Mônica Marianno is a singer from Sao Paulo, influenced by rock and MPB (Brazilian “pop” music). as well as other contemporary Brazilian music forms. She has a really great, funky sound, and sings in English and other languages, as well as Portuguese. I highly recommend listening to some of her songs!
Check her out on Youtube and Myspace. You can also download her new album on the Brazilian music blog, Musicoteca.
Though Brazil is known for its samba and bossa nova musicians worldwide, it may come as a surprise that Brazil’s most successful singer is actually a Barry Manilow-style crooner. In his fifty year career, Roberto Carlos has sold over 100 million albums, more than any Brazilian or Latin American musician. 
Born in 1941, Roberto grew up in the countryside of Espirito Santo, one of four children in a humble household. He began playing the piano and the guitar early in life, and began singing when he was nine. He suffered an accident and had to have his leg amputated, and has been using a prosthetic leg ever since. When he was a teenager, he moved to Niteroi, in Rio de Janeiro, where he first came in contact with rock and MPB. Initially, he formed a band with a group of friends, called the Sputniks, but began his solo career shortly after, singing samba and bossa nova.
In the 1960s, Roberto segwayed into rock, and recorded several successful albums and became a TV star, hosting shows on TV Record. Then, in the 1970s, he moved on to “romantic” music (crooning), when his career took off abroad. He sang for the Pope in Mexico in 1979, during a live broadcast watched by millions around the world. He began to focus on his international career in the 1980s, when he began recording in Spanish, Italian, French, and English. He won a Grammy in 1988 for Best Latin American Singer, and beat the Beatles’ Latin American record sales in 1994, surpassing 70 million records sold in the region.
Roberto got married in 1995, to a teacher named Maria Rita. But tragically, she was diagnosed with cancer three years later, and died in 1999. Though his success continued into the new millennium, he had to deal with other problems. In 2004, he was treated for OCD, which had led him to some odd habits and refuse to sing some of his most successful songs. In 2006, a tell-all biography about Roberto’s life was published without his consent or acknowledgment, and he sued the publisher, who was ordered by the court to remove the books from bookstores nationwide.
Roberto recently celebrated the fifty year anniversary of his career in his hometown of Cachoeiro de Itapemirim. He currently lives in Rio de Janeiro’s Urca neighborhood.
Elis Regina Carvalho Costa is one of Brazil’s most celebrated female singers, and one of its most famous MPB
performers. Born in 1945 in the capital of the southernmost state in Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, she began her career early at age eleven, when she performed on a children’s radio show. She recorded her first song at age sixteen. She was then hired by a radio station in Porto Alegre, but traveled to Rio de Janeiro to begin recording.
In 1961, she recorded her first record, Viva a Brotolândia, followed by three more. She sang bossa nova, a mix of jazz and samba, and MPB, Brazilian popu music. She began performing in Sao Paulo and Rio and in 1964 she was hired to perform on a popular TV program in Rio. She met her husband on the show, Ronaldo Bôscoli, who she married in 1967. The same year, she released a new record, Dois na Bossa, which was the first Brazilian record to sell more than a million copies. She was nicknamed Pimentinha, or Little Pepper, by her colleagues.
She achieved great success as a performer and recording artist in the 1970s with many live shows, new records, and TV show appearances. She was also an outspoken opponent of the military dictatorship, taking a great risk in her vocal opposition to the government.
Tragically, Elis died young at the age of thirty six, after overdosing on a mixture of cocaine, tranquilizers and alcohol. She is still celebrated as one of Brazil’s greatest singers.
One of Brazil’s greatest samba singers, Elza Soares is not only a Brazilian cultural icon, but a symbol of endurance and courage. 
Born in 1930 in the Água Santa shantytown in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Norte, Elza grew up in extreme poverty. Her mother was a washerwoman, and sometimes forced her to nurse from a goat since she could scarely feed the girl herself. As a child, she picked through trash for food to eat and bottles to sell, and ate of tin cans at home since there were no plates or forks.
At age 12, her father forced her to marry a man ten years her senior after he raped her. The husband was emotionally and physically abusive, but she was stuck. She had her first child at age 13, and continued to give birth in the following years, but three of her children died in infancy. The first to survive was born in 1948, and she went on to have three other children. In order to support herself and her family, she worked as a cleaning woman, a waitress, and a factory worker.
But luckily, Elza had her big break in 1948, when she went on Ary Barroso’s radio show to compete in a singing competition. She wore her mother’s dress, even though her mother was twenty pounds heavier than her, which gave her a slightly ridiculous appearance. When the host jokingly asked her what planet she was from, she responded, “From the same planet as you: Planet Hunger.”
After she won, she went on to sing locally, adapting American-style jazz to Brazilian samba. When husband died of tuberculosis, she left her children with her mother and went to Buenos Aires to continue her singing career there. She then returned to Rio, where she gained fame and fortune singing on Radio Tupi and recording her music.
She began dating bossa nova performer Milton Banana in the late 1950s, but in 1962 she met the great love of her life: the infamous Garrincha, one of the best soccer players in Brazilian history. They began an affair that would last twenty years. However, the affair would destroy both of their lives. Since Garrincha was married, the affair turned into a huge scandal, and Elza endured abuse, death threats, harrassment, and even attempts on her life. Eventually, the situation got so bad that the couple moved to São Paulo. They went on to have a son together, Garrinchinha, but the couple split for good in 1973. At age 8, their son was killed in a car accident, and Elza moved to Los Angeles for a time, and also spent two and half years in Italy.
Elza is alive today at age 78, living in Brazil.
For more information, see:
Elza’s discography
Lyrics to Elza’s music
Videos of her performances
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