With a very particular voice and charisma, RAS BERNARDO helped popularize a style of music that for a long time did not receive due importance here in Brazil: reggae.
Aboard the pioneering Cidade Negra, RAS BERNARDO faced the most difficult period of a process that ranged from media distrust in general to the impact his grown dreadlocks caused on people in the streets. Today, after three albums released (two with the former group, one already as a solo artist), several hits (Falar a Verdade, Conciliação, Pensamento), shows across the country and abroad (Jamaica, United States, France), plus experiences in studios and on stage with some of the genre's biggest stars (Jimmy Cliff, Steel Pulse, Aswad, Ziggy Marley), everything should be easier in the career of this singer and songwriter with so many "services rendered".
It should be, but it isn't. In this land where you must kill a lion every day (and precisely at the moment when reggae asserts itself as a style of music and behavior among youth), RAS BERNARDO now faces two challenges:
First, proving to those who already know him that this entire journey did not happen by mere chance.
A successful artist is not manufactured overnight, just as talent is not something you unlearn in the blink of an eye.
Second, reaching those who have heard of the original singer of Cidade Negra but have not seen him shine on stage with full intensity. Although they did not closely follow the beginning of his career, many young people today feel totally in tune with the songs and lyrics sung by RAS BERNARDO when he was still the frontman of Cidade Negra.
But all of this, far from constituting an "impossible mission", is serving only as another comeback for someone who has already had to shake off a lot of dust to leave Belford Roxo and earn a living and the world solely through the force of his inspiration and art.
While preparing his second solo album, RAS BERNARDO takes the opportunity to reaffirm ideas and convictions that once made him choose the harder path: swimming against the current and remaining faithful to the style that made him famous. And that is precisely what all fans of good, authentic reggae music await. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for... RAS BERNARDO, come what may!!