Sergio Mendes has been getting nice reviews for his new album and the artist recently sat down with L.A. Weekly to talk about his five decades in Brazilian music. The artist also touched on his recording history with some of the greatest names in jazz and Brazilian sound, his life in the United States, and his music-making process.

Here is a bit on his life in the U.S. and the beginnings of his career:

• L.A. WEEKLY: You’ve been living in L.A. for many, many years. Do you consider your music Brazilian, international or part of the West Coast sound?

• I’ve been in the U.S. since 1964, but I go back every year to Brazil, spend time with the family. When I first came to L.A., I liked the weather and I played some clubs here and I met Jerry Moss and Herb Alpert. [Their] A&M Records was just starting. I like it here. I came to New York first with the bossa nova festival at Carnegie Hall with Stan Getz, then I went back to Brazil, and after that L.A. has been my second home.

• The songs that made me famous were most of them Brazilian songs. “Mais que Nada” was my first hit: It became internationally famous. I was living in Glendale, rehearsing, and that’s when I met Jerry and Herb and things started happening. Of course living here, the sun and everything else affected a lot. Also the great musicians that are here, that I’ve had the chance to work with.

• It’s a little different than if I decided to go to Wyoming, but the music is basically Brazilian music. That’s why I called it Brazil ’66.

What are your thoughts on Sergio Mendes and his stellar career?

By DAVID CHEW, guest contributor

Last Updated: July 30, 2010; 8:00 pm CT

Englishman David Chew is the founder of the Rio International Cello Festival and principal cellist in the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra. He recently was awarded the UK’s OBE medal for his four decades of work in Brazilian music. He lives with his wife and family in Rio de Janeiro and has agreed to share some of his stories in music with our readers. This is the final part in this series.

– Sean Chaffin, Mosaic Brazil editor

PART IV – Tom Jobim and forming a new orchestra in Rio

Radames Gnatalli and Antonio Carlos Jobim were great friends, and I believe often worked together as Radames was a concert pianist and played Sergei Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky in his youth. Tom Jobim was also a fine pianist. I was called during 1982 to perform at the Sala Cecilia Merelies Concert Hall to perform as part of a live concert with Jobim. Naturally, he was accompanied by his favorite musicians including the guitarist who toured with him regularly, Raphael Ribeiro.

I was so excited that I forgot that I couldn’t yet speak fluent Portuguese and went up to Mr. Jobim at the interval of our rehearsal and talked so much with him about his time and my time in London. I remember that all the way through rehearsal he had a bottle of Scotch at hand, on top of the piano. He asked me if I cared, and I told him about my whiskey collection and my passions for Villa-Lobos music. We certainly had lots in common and I wish I could have spoken more fluently in Portuguese. However, his English was impeccable and music was certainly our common language. I still remember with what ease he played and sang. How natural it all sounded. And as I’d had six years of playing popular music in London, it all felt so easy to me. I started to feel from that moment on that my home, and certainly my musical ambience, was to be Rio de Janeiro. I was feeling the Carioca blood flowing through my veins.

I had been living in Rio for some five years and I had certainly become more Brazilian, and had played with many famous Brazilian musicians both in the orchestra and through me being involved in playing Brazilian Choro music and MPB. I had become used to the more relaxed way of life, a little too much at times, and I often became frustrated that I was working so little. Naturally, I started to dream up projects and go chasing after support to play more, and not just Brazilian music. The need to play chamber music and British string music was a craving as that is what I had been brought up playing. Even whenever asked to write music, I write in the style of Vaughan Williams.

***

In Rio, I become a very close friend of the then active and influential British Council of Rio de Janeiro director, Michael Potter, MBE. He is a very cultured man and a lover of all music. He corrected my spellings on many occasions, especially when I had important letters to write, and I think I repaid him over a chopp (beer) or two. Fortunately, in those days directors listened to people and certainly had time to see you and even go to lunch. I think now with our more restrained budgets for culture and a more technical orientated way of life, everything is resolved before one even has the chance to either know or look into the eyes of our fellow human beings.

