Elza Soares’ life and career was marked by its ups and downs, incredible achievements intermittent with hardship and tragedy. She grew up in Rio’s favelas as one of ten children; it was a humble and hard upbringing. She married at 12, gave birth to her first child at 13, and was forced to work when her husband became ill. By 21, following his death, she was a widow, with five children.

Despite this, she dreamed of becoming a singer and made her name on a radio talent contest in 1953, when the host Ary Barroso notably took one look at her appearance – she was wearing her mother’s dress, adjusted to fit her, and had her hair in pigtails – and remarked “what planet are you from?” Soares swiftly replied: “The same planet as you, planet hunger.” The rest, as they say, is history. Soares’ performance won the contest and started a career that flourished in the 1960s, her husky singing style and ability to scat marrying itself perfectly to the big band samba and bossa nova of the time.

In 1962 she was asked to represent Brazil at the football World Cup in Chile, where she met Louis Armstrong, as well as footballer Garrincha, whom she would marry in 1966. The newly-wed couple were vilified by the press, due to Garrincha leaving his wife and family; then in 1970, their home was machine-gunned – presumably by the military dictatorship, with no official reason ever given – and they left for Italy, with Garrincha drinking heavily and Elza unable to perform due to the lack of a work permit. When she returned to Brazil in 1971, she continued to record, releasing albums that explored the roots of samba, as well as embracing soul and funk (notably on 1972’s excellent Elza Pede Passagem), but she found herself behind singers like Clara Nunes, Beth Carvalho and Gal Costa in the pecking order, and her record sales declined. She regularly cited racial discrimination as the reason for her neglect from the record companies, and this allied to problems in her private life – Garrincha struggled with alcohol, crashing a car while drunk in an accident that killed Soares’ mother, with Soares leaving him in 1982 after he assaulted her – led to Soares eschewing music to work in a circus in order to support her children.

It was a phone call from Caetano Veloso that persuaded her to return in the mid-80s, though it would not be until her 2002 album Do Cóccix até o Pescoço, which saw her working with Veloso, Chico Buarque and Jorge Ben, as well as emerging artists like Seu Jorge, that she was finally embraced by a new generation of Brazilians. Experiments with electronic music and rap helped her remain relevant, until 2015’s A Mulher do Fim do Mundo (also released as The Woman At The End of the World) saw her score an unlikely international breakthrough while in her 80s. Through that album, and the two that followed, Deus É Mulher (2018) and Planeta Fome (2019), she gained recognition for being the artist she had always been: a woman of defiance, a proud Black Brazilian, unafraid of telling the stories of the marginalised, and unafraid of taking artistic risks.

On the song ‘Mulher do Fim do Mundo’ she sang ‘until the end I will sing’. Her last performance had been in December 2021, just one month before her death, aged 91, on January 20. She is survived by four of her eight children.