Maria da Graça Costa Penna Burgos was born in 1945 in Bahia. She began recording with the bossa nova album Domingo, which also began her association with fellow Bahian Caetano Veloso. She was the main female participant in Tropicalia and the spokesperson for Gilberto Gil and Veloso while they were exiles in 1969. Considered for years a sex symbol as well as a very natural singer, she studied singing only after her early successes and perhaps her best voice is to be found on the recordings after 1980, when her innate talent became as carefully modualted as it is lovely.