Michael certainly was a top executive, as anyone in his position has to be, but somehow I sensed a feeling of adventure in his eyes. I was a little stagnant after my hectic life in London, so one day Michael as the representative of British culture in Brazil told me that Britain’s most important composer, the great Sir Michael Tippett, OM, was to come to Brazil to perform in São Paulo. I was asked if I could organize his trip activities in Rio. What a shame coming all this way and not to do anything in Rio? That set my wheels in action. I went home and read all about Sir Michael, and discovered he had written a work for string called A Little String Music. I immediately had lunch with Mr. Potter, and am ashamed to say I made up a little white lie. I had actually been to the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra offices in town and offered a concert with Sir Michael. This was a year a head of his visit, and can you believe the orchestra, my orchestra, had no interest. I was quite ashamed to tell the director of the British council this. So when asked if there was an orchestra for Sir Michael, I told him yes, mine, and I named my new then non-existent orchestra the Brasil Consort. A new orchestra was born, and I had even put it all down as a project.

Sir Michel came to Rio the following year to conduct my newly-formed string orchestra, which later went on to record several CDs and many hundreds of concert series. I became quite close during that week with Sir Michael, and he even gave me a big slobbery kiss on my cheek. What a fantastic week performing with Britain’s most renowned composer. If I had stayed in London, I probably would never have met him. But In Rio, all is possible.

***

For more information on David Chew and to purchase his music, visit his website. To purchase Brazilian CDs including some of the music that inspired him and to listen to the Sounds of Brazil radio show, visit Connect Brazil.

Click here for Part IV in this series.

His clarinet and saxophone spanned musical genres from classical and jazz to Bossa Nova and Samba. And now one of Brazilian sound’s pioneers is gone. A Brazilian musical force, Paulo Moura, passed away July 12 at the age of 77 due to lymphoma.

Releasing his first solo classical recording in 1956, Moura went on to a long career in classical music, Brazilian Popular Music, Bossa Nova, and many more. His career intertwined with Antonio Carlos Jobim in the 1950s and ‘60s, playing with the legendary Brazilian artist often. He also became a frequent member of Sergio Mendes’s band Bossa Rio, including playing a show as part of a Bossa Nova night in 1962 at Cargnegie Hall.

More recently, Moura returned to his roots playing Jobim by releasing the album “Paulo Moura Visits Gershwin and Jobim” and also toured throughout the globe with other Brazilian artists in a production called “Homage to Jobim.”

Moura was born in 1932 in São José do Rio Preto in the state of São Paulo state. As a child, he was given his first clarinet by age 9 and was soon playing alongside his father, Pedro Moura, who was also a musician. Moura’s family moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1945, where the young artist studied at the National School of Music. He jumped right into the thriving Rio music scene, playing at Samba halls and music clubs throughout the ’50. A professional musician by age 14, Moura would go on to play with stars such as Milton Nascimento, Elis Regina, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat King Cole. The Guardian had these words from Marcello Gonçalves, who had recently been playing with Moura.

• ”He always had the courage to show his own work,” said Brazilian guitarist Marcello Gonçalves, who accompanied Moura on recent trips to London, Amsterdam and Berlin. “He didn’t limit himself to just playing what other people were playing. Each of his records is different and they were always different to what was happening at the time.”

• ”No matter where he was playing, he always maintained the same posture and this just added to his elegance,” said Gonçalves, who was at Moura’s bedside as the clarinettist played the choro classic Doce de Coco shortly before his death. “I have the feeling that he was trying to say goodbye, and to give his friends a blessing. It was a farewell, but a farewell on a high.”

During his career, Moura released many albums, and recorded, collaborated, and composed for many of the biggest names in Brazilian music. His last album was “AfroBossaNova,” a collaboration with his fellow Brazilian musician Armandinho. The album was released in July of 2009.

