Born in a Rio favela, Elza Soares overcame all sorts of struggle and tragedy in her lifetime to become a national treasure. Married at the age of 12 (and with a child a year later), Soares won a singing competition in her teens that confirmed her talent, but it wasn’t until 1960 that she released her first album, Se Acaso Você Chegasse, which set her on a course to explore all manner of samba, bossa nova and MPB over the ensuing decades. After a quiet period in the ’80s and ’90s (during which she experienced the death of her son and husband), she re-emerged in the 2000s to great acclaim, reinventing herself as a husky-voiced diva who could sing just as marvellously over traditional Brazilian pop as she could rock, electronic and experimental sounds. She died on 20 January 2022 at the age of 91.