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The team of Zeigler Productions sat down with Jorge, June 17, right before his concert at Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Ill.
SEU JORGE: “Aaaah, Chicago! It’s the land of Bill Murray!” [smiles]. “I fell in love with Chicago from the first time I visited. I played in the marvelous theatre of Millennium Park. I am very proud to have been able to play on this stage. I hope to come back to Chicago soon. … I always had a different eye for Chicago. I have seen Chicago in the movies and on TV in Brazil. Chicago had something unique, enough to rival with other popular cities like Las Vegas and Philadelphia. Before I came here, I heard a lot of things about Chicago. The whole world knows where Chicago is!”
SEU JORGE: “Music saved my life at the age of 10. My situation was difficult because I lived in the favela. I was the oldest and had three younger brothers and if I went the wrong way my siblings would follow. And because of Michael Jackson in the 80s- who was a very successful black child at the time- to see him sing and dance I was able to see that I can express myself the same way. … I started to practice music at the age of 20. It was hard because I was living on the street. Music brought me the theatre, the cinema and today I live with dignity in the profession. [Today] I am very, very happy! Today I have a family! In my particular case, music saved my life. Music is a divine gift: Humans sing. Whales, dolphins and birds they all sing. Music is something that humans can appreciate and admire; then why not use it to construct your life.”
SEU JORGE: I was 20 years old when I started playing music. I covered songs of famous musicians and I started to make friends. So when I was with my guitar people invited me to play. When I didn't have my guitar, I was the person nobody invited. [Without my guitar] I was a suspect, people didn't like me. So if I had my instrument in my hands, they would say ‘This guy should be normal, he has an instrument. This guy is cool! Play something for me, sing something for me.’ This is how I started my music. In 1993 I was invited to play music for a theatre group. It is where I realized I had talent to write my own music. That’s what gave me the urge to write music and write my own ideas. And I just started making and creating. Then people started to realize that I was good. ‘Make more, make more!’ people said. ‘Your music is good. I like your lyrics.’[Me becoming famous] was never even thought, or planned.”
SEU JORGE: A song called “Carolina.” ZP: Who is Carolina? SEU JORGE: “Carolina was a girl that was impossible to forget. She was a girl that I dated and then she broke up with me. I said ‘Ok’, I am going to go make a song that you will never forget. This song will be successful and will be playing everywhere, and you will never forget [me]. You won’t be my girlfriend anymore but you will have that song. And that’s what happened: The song was successful and all the Carolinas thought I wrote the song for them. I thought that was great!” [laughs]
SEU JORGE: “That was a different phase in my life, when I separated from my first wife. We have a daughter together and she lives here in the U.S. (San Francisco). I thought we would go back together, if she wanted. But this didn't happen. One curious thing about this song is that it represents the general idea that everyone has gone through, heartache and pain. I needed to say [tell her] that I was right, I wasn't happy but I had to find a new way. When I wrote this song I thought I would go back to her. So you need to be able to say ‘I am not happy, I have to find my own way, let’s not be enemies.’ It was just something that happened.
SEU JORGE: “It’s a song that I wrote called “Brasis”. This is the song that I wrote for the 500th birthday of Brazil in 2000. There was a big celebration in the country. I wrote a song that is critique of the two Brazils-one is prosperous the other one doesn't move; one Brazil that invests the other one that sucks it all up; one Brazil in swimming trunks, the other in bow ties; one Brazil that makes love the other one that kills; one that makes gold the other one that makes silver; one Brazil that is beautiful the other stinks; one that gives and the other that begs, begs for peace, health, work and money. One Brazil that rises and the other that falls. One Brazil that is copper and the other one that’s tin. A Brazil that is black, white, Asian, Indian, cafuzo (black and Indian offspring) and confusion.”
SEU JORGE: “Yes, all of the artistic movements-photography, film, architecture. One of the things that inspired me the most was Oscar Niemeyer. He is a very important architect in our country. He created the Latin American Memorial and started to think that we could discuss a little bit more of Latin America. He started this memorial that signifies the unity and development of the Latin people. …Yes, architecture is certainly one of the important movements [that inspired me].”
SEU JORGE: “ Well, it a very large country, almost a continent, with over 200 million people. We live under a very complicated system and administration and Brazil is trying to catch up to the modern world. Today we are able to say that Brazil is a country that has a small chance to restore sovereignty, growth and development. But above all Brazil needs to develop a relationship and care for its own people. Today Brazil is a country that is able to continue to conserve beautiful and rich people, but the Brazilian people are tired of suffering, difficulties and not having enough to eat. I have always said that the worse problems [in Brazil] are the indifference and the hunger. We are position on Earth far away from the rest of the world. South America is isolated just like Australia, nobody goes there, and barely anybody goes to Brazil or Latin America to find out what really happens there. So the influence of the large world- Asia, Europe and this large continent that is [North] America- is not big. Therefore Brazil and South American countries suffer difficulties in following. Right now I am in a land [U.S.] that is completely in a process of social equality; a country which is much better established than Brazil. Brazil is an emerging country and has a huge economic potential to reform and to grow, but reforms need to be made in the administrative areas, workforce, and judicial areas. We have not been able to construct a republic based on the people and the history. We need to change the structure. We [Brazilians] made a republic and it is no different than America. The Americans fought to create a republic, every state has its own laws; but with the same common goal, a common path, a unity. Brazil doesn't have an image, or a common goal. And we need to develop it. Fortunately new generation is very interested in restoring politics and the dignity of Brazil.”