Moura leaves behind his wife, Halina Grynberg, and sons, Pedro and Domingos. The world of Brazilian music has lost one of its greats.

By DAVID CHEW, guest contributor

Last Updated: July 22, 2010; 1:10 pm CT

Englishman David Chew is the founder of the Rio International Cello Festival and principal cellist in the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra. He recently was awarded the UK’s OBE medal for his four decades of work in Brazilian music. He lives with his wife and family in Rio de Janeiro and has agreed to share some of his stories in music with our readers. This is part of an occasional series, so check back next week for more music tales from Rio.  – Sean Chaffin, Mosaic Brazil editor

PART IV – A new Brazilian life

I had lived with many popular British artists and really played many years of Brazilian rhythms with the BBC Light Orchestra. Being married to a Carioca, I listened to LPs of Maria Bethania, Gilberto Gil,  Caetano Veloso (whose son I later taught the cello), Chico Buarque (my sister-in-law now arranges and sings together with him), and Edu Lobo. I lived in Wimbledon Park in a small terraced house on the grid where my ex-wife Carolina now lives with her artist husband Kiko Lopes, a famous Brazilian tattoo artist.

Every night, I would listen to Heitor Villa-Lobos (the Brazilian considered the greatest Latin-American composer), Antonio Carlos Jobim, and MPB (Brazilian Popular Music). What an honor it would be to know Rio and meet some of the city’s great musicians. Eventually, I remember after six years playing Brazilian Popular Music with the BBC Radio Orchestra and doing so much session work in West End theaters and cabarets to pay my mortgage, I ended up in the wrong end of the hospital ward where doctors told me I almost died. Mariana, my newly-born daughter was barely a year old, and I would work around the clock leaving home at 8 a.m. and arriving back at 4 a.m. every morning. What a workaholic I was. I laid in the hot bath in the hospital and lit up a Brazilian cigar – totally against hospital rules thinking that this may be my last night on this planet. I was operated on and after a month on death row, I recovered and promised myself a new – Brazilian – life.

I auditioned with the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra by tape, preparing a beautiful slow movement of the solo cello part of Johannes Brahms’s 2nd Piano Concerto (my favorite), a Joseph Haydn cello concerto, and a Sir Edward Elgar cello concerto, together with my very close friend Marios Papadopoulos, now professor at Oxford and a leading British maestro and great pianist. The Brazilian Maestro Issac Karabkevsky and lead cellist Mauricio Mallard (who later became my close colleague and had recorded with all the Brazilian musicians mentioned) sent me an immediate invitation to play in the orchestra. This was my chance to know and later become Brazilian.

I arrived in Rio in 1982 with Claudia and my eldest daughter Mariana, who only spoke English then. I’m not sure who learnt the better Portuguese, but I know that I don’t have an accent (well not really) and she’s the English teacher now.

It felt like jumping off an express train and landing on a small country station platform, I only had to work from 9 a.m. to noon, and the rest of the time was my own. Three months paid holiday and paradise – what a life. At least that’s what I thought at the beginning, until after my first assault with a 45-caliber and the desire to work crept back.

I was slowly accepted into the musical circles. Often I played and recorded without receiving fees, just for the pure pleasure and enjoyment of playing with real Brazilian musicians and getting to feel the Brazilian swing. It really was a fabulous and enriching experience to play and record all the Bachianas Brasileiras with the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, especially Nos. 1 and 5, my favorites for cello ensemble. And I loved hearing all the first-hand stories about the genius of Maestro Heitor Villa-Lobos – what a phenomenal composer and probably more prolific than Mozart. The more I visited his wife Minginha Villa-Lobos at the Villa-Lobos Museum, the more intrigued I was and his language stayed with me ever since I received that first score from Claudia’s father, Claudio Barbosa, who was Villa-Lobos’s close billiards partner in Rio. I even sat in the same hairdresser’s chair where Villa-Lobos had his hair cut, just to feel his presence. I never got to meet the composer, as he died in 1958, but I sat many an hour talking to his wife and his music has become a major part of my life.

