of Brazil’s Tropicália movement which, spearheaded by composers Caetano Veloso, Tom Zé and Gilberto Gil, blended traditional Brazilian music with electric instruments and foreign influences
“The bottom line is that we were light years ahead of everyone else,” Rita Lee remembered in a 2001 interview with the New York Times.
An immediate sensation in Brazil, it took Os Mutantes several decades to find international fame and recognition – but it did arrive eventually. Kurt Cobain met the group during a 1993 trip to Brazil, hailing their “revolutionary” sound and the “guts” they showed producing such daring music during the 1964-85 military dictatorship.
Lee left Os Mutantes in 1972 but not before helping produce a staggering catalogue of classics including “Balada do Louco, ” “Baby” and “Ando Meio Desligado.”