SEU JORGE: “I have an undefined style. Not to have a particular style is to have authorship and to be an author of expression. I want to create music that comes to people in the simplest manner. …I pay a lot of attention to an American figure, very important in the music called Miles Davis. He doesn't have a style at all. Davis created the jazz never even mentioned or defined that he played jazz. He abandoned all the categorizing of music, he just played the music. The music has functions. It has a function to make people dance; I am inspired by his example and it’s nothing against theatre. I love theatre. I love the opportunity to create a clown, the circus, things along those lines. Music doesn't have to depend on anything. Can be anything we want it. Music is music. It is a separate entity from theatre. You can listen to it on your computer, your car, at a party, in your most intimate moments with your boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife. At the end it’s all music, and makes you feel good. ”
SEU JORGE: “I look to have fun. When I have fun people start to become curious; so when I am having fun, when I am doing it with pleasure, I start to enter a phase. So whatever it’s written in front of me doesn't make sense anymore and [music and performing] comes from within. So it has meaning. For example, I have a list of 15 songs and if during the first song I am professional, the second song I am professional and the third song I am still professional: On the fourth and fifth song you (the crowd) are professional. If it’s the first song and I am having fun, and the second song I am still having fun, and the third song you are having fun with me; the forth song he is having fun with me, she is having fun with me then this is what the purpose is-to make people happy.”
SEU JORGE: “Once you leave the favela , you leave the favela [forever], but the favela doesn't leave you. You can move anywhere, but it’s always with you. As if you would ask me ‘What were you doing when you are 8?’, I would answer ‘I was in the favela.’ It’s my life, my history. Today I live well in Sao Paolo. Thank God, I have a very good life with my wife and two daughters. And I think about the time when I lived in the favela, with my mother, my brothers, my friends. And everything was very difficult. [I remember] the living conditions, I remember the people…Life is real inside. It’s no joke, you can’t sleep. If you close your eyes, you may not wake up. It is very serious. … Because the state doesn't take care of the people. The only instrument the state has against the favela is the police. This creates a lot of indifference, a lot of fights, a lot of pain, a lot of anger and hate among the people in the community. And children are growing up among all this. They are growing up in the middle of this violence, brutality and ignorance with the inability to forgive. But despite all, these are the same people that fight very hard every single day not to lose their ability of being happy, creative; not to lose the sense of life and to be human. To create something without having anything to create from, to create a smile from where there is no smile. These are factors that make the favela not leave us. Fortunately today more people are looking for ways to get out of the favela. And they are in a stage of equality not indifference. Because I left [the favela], it doesn't mean I am better. I left not because I am better! I am still the same. I am equal to you. There, you are different. Once in the favela, you have no rights. There is nothing to make them believe that maybe tomorrow they can find a job. You are never invited to participate and to be a part of an organized system. So these people want to be organized. They want to be an organized society. And they fight and need knowledge and people to bring them knowledge. …And today in the favelas of Brazil, there is a growing youth movement. This is the incentive of the favela because people cannot stand to kill anymore, because they don’t have anything to eat. They want to try a new life.”
SEU JORGE: “I love football. I am very proud of the Brazilian national team not only because they have won five World Cups but because they play for the love of the country. We try to prove that we are the best in this sport. We try to show that we put in this sport our smiles, our dance, our music, our culture. And we owe it all to these athletes that the world got to know us. Before Pele, nobody knew that Brazil existed. After Pele played in all World Cups of the 1960s and early 1970s the world saw that there is a country called Brazil that has a different talent. …And [today] football is a dream for many fathers and mothers. Many poor families in Brazil have this dream for their children. So you see a five-year-old child growing up in the favela, making a ball out of a paper-stuffed sock and starts playing. Only five years old! And then he'll pass the ball to the other kid and before you know it, they are 20-23 years old, billionaires, helping their families. It’s a dream for all Brazilians, the art of football. Football is just as important as the music in Brazil, maybe even more important.”
SEU JORGE: “I want to wish the American people happiness and that they find the path of happiness. You live here to fight for the right to be happy, to fight for the rights of the world. Many people don’t know that outside the U.S.. There is a very strong prejudice against the American people. Please don’t confuse the American people with the American administration. Because these are two different things. Americans are cool. Thank you very much!” Many thanks to Lara, Marilva and Don Zeigler who contributed to this report. |
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