"Flores da Serra" for the friends of CD Baby It is a pleasure to present the record "Flores da Serra" to the CD Baby audience as well as to its partners all over the world. I also recognize this as an opportunity for general audience to get to know a little bit about me. I think this is great for my work and I hope it is pleasant for those who read it. * * * Well, I started composing intuitively when I was about 16 years old, maybe just trying to attract the attention of the girls, since this method was working for Julinho and Breno, who were the composers of the group. Lucky guys! It didn't work... I just couldn't sing my first compositions when I was with my friends, therefore, the girls just continued having little interest on me. They were right! The adolescence is not a territory for those who are shy... After that time, I have never been able to disconnect myself from music as a form of expression. Even if only silent, intimate, or even quiet. At that time I already was a confused, diffused, dispersed guy, also interested on other art works – mainly as poetry, prose and theater. So, theater and poetry represented to me the space for social affirmation, which I was not able to establish with the music, in such an extent that the first time I sang one of my compositions to an audience was during one of my plays where I also acted. And, if you want to know, this has been my life's dilemma in relation to music: I had a total lack of confidence to defend it publically, in spite of seeing myself as a skilled composer, but a poor guitar player, mainly due to my dysrythmia which has always made it difficult for me to maintain the rhythmical division. I enjoyed my voice as a singer, before I started recording in studios, I thought I was tuned. Sweet illusion... Friends from my generation (year of 1958 and surroundings) did not bear my huge musical deficiencies, which was also hard for me to bear. As time went by, I studied a little classic guitar, a little theory, a little bit of piano, some drums, a tiny bit of tenor flute, always little, always becoming disperse along the way, always doubting that musical possibility as a real one for me, something which was internally essential, which made me very happy, but I didn't know how to transpose safely and clearly to the external world, and by doing this finding my place in the sun. And fresh water on a shade! However it was amazing, how I went on composing stubbornly, for many and many years, without any type of recognition or approval to justify this insistence. Some friends and some girlfriends surely appreciated one song or another, but not enough to take the dust out of my shoulders... Yes! I have to tell this. Once, a mother and her daughter who lived in the apartment below mine, a girl who looked at me with a tender shyness, went up two flights of stairs to discover who had the beautiful voice they heard over the service area. I was surprised, and was not able to disguise it... but, I also didn't try to win the girl's heart!... On another occasion, I lived in a small village in the district of Santa Teresa, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, and used to sing my songs sitting in the living room balcony of the old building. One morning, when I finished singing a song, the kids who were playing with their cars at the courtyard, started applauding asking for more! Wooppiiiii!... This was one of the most relevant incentives I have ever received from strangers... I also remember a time when the members of a theater group managed by me in the Rio de Janeiro's outskirts, sang happily one of my little sambas during our social meeting, but the situation remained the same as far as facing life as a singer and composer. It is true; I had an opportunity when I was 24... I was coordinating a theater at Baixada Fluminense, close to Rio de Janeiro city, which was at that time an area inhabited by misery and outlaws, and the director of one play heard me singing one of my songs and invited me to make a presentation. Wow! Voice and guitar, he said. I was uncomfortable, but I started rehearsing... Our rehearsals, however, were as follows for over a month: We arrived at the place, he was carrying his black little leather folder, and I my guitar. Then he would leave me there alone, on a filthy carpet, with the air conditioner turned off inside of a room without windows, under infernal heat, playing the songs from a repertoire we had chosen together, only coming back after two hours. He used to go out to run errands during the rehearsal! I gave up. I thought I was not going anywhere, my guitar playing was very elementary!... * * * So, at 46 years old, which was thirty years and three hundred songs later, I heard a bell. I thought, well, these songs cannot be penalized for my difficult personality. At least 5% are good song, although crooked. It is just a question of finding someone to straighten them out with me... After a first abandoned tentative in 2000, in 2004 I tried to record my first album again. Have you ever seen something which went totally wrong, but totally right? Well, that was the case of the second tentative. The record came out totally disjointed, in spite of the good musicians who lent me their cooperation. The duplication was hand crafted. The distribution was precarious. Everything was bad, really bad. But it was unbelievably good! I learned so much with that poor process, I looked so deep into my personal characteristics, my idiosyncrasies, fears, retractions, the difficulty I had to fully expose myself and live my own mistakes, I grew so much watching and learning a little the entire dynamic of the poor process, mainly due to my own fault and my choices, that at that moment, finally, music happened for me. Well, the Lord has also given a small push... * * * It was as if I had remained at the train station, waiting for the next generation train to pass. Most musicians who embraced my music and helped me to straighten it out and made it palatable to the educated ears were around 19 to 30 years old. They didn't turn their noses to my retorted compositions, which in some cases had long lyrics, full of inadequate words for the popular singers and somehow enigmatic as far as their messages. To the contrary, the instrumentalists I had the pleasure to meet from my relationship with Midstudio, in Friburgo, my hometown located in the mountains of Rio de Janeiro, they found an incredible place inside my unexpected harmonies to freely express and create in such a way, I dare say, they were also pleased to be with me all along the intense creation process. During these seven years of work, I produced around 60 phonograms, all dully straightened thanks to the musical help from my young partners. Anderson Erthal, Tiquinho Santos and Jouber Alves were in charge of the project. This means that nowadays, my songs may be appreciated by you, friends of CD Baby around the world, without any strangeness, in spite of certain strangeness inherent to my way of composing. Or even to my way of being. I owe this to these incredible boys who embraced and greeted me and to many other friends musicians, some from older generations, who also joined us during our journey with their bright cooperation. This is the case of Cristovão Bastos, Edson Lobo and Marcio Mallard among other giants of the Brazilian instrumental music who deeply honored me with their participation. * * * From 2006 to 2010 I produced tracks in different directions, from local color world music (also known as Brazilian pop) including the Brazilian music from different genres where I sail. On a given moment the collection started taking shape from a repertoire with pop songs and a few Brazilian songs. I felt I had a record on my hands which expressed my diversity, but could give the audience a feeling I was a composer directed to the pop universe, which reflects only part of the reality. So, I took two recent songs and an older song of the same type and added to this repertoire with the purpose to establish the balance on the limits of my bipolarity: the samba and the pop. Samba was on the same wide sense as applied by Tom Jobim. And pop on its world music sense. Therefore, "Flores da Serra", is a copyright album with a pop cut and some cuttings, due to the incursions of the Brazilian sounds. Its lyrics have a certain poetic appeal. Oh? During its release (2011) there was a show with voice, guitar, percussion... And poetry!