Rosalia de Souza

Rosalia de Souza is a Brazilian bossa nova singer. She was born in Nilópolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, an area famous for its samba school, Beija-Flor.

Rosalia de Souza
Circolo degli Artisti, Rome, 16 April 2009
Background information
Birth name	Rosalia de Souza
Born	(1966-07-04) July 4, 1966 Nilópolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil[1]
Genres	Bossa nova
Occupation(s)	Singer
Instrument(s)	Vocals
Labels	Avatar, Schema, Phantom Sound & Vision

Rosalia de Souza (2020) in Aarhus, Denmark
Poto Hreinn Gudlaugsson

After travelling to Italy at the age of 21,[2] she began to study music theory, Cuban percussion, and jazz at the Scuola Popolare di Testaccio (Popular school of Testaccio) in Rome.[1][3][4][5]

De Souza resides in Italy and is very active in the Italian jazz and music scene, performing live in jazz clubs and concerts throughout Italy and Europe, including major opera venues like the Teatro Massimo Bellini di Cantania where she has been invited to perform several times. She has also performed in her native Brazil, and in Japan and Russia. De Souza is active in all stages of development of her music. In addition to singing, she writes lyrics. She also actively participates in the composition and scoring of her songs. The vast majority of her songs are original, specifically designed for her voice and to her unique creative standards.

De Souza’s albums and songs have been recorded in Italy and Brazil in collaboration with noted writers and producers such as Nicola Conte (Italy) and Roberto Menescal (Brazil), and Tomaz de Cunto and produced under the indie record labels Schema, NAU, and Incipit in Italy as well as in France and Japan. De Souza typically combines international with local talent in her live performances. She is known for partnering with local bands and orchestras rather than traveling with her own group of musicians.

De Souza borrows from her Brazilian roots by incorporating bossa nova and samba into many of her songs. She also experiments with popular and acid jazz. Most lyrics are in Brazilian Portuguese, with a few songs in Italian.

De Souza’s voice is particularly well suited to bossa nova. Her voice has been likened to a gentle breeze blending into and flowing over the instruments. Bossa nova is intended to have a softer, gentler and lighter touch than samba and other forms of jazz. De Souza is also particularly noted for scatting. Scat singing is a jazz vocal style using emotive, onomatopoeic, and nonsense syllables instead of words in solo improvisations on a melody. It allows a jazz vocalist to escape the lyrics and the straitjacket of meanings that comes from lyrics or words. It grants a singer the status of a solo instrument, like any other musical instrument, and thereby moves vocal expression towards abstraction and modes of meaning that are musical rather than verbal. It is a musical language expression in its own right. See: Scat singing and https://jazzfuel.com/jazz-scat-singing/