roots

where I come from there is Silence. to fill this lonesome void, men yodel and women sing hymns. and sometimes vice versa. for a thrill, adults have also been known to anchor themselves to the sway of forró rhythms well into the night or spend hours gathered round the improv dialogue between two guitars. and children play "ring 'o roses", maypole and "london bridge is falling down." or it could be a complete mixture of big people and little people alike, all watching TV: football games, novelas and talent shows. And listening to radio full blast.

there was a lot more silence when my mother, dona etelvina, brought me into the world. it was January 26, 1964 , around five thirty in the afternoon. aquarius, gemini rising. breaking the silence was the thunder of a januarian storm. they say i breathed with great difficulty, and cried with ease. inherited my first name from my father and the saint in which my mother, dona etelvina, put and received all of her faith: francis. my only brother got it into his head that it would be good if I had the name of a king. that's where I got the césar (caesar). my five sisters had no say in the matter and I was called francisco césar filho until I was seven or eight. and afterwards, francisco césar gonçalves. on a little plot of land beside a dirt road four kilometers away from the town catolé da rocha (Paraíba state), was where we lived. it was there that I spent my childhood as the baby of the family.

television would only arrive in catolé da rocha around the time of the world cup of '70 so that the backwoods paraibanos filed up in the town square, mouths agape along with the rest of the world watching pelé, gérson, tostão, jairzinho, rivelino. just a year before, i tasted ice for the first time at a party in celebration of my brother's release from prison. he'd been arrested along with other students for subversive activity.

i began school at an early age, already knowing how to spell and read a little. it was a rural school with the handshake of the aliança de progesso (alliance for progress) depicted on the wall. later came the rigorous school run by german franciscan nuns, where my aunt maria washed clothes and managed to get a scholarship for me and some of my sisters. in between, a little time in the high school run by capuchin friars. more time in the nun's school, public high school, terceiro científico at the tambía de joão pessoa high school and lastly, a degree in communication at the federal university of paraíba.

still a boy, only eight years old, i went to work at lunik. a record, book and photo shop. it was then that, the nuns bombarded catolé with the sweet sound of flutes. every imaginable place-underneath mesquite, apple and mango trees, in squares, football fields-had a girl or boy, poor or well off, tooting away. i was one of them and had been incurably contaminated by music.

first came the cover bands at age ten like, super som mirim and the snakes, featuring instruments invented by me and my friends. later at age 14, the band ferradura (stinger). armed with our own songs we blazed through festivals in souza, cajazeiras, patos, pombal (all in paraíba). at 16, when i moved to joão pessoa (paraíba) i met the brothers paulo ró and pedro osmar. they had a band called jaguaribe carne, dedicated to exploring language, and adopted me. they introduced me to aleatory music, concrete poetry, cinema novo, mao zedung, erotic poetry, world music, dodecaphonism. and for someone from the outback who barely knew the poet joão cabral, it was a blast. the group is still around and continues to be a very strong influence in my life.

at the end of 1984 i left joão pessoa destined for são paulo. beforehand i stopped in ouro preto (minas gerais state), barra mansa (rio de Janeiro state) and a small stint in rio de janeiro. in may of 85, there i was in sampa. too much of a nordestino (northeasterner) to play in the modern hotspots of the big city and with far too strange a musical genre to play in forró halls. i continued working as a journalist. i worked as a reviser, at the copy desk, as a copy editor, and a reporter. i did small shows in bars and alternative theaters.

on a trip to germany, invited by the brazil-germany cultural society to do some shows there, i almost stayed. but i came back, determined to be solely dedicated to music. i participated in a few musical festivals, put together the câmara de camaradas (chamber of comrades) that would later become the cuscuz clã. in 1994, i recorded aos vivos guided and co-produced by sound engineer egídio conde. the record was only released a year later under the velas label. the now-defunct radio station musical began playing "a primeira vista". i began to pack in students at the former bar bamboo brasil. what followed was more records, the recording of my songs by several significant interpretive voices, tours throughout the world. and this is what i do until today.