“It’s a long time since I’ve been to my place,” says Seu Jorge, referring not to the LA home he shares with his wife, Mariana, and two daughters, but to the favela in the city of Belford Roxo, Rio de Janeiro state, where he grew up as a different person entirely – Jorge Mário da Silva.
It was only as a musician that he become Seu (“Mr”) Jorge – the drummer Marcelo Yuka assigned him the nickname. “My place had nothing,” he says of Belford Roxo. “Just drugs, gangs, murder, bad cops.”
Sitting poolside at Sydney’s Four Seasons hotel in blue jeans and a grey T-shirt, the 44-year-old Jorge is a world away from that home – and visibly fatigued, having only arrived the night before. He’s also polite, thoughtful and charming. Intermittently he pauses to sip on tea with honey. “It’ll save my voice,” he says, grinning.
Scheduled to arrive a day earlier to be boxfresh for two headline dates at Sydney festival, Jorge pushed back his plans to attend his father’s 84th birthday. He beams as he recalls the evening, a party at the home of his friend, the legendary Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso. “It was amazing,” says Jorge, who took daughters Flor, 12, and Luz, eight, along to spend time with their grandfather. “Lots of friends and musicians there for my daddy.”
In Brazil, Seu Jorge is a superstar. A consummate performer, respected composer but, above all else, possessor of an incredible, smoky baritone. It’s a voice that first reached a significant international audience via the director Wes Anderson’s quirky comedy The Life Aquatic with Steve Zizzou, in which Jorge plays a sailor with a penchant for singing David Bowie songs in Portuguese.
Bowie himself credits Jorge with giving his songs “a new level of beauty”. But it is Jorge’s performance in another film – Fernando Meirelles’ powerful drama City of God – that affords more insight into his previous life. The film brutally depicts the sort of rampant violence and corruption he grew up with in the favelas.
“They are true, true stories in City of God, very close to my story,” Jorge says. “It is very fresh in my mind, watching the people fighting for survival, for better days, and expecting that one day everything is going to be fine. Everyone wants to express themselves and in the favela it is not different.”
The oldest of four brothers, Jorge began working at the age of 10, fixing tyres in a mechanic’s garage. That was 1980, he recalls, the year his parents separated.
At 12 he left school (though he’d later return to a private college after his mother wangled four scholarships through a vote-seeking politician). He picked up his first instrument – the cornet – during a year of compulsory military service, but the following year (1990), his 16-year-old brother was killed in one of Belford Roxo’s frequent battles between police and favela drug gangs.
Jorge spent the next three years living on the streets. It is difficult to reconcile this hardened youth with the gentle man opposite me – with Seu Jorge the star. But unlike Knockout Ned, his character in City of God, Jorge has always eschewed the gangster life and culture of vengeance.
“I take my revenge when I decide to make music and send a great message to the people,” he says. “I’ve done movies and talked about these stories but as an artist I never played in favelas because I’ve been working hard to escape that.
“I don’t want to go back because if I go back the big boys say, ‘Oh I wanna know Jorge, I’m gonna meet him,’ – and I don’t want to be involved with these things.”
Instead, he left the favela after his brother’s death in 1990 to avoid being cast as avenger “especially as I was older than my brothers, any bad decision would be for all of them, those guys would follow”. He moved in with his uncle in a different neighbourhood and, the same day his brother was laid to rest, he learned of a theatre program run by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Jorge, who’d only just begun playing the guitar, auditioned for the great saxophonist Paulo Moura. Told to step to one side, he thought: “Oh no, he doesn’t like my voice.” But it turned out Moura wanted him for his composition team.
And that, says Jorge, “changed everything”.
When this strong-willed, idealistic teen announced to his family he was going to be a musician – by his own admission not so much as a career choice but “to make friends” – the news was not met well, which is why he ended up on the streets. However, despite being homeless, Jorge gained a reputation – and for the right reasons. In 1996 he joined his first band, Farofa Carioca, which signed to a major label. His 2001 debut solo album Samba Esporte Fino was a smash in Brazil, with the single Carolina still a popular classic.
Subsequent records Cru and Músicas Para Churrasco Vol 1 cemented his place as one of Brazil’s most important samba and Afro-Brazilian artists. He’s now working on a second volume of Músicas Para Churrasco and has wrapped an acting role as the father of the Brazilian football great Pelé in a film due out this year.
“I love playing football,” he says. “I don’t have so much skills but cinema is magic. “If you look at me in the movie you’ll say, ‘Oh, wow! Jorge can play!’”
Jorge likes to experiment with different musical styles, as well as the ball, but so far has baulked at funk carioca, otherwise known as favela funk, the electronic dance music hybrid derived from Miami bass that has been popular in Brazil’s favelas since the 90s. “I like the idea but I don’t like the lyrics, sometimes. Sometimes the lyrics put the woman down. My idea is to put the woman on the top, baby!”
So what does he think the role of an artist should be? “In my country I think it is to produce culture,” he says. “Maybe in the US it is to be a great entertainer. Maybe you don’t need a big connect [with] the people, you need a connect with the audience – this is different, you know. [But] in Brazil, it is more serious. You need to have a function, you need to send a sound for making people think.”
Bob Marley did this for Jamaica, he says. “His sound needs to say something; [it’s] not just for making people dance. You need to touch people and I think my role is this.”
As for reaching people worldwide: “I never imagined I’d be in Australia, never. Now I have five continents that I’ve discovered – this is more than I expected for my life.”
• The Sydney festival runs until 26 January. Find all Guardian Australia’s coverage here
