Nara Leão, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetNara Leão
Brazilian recording artist; singer, songwriter
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Vitória, Espírito Santo, Brazil
About Nara Leão
- Nara Lofego Leão (Brazilian Portuguese: ['nar? le'?~w~]; 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.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.
- Popular musician and composer Patricio Teixeira and classical guitarist Solon Ayala were her teachers.
- 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.
- In fact, it was in her apartment in her parents' home in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro that the new music was born in 1958.
- 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." In 1968 she appeared on the album Tropicália: ou Panis et Circenses, 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 is Danuza Leão, a former model and socialite who's a newspaper columnist and occasional TV commentator.
Read more at Wikipedia