One of my very first encounters with a real Brazilian composer was when I was asked to record a work for eight cellos. I was so happy to be included in the cello fraternity and went to the studio to record a beautiful work for cello and piano solo for a film. And who was the maestro? None other than Radames Gnattali – the George Gershwin of Brazilian music. He was the bridge between Brazilian Classical and Popular Music. I later made a first world recording of his complete works for cello and piano, with the Brazilian pianist and expert in Gnatallis music, Fernanda Canaud. All was taken from his original manuscripts, and this also became part of my doctoral thesis at Kingston University, which I still must finish.

Radames is known to arrive a t a recording studio in his pajamas. I remember myself being so tired in London that I was on my way to the Maida Vale studios one day, and suddenly realized I was still with my pajama trousers and slipper s on. But never had I gone to work just in pajamas – and I certainly went back to change. Radames, no he went on to the bar at night to drink still in his pajamas.

The second encounter with Gnatalli was in 1982 , when he gave a performance of his piano and cello concerto with the Brazilian master of cello, Ibere Carlos Gomes. Villa-Lobos wrote most of his works dedicating them to Ibere. This was a magical moment even though a sad one. I was invited to play in the Syndicate Orchestra, and could not take my eyes and ears of them both. What an inspired performance, and unfortunately, a last performance as shortly afterwards Ibere slipped, banged his head, went into a coma, and died. This was the first and last time I was fortunate enough to be inspired by these great artists.

Click here for Part III in this series, and check back soon for another part in this series.

By DAVID CHEW, guest contributor

Last Updated: July 1, 2010; 11:40 pm CT

Englishman David Chew is the founder of the Rio International Cello Festival and principal cellist in the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra. He recently was awarded the UK’s OBE medal for his four decades of work in Brazilian music. He lives with his wife and family in Rio de Janeiro and has agreed to share some of his stories in music with our readers. This is part of an occasional series, so check back next week for more music tales from Rio.  – Sean Chaffin, Mosaic Brazil editor

PART III – Jazz great, Brazilian percussion at Ronnie Scott’s, and taking on the tambor

I became very close friends to the popular guitarist Bobby Moore, my dear principal cellist’s Sylvia Mann’s husband, and with all the guys in the BBC Big Band. The band was a very famous set-up in those days, and we recorded every Wednesday with them and had lunch time drinks over at the tennis club. How we got through those afternoon sessions, I don’t know.

I became close to several of the best British jazzers including Don Lusher, and I never forgot his wonderful warm trombone sounds that I try to imitate to this day. Also, Bill the bass player and Paul our jazz drummer were great influences on me as I was always wanting to get to play jazz and know more about Latin American music. I even formed a group called the Chew Ensemble, which recorded regularly with the jazz pianist and arranger Don Inns for BBC Radio 2. Paul came to me with an invitation to here some great drumming. Naturally I was free in those days while married to my pianist Brazilian wife Claudia Tolipan. We were give tickets to Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. What a thrill, I had worked for years in the midst of the West End shows, and had walked by many times the most famous jazz club in London. But this was to be my first real experience of a jazz concert.
We were ushered into a very welcoming ambience and sat down in excellent seats. I think Paul must have had close connections, and what I was about to witness was simply the most memorable and emotional two hours of the greatest music-making I’d ever witnessed.

I think I received more than the spirit in my glass, but somehow I was transformed and decided that night that in my next life I want to be a great jazz drummer. What a blast! I closed my eyes and was transformed by Louise Bellson and his orchestra. I thought at the time that Bellson must be the world’s greatest drummer. He was able to carry on ideas and phrases for eternity.  I did realize my dream, once I was living in Brazil. I never thought that I would end up taking percussion lessons, but I did. I love playing the tambor, it’s used in Brazilian Samba schools. I can sit in my living room, close all the windows and to the annoyance of my neighbors, can improvise with my eyes closed. All those innate African rhythms are deep down inside me. I’m sure that I was not awarded the Honorary Heir of the Zumbi for nothing. I really feel that the African blood is in me, especially when I get on my tambor and improvise for hours with not a note out of tune.

