Nara Leão

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Nara Loffego Leão (January 19, 1942 – June 7, 1989) was a Brazilian bossa nova singer and occasional actress. Her husband was Carlos Diegues, director and writer of Bye Bye Brasil among others.^[1]

She first studied viola when she was twelve. She studied guitar with Carlos Lyra in her teens. She began as an amateur singer in university where she moved on to sing with João Gilberto and others. By 1963 she had become a professional and toured with Sergio Mendes. In the mid-1960s her hostility to the military dictatorship led to her music becoming increasingly political. Her show Opinião reflected her political beliefs and she had largely switched to political music by this point. In the later part of the 1960s she even spoke against bossa nova as a movement, calling it "alienating."^[2]

She later left Brazil for Paris and in the 1970s abandoned music to concentrate on her family. She returned to music later and when she discovered, in 1988, that she had an inoperable brain tumor she increased her productivity as much as possible. She died the following year, 1989.^[3]

She has often been referred to 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.