AFPSergio Mendes at a performance in 2011
NOS Nieuws•gisteren, 19:34
Brazilian musician Sergio Mendes has died, his family announced. The 83-year-old singer, pianist and arranger was battling long covid.
Mendes achieved worldwide fame in the 1960s with the song But nothing. The song, recorded with his band Brasil ’66, helped introduce the Brazilian music style bossa nova to the general public. Within the world music genre, Mendes won a Grammy in 1992 for his album Brazilian.
The singer was also known to younger generations. This was partly due to the version of But nothing in collaboration with the American band Black Eyed Peas.
The modernized song topped the charts in many countries and reached number 1 in the Dutch Top 40. In 2012, Mendes’ song Real in Rio used in the animated film Riofor which he received an Oscar nomination.
His family writes that the singer last performed “in sold-out and enthusiastic audiences” in Paris, London and Barcelona in November last year. American trumpeter and producer Herb Alpert calls Mendes “an extremely talented musician who elegantly shared Brazilian music in all its manifestations with the world”.