We were naturally absorbed for hours at the show, but on awakening from this heaven of sounds and rhythms Claudia said: “Do you know who that is who sat next to us, at a table all to himself?” Can you believe I had shared this moment in space with my greatest idol, Oscar Peterson, the famous Canadian jazz pianist and composer? I certainly was in heaven as I was of course a great fan and loved his walking bass.

Pictured – Chew with family after receiving the OBE honor at Buckingham Palace.

Click here for Part II in this series, and check back next week for another part in this series.

By DAVID CHEW, guest contributor

Last Updated: June 22, 2010; 10:00 am CT

*** Englishman David Chew is the founder of the Rio International Cello Festival and principal cellist in the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra. He recently was awarded the UK’s OBE medal for his four decades of work in Brazilian music. He lives with his wife and family in Rio de Janeiro and has agreed to share some of his stories in music with our readers. This is part of an occasional series, so check back next week for more music tales from Rio. – Sean Chaffin, Mosaic Brazil editor

Part II – Football, Pele, Monty Python, home decor disaster

I suppose I was a bit of a loner while in London, having come from a small coastal town in the northeast of England. I drank alone or with my very close friend and brother Jonathan, who apart from trying to get me involved with the Black Panthers, was having problems with heavy drugs. I really tried to save him as I had my cello and didn’t seem to need drugs. He sadly died very young and I think three people went to his funeral. Two of them were my dear parents who read out my letter. Jonathan had a very high IQ and later in life Labor Party politicians approached him for advice. He could have become an MP (member of parliament) – what a brain.

We talked about saving the planet, agricultural revolution, and bringing Brazilian football youth to England. Spurs was his team and can you believe it, some 10 years later, Spurs were the first team to bring Latin stars to the UK. Look at all the young Brazilians who are coming to work in the UK nowadays. I suppose Jonathan and I could have been the first football managers to introduce Brazilian talent.

***

I was very lucky in the ‘90s when I was asked to organize an event for the English Cello Orchestra conference in Rio. My cello ensemble played at an opening ceremony and I’d always wanted to meet Pele, who was to open this particular event. What an emotion it was for me to be introduced to the greatest ever football player. And to learn that he plays the guitar too was very special. I wish we could have organized a game there and then, musicians versus Pele. He certainly is a music lover and such a sympathetic person.

Living in Brazil, as an Englishman I suppose opens certain doors and creates many otherwise impossible circumstances. As a professional musician in the UK I had met and played with so many great artists including the Stylistics, the Four Tops, Three Degrees, Tony Bennett, Freddy Starr, Angela Morley, Bob Love, and many famous classical musicians too. At the BBC Maida Vale studios, I’d even literally had arguments and tried to convince John Cleese from Monty Python to join our cause to save the five BBC orchestras, during the musicians’ strike. Naturally, it’s very different when you’re on a picket line, but I still had great respect for such a great actor. In fact, I was literally to bump into him once again at the Royal Academy of Art. Not knowing we were both in the same gallery and as one does, both of us started to step backward to appreciate the fine works of art. Well I went one step and he another, until finally both of us bumped into each other, back to back. It must have been so funny to someone observing, but as there was no one else around ,we both jumped in that startled fashion and apologized profusely. Did I know who he was? Not until my brother Michael and sister-in-law Shorna, both great artists, told me. If I had, I would have tackled him about the BBC orchestras again.

