ZP:You said once in an interview: “Once you are involved within the favelas, it is very difficult not to go back because it is just under your skin.”Besides your music, what has kept you out of the favelas?
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.”
