ADVERTISEMENT Renowned Brazilian singer and presenter Preta Gil has died of cancer at the age of 50. Daughter of singer and former Brazilian culture minister Gilberto Gil and actress Sandra Gadelha, she had been fighting colorectal cancer since the beginning of 2023.
Equally celebrated for her musical talents and campaigning for women’s rights and the LGBTQ+ communities, she died in New York on Sunday, according to her spokeswoman, where she was undergoing treatment.
Art and activism
She released her first album in 2003, ‘Prêt-à-porter’, when her father was culture minister during Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s first presidency.
“This disc shows my roots, both the tropicalist side of MPB and my open, democratic and connected side,” she wrote in her autobiography “Preta Gil: Os primeiros 50” (Preta Gil: The First 50), published in 2024.
She also produced three more albums, ‘Preta’, from 2005, ‘Sou Como Sou’, from 2012, and ‘Todas as Cores’, from 2017, with collaborations with Gal Costa, Pabllo Vittar and Marília Mendonça. She released two live albums based on the shows ‘Noite Preta’, in 2010, and ‘Bloco da Preta’, in 2014.
As an actress, she appeared in soap operas and various Globo projects and created a talk show in 2004.
From the 2000s onwards, despite facing criticism for posing naked on the cover of her first album and for being open about her bisexuality, she championed feminist and anti-racist positions.
She is survived by a 28-year-old son, Francisco, a member of the Gilsons, and a seven-year-old granddaughter.