I was very lucky in the mid-70s to have played with the BBC Radio Orchestra for six years. I met so many important popular and light music stars as most of the famous singers of those days came into the studios to record with us – European music award winners, some great maestros, and light music arrangers and composers. During the BBC strikes, my brother Robert and I had huge mortgages to pay and there was no work. So I, who had done just about every job going as a student from working as a male nurse in a mortuary to sweeping the London roads to painting and decorating as a professional with my Uncle Noel in Yorkshire, decided to form a firm – the Chew Brothers Painting and Decoration. And unbelievably, we managed to more than pay our mortgages with what we earned. I’ll never forget one job. I was asked to redecorate Neil Richardson’s mansion. He was one of our main guest conductors. Well the two of us started, and it was a full week’s work – rolls and rolls of the most expensive wallpaper. And have you ever tried pasting a full staircase in a mansion? Well we did and the living room too. End of week came, and we were paid. And we went to celebrate. What a wonderful job – we were so proud. That next morning, a Sunday, the maestro calls. “David, can you tell me where the plugs or sockets in the living room are? And also, I cannot walk upstairs as the paper has all come down.” Was I embarrassed! Naturally I sent Robert out and he corrected the mistakes. I was so happy to get back to playing the cello!

Click here for Part I in this series, and check back next week for another part in this series including the author taking up Brazilian percussion.

The Houston Brazilian Arts Foundation brings a bit of Brazil to the Lone Star State, and has announced several events in the coming weeks.

• Brazilian Movie Night – Friday, June 25 and 8 p.m. and free to the public. The movie is Mestre Bimba: A Capoeira Iluminada, which tells the story of Capoeira as sport, art, game, and fight, which is being spread through Brazil and abroad – all because of the determination of Mestre Bimba. Subtitles will be available.

• Afro-Brazilian Dance Workshop with Janete Silva– Sunday, June 27 from 1-3 p.m. at Brazilian Arts Foundation. Join renowned artist and choreographer, Janete Silva,

for an energetic workshop exploring the rhythms and movements of Afro-Brazilian dance. Learn Afro, Afoxe, Samba Reggae and movements of the Orixas. The cost is $25.

• 2010 Houston Brazilian Festival – Sunday, Sept. 5 from 4-10 p.m. It’s almost that time again, and the foundation is gearing up for the 3rd Annual Houston Brazilian Festival at Jones Plaza. The event has become one of the biggest Brazilian events in Houston each year.

The Houston Brazilian Arts Foundation was founded in 2001 and is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing cultural education and building community through the preservation and sharing of Brazilian culture. For more information on the foundation or to volunteer for the Brazilian Festival, visit www.brazilianarts.org.

Do you have Brazilian items of interest in your community? Please let us know to post here and as part of Connect Brazil’s new Brazil Club initiative.

By DAVID CHEW, guest contributor

Last Updated: June 11, 2010; 10:05 pm CT

Why is Rio a magnet especially to us gringos and how is it that we seem to meet so many famous people?

*** Englishman David Chew is the founder of the Rio International Cello Festival and principal cellist in the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra. He recently was awarded the UK’s OBE medal for his four decades of work in Brazilian music. He lives with his wife and family in Rio de Janeiro and has agreed to share some of his stories in music with our readers. This is part of an occasional series, so check back next week for more music tales from Rio.   – Sean Chaffin, Mosaic Brazil editor ***

PART I – London life and rock band remembrances

Being a musician, I suppose it brings us into close contact with numerous stars and famous people. Way back in my student days I remember being called by a fellow (William and Tony) Pleeth student at the Guildhall School of Music (UK) to join, or at least rehearse with, what became one of the world’s greatest pop groups – the Electric Light Orchestra. A fellow from the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Hugh MacDowell, only 16 years of age then, met up with me one day at the entrance of Guildhall. He wore his long leather boots and me with my long red Jesus-style haircut, brown leather boots, and an X-army jacket that I used to carry a pint of milk around in one pocket. What a sight! I even kept a small bird in my hair. It traveled all over London with me to my lessons and all – underground, trains, and buses.

