Seu Jorge lived on the street for 7 years before becoming famous; what’s his story

Seu Jorge lived on the street for 7 years before becoming famous;  what's his story

Victim of racism during a show last Friday (14), Seu Jorge is one of the main names in Brazilian music in the last two decades. Before fame, however, he had a difficult life and lived on the streets for seven years.

Jorge Mário da Silva was born in 1970 and grew up in a favela in Belford Roxo, in the Metropolitan Region of Rio. Coming from a humble family, he did a little bit of everything before joining Farofa Carioca, a group that was successful in the 90s combining samba and rock.

Before fame, he was in a vulnerable situation. Still in Belford Roxo, when Jorge was 19, his brother Vitorio was killed in a massacre, which destabilized the family. The young man came to live with a relative in Méier, in the North Zone of Rio, but soon after he ended up on the streets of the city.

In an interview with Jô Soares in 2001, he said that he lived on the streets for seven years, but did not abandon art during this period. On the contrary, four of those years were together in a theater company.

“Of the seven years (I lived on the streets), four I was in the theater. I did 26 shows with them… I had nowhere to stay, after two weeks I spoke to him: ‘Oh, Antonio (Pedro), clean clothes It’s ending, I’m already sleeping here hiding. It gives me this condition because I want to learn the profession, train here, be an artist, be a musician’. There was Paulo Moura, he told me to stay there. I stayed there”, he said.

After being discovered by clarinetist Paulo Moura, he auditioned for a musical and had his life changed. Subsequently, he received the stage name of “Seu Jorge”, given by drummer Marcelo Yuka. In 1997, he arrived at Farofa Carioca, and four years later he recorded his first album, “Samba Esporte Fino”, and made partnerships with Planet Hemp, Ed Motta and Paula Lima.

In 2005, when interviewed on “Roda Viva” (TV Cultura), he detailed what it was like to live on the streets. That year, he lived one of the peaks of his career with the song “É Isso Aí”, alongside Ana Carolina

“I’ve had good encounters in my life, incredible people. The theater was an encounter. Inside the theater I met other people… I lived very well with the guitar thing, you know? I didn’t stretch out my hand and ask for anything. There was a glass to clean, I would get alcohol to clean it and the guy would give me a warm one”, he said.

Did I wash the bathroom, the dirty one that no one wanted to wash? I took and took my range. I never asked for anything. I always changed things.

Jorge said that he always had the ability to imagine tomorrow and “the sun thing” despite the difficulties, which he enumerated during the interview.

“(Living on the street) It’s you having nowhere to sleep, it’s people jumping all over you. For example, you’re sleeping at the bus stop, because the night is very difficult, there’s a lot of cowardice and there are always people there, a lamp. Then, in the morning, the guy jumps you and says: ‘a guy that size could be at a construction site, but he’s lying there, using drugs’… There are difficulties. Bathing is very difficult, physiological needs are difficult and hygiene It’s very difficult. It lowers morale and ends up affecting mental health. You can’t control your emotions. The humiliation is too great”, he told “Roda Viva”

“I was very lucky because it was the guitar thing, I defended my rank, I was loved in the middle of the circle, there in Vila Isabel. At Petisco da Vila, for example, I arrived, I stayed around the chairs and the people called me to play the guitar. I was always able to dribble”, he added.

One of the people that Seu Jorge asked to give a soup was Xande de Pilares, who was not yet recognized nationally. The sambista told the story in a participation in “Esquenta”, a program presented by Regina Casé on Globo, in 2015.

“He took Soneca’s guitar (another member of the group) and started singing. He stole the show in such a way that I didn’t even want to go back”, said Xande, who only saw Seu Jorge again when the singer was already in the Carioca Farofa.

Seu Jorge, in the sequence, recalled the difficult phase of his life. “My situation was so bad that I didn’t even have anything to eat. So, the thing about playing wasn’t the money. But there was a pizza at the end that Xande, without any review, he shared that”, he said. he to Regina Case.

At the age of 52, Seu Jorge has already received awards for his music, such as Best Singer at the 2009 Multishow Award and Best Contemporary Pop Album at the 2012 Latin Grammy for the album “Músicas Para Churrasco Vol. 1”.

As an actor, he has participated in hit films such as “City of God” (2002), “Elite Squad 2” (2010), “Provisional Measure” (2020) and “Marighella” (2021).

“Too much racist rudeness”

Yesterday, Seu Jorge used social media to say that he witnessed “a lot of gratuitous hatred and racist rudeness” during a show held at the Grêmio Náutico União club, in Porto Alegre, The Civil Police is investigating the case to identify those involved in the attacks.

In a nine-minute video released on his Youtube channel, the artist appears next to the Rio Grande do Sul flag to affirm his love for the state and reported having heard boos and racist insults in his presentation to an event that “did not see the presence ” of black people.

“When it got to the end of the show, I left the stage. When I got behind the stage, I started to hear a lot of boos and cursing. Because of that, I realized it wouldn’t be possible to go back to do the famous “encore”, but alone I returned to the stage and, respectfully, I thanked everyone for their presence and left the concert venue. Actually, what I want to say here is that I didn’t recognize the city that I learned to love and respect. In fact, what I witnessed was very gratuitous hate and a lot of racist rudeness”, said the singer in part of the video.