Heitor dos Prazeres (23 September 1898 — Rio de Janeiro, 4 October 1966) was a Brazilian composer, singer and painter.

[1] Heitor was born in the Rio de Janeiro, to Eduardo Alexandre dos Prazeres, woodworker and clarinetist in the National Guard band, and the seamstress Celestina Gonçalves Martins, living in the Cidade Nova (Praça Onze) neighborhood.

Some of the most important gatherings he attended were at the houses of vovó Celi, tia Esther, Oswaldo Cruz and tia Ciata, where musicians like Lalu de Ouro, Caninha, João da Baiana, Sinhô, Getúlio Marinho ("Amor"), Donga, Saturnino Gonçalves ("Satur"), Pixinguinha, and Paulo da Portela played.

While working as a shoe shiner and newsboy, he frequented nearby breweries and silent movies near Praça Onze and Lapa cafes, where he could hear the typical Belle Époque musicians and orchestras in Rio de Janeiro.

In the 1920s, assisted by other sambistas and composers such as João da Baiana, Caninha, Ismael Silva, Alcebíades Barcelos ("Bide") and Marçal he helped to organize various samba groups from Rio Comprido, Estácio and other places nearby, so was known as Mano Heitor of Estacio.

Two of his most popular songs were Deixaste meu lar and Estas farto de minha vida, both from 1925 and recorded by Francisco Alves.

[8] In the same year he performed with pianist Sinhô the first controversy of Brazilian popular music; when performing at the popular festival of Our Lady of Penha, where the songs for the upcoming Carnival were presented to the public, he discovered that the authorship of Cassino Maxixe, played by Francisco Alves, was attributed only to Sinhô and his co-authorship was omitted.

[6][7] At the request of his friend Carlos Cavalcante, in 1951 he participated in the first Biennial of Modern Art of São Paulo, winning the third prize at the national artists exhibition with his painting Moenda.

[6] In 1999, on the centenary of his birth, a retrospective of his pictorial work was held at Espaço BNDES and at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Rio de Janeiro.

In 2003, journalist Alba Lírio published the book Heitor dos Prazeres: Sua Arte e Seu Tempo.