Hugh asked me one day if I would play second cello in the band. I had just gained a scholarship to study classical cello and thought about my poor old dad who had made so many sacrifices to be able to come to London. And Hugh said: “You’ll have to paint your cello green and stand up to play and improvise a lot.” I decided at that moment, “not for me” – even though Hugh and ELO were followed by numerous screaming girls. Later, I saw them go on to fame – traveling the world, homes all over the world, and recording many records.

That very same year though, I was invited to a full day of recording by another cellist mate, and I was to be picked up at a London metro station and taken to the recording studio and paid £7. Back in the ‘70s, that was good drinking money and we didn’t think much of eating in those days, so I accepted. I arrived at the station with my cello, a little nervous, as this was to be my very first recording session. I was picked up by a big white Mercedes-Benz. “Very posh,” I thought, having come from a working class family background. Both my parents were ardent socialists and very high-principled people, working all their lives towards helping make the world a better place.

I eventually was taken off to an enormous mansion with most of one floor turned into a recording studio. Together with my cellist mate we started what was to be an all day session. No union hours or for that matter wages, after all I was a first year student with a warm sound and heart. This was to be Mick Rutherford’s demo EP. Yes Genesis was there, and I met the entire group, giving their opinions and telling me how beautiful everything was. Did I know who Genesis was in those days? I had no idea. I just knew that I was bloody hungry after many hours of recording and asked one of them if he would be so kind as to fetch me a sandwich. He very humbly did.

As it happed these guys were very knowledgeable musicians and all studied at the Guildhall, or went to the same grammar school as my friend.

Click here for Part II in this series.

Big waves and now a big name. In April, Brazil’s Carlos Burle was named the first-ever Big Wave World Champion as the winner of the Big Wave World Tour surfing cicuit.

The tour seeks to promote big wave surfing. Brazil is home to some great surf, and great surfers. The size of waves these surfers glide down is gigantic and it is mesmerizing to see them at work. Burle is happy to be the first king of the big waves and recently sat down with ESPN to discuss this burgeoning sport , his career on the water, and his life back in Brazil:

I devoted my life to this sport and to become the first champ of the Big Wave Tour in history at my age it is much more than I expected. It’s like, right now, more than ever, I can rest in peace. This achievement is highly linked to this moment of my life. I’m focused on giving back to the sport and our community and there is a lot work to do out there.

Since I stepped into surfing in the early ’80s in the city of Recife in the state of Pernambuco in Brazil, I had to overcome the prejudice of my parents, family and the whole society to keep surfing. The sport itself lacked an infrastructure, money and most of all, it didn’t have the respect and support like in others areas. I had to leave my town and look for a brighter future in the southeast and south of Brazil. By that time I had proved to my family that I was talented, however, that didn’t mean that I would be able to make a living from it. As a professional surfer, I was doing pretty good on average contests. I was fifth on the Brazilian national ranking at the age of 20 and had a sponsor. Was I all set? No way. I didn’t like to spend the whole year at contests with poor surfing conditions. By that time, with a couple Hawaiian seasons and some trips to good places behind me, I was already addicted to the rush of the big surf. There wasn’t money for going big, but I thought it could be a good start, because to approach the big surf it must be from the heart.

Brazil’s famous favelas (shantytowns) have become a stopping point for many visitors making their way to Rio in recent years.

These famous areas known for poverty, drugs, and often violence have inspired books and movies and fascinated many travelers according to the Seattle Times. Hundreds of thousands of people are crammed into these tiny cities within a city, and some favelas have even grown into near-middle class sanctuaries in recent years with churches, shops, and schools. As the Times notes about the favelas:

For visitors to Rio, there even are guided daytrips to a few of the more stable favelas. It’s part of a “reality tourism” trend that takes tourists from Brazilian favelas to South Africa’s gritty Soweto shantytown and teeming Indian train stations where street children live.

Like almost everyone in Rio, favela-dwellers are crazy for soccer and samba. During the annual raucous Carnival parade and street parties, teams of gyrating and strutting dancers proudly represent favela samba schools.

What are your experiences with Rio’s favelas?