Read Bárbara Fálcon's interview with Sérgio Cassiano, vocalist of Adão Negro!

 BÁRBARA: How did you become interested in music? Did you have any musicians in the family?
SÉRGIO:They say my grandfather played the viola, but I never saw my grandfather play the viola. The only time I saw my grandfather with an instrument was when he picked up an instrument like that, counted the strings and said he had one too many. So I think he played the five-string viola, but I never saw him. When I was around 16 or 17 years old, Marcos and I went to live in the city center. And it was very close to Pelourinho, that whole thing. A boy who liked guitar, rock, Camisa de Vênus and so on comes to live next door to us. And then this neighbor started teaching us guitar, playing songs for us and so on. At that time I met Vitor Hugo, who is the bassist of Morrão Fumegante. And Vitor was also a reference for us because he was a link with the boys from Cachoeira (city in Recôncavo Bahia where Edson Gomes, Nengo Vieira and Sine Calmon were born). Also influenced by the boys, I always listened to very good music, I always listened to traditional jazz, reggae, in general, black American music. And then we formed a rock band, me, Vitor, Marcos (from Adão Negro), Simone (who sang vocals with Edson Gomes). We got the group together and started playing and getting interested in music. So we went through the bars playing everything from Brazilian popular music, the best and the worst, Bahian music from the best and the worst, in contact with other artists here too. Vitor was already playing with the reggae people. We already knew Remanescentes. We were already close to the boys from Cachoeira, still listening, but not playing.

 BÁRBARA: And they had never played reggae?
SÉRGIO:No, I had never played reggae. I liked it, I played like that with Vitor, but I had never played in a band, I had never thought about forming a reggae band, with work focused on reggae. Then Remanescentes ends, right? When Remanescentes ends, Sine does Sojah with Marcos Oliveira, but it didn't work out very well. Then I ended up joining Morrão Fumegante by chance. I entered by chance. Then Morrão started to grow. I started to understand some things that I didn't understand. For example, this thing about the music taking too long and the message, giving more importance to the message. So I started to understand these things more. I joined Morrão Fumegante and stayed at Morrão Fumegante until close to recording the first album. Then we played frequently and earned some money. It wasn't enough money to pay the phone bill, but it was enough to pay the electricity bill.

 BÁRBARA: You followed this growth process well, right?
SÉRGIO:I want to record this, that I played at Morrão Fumegante and earned a fee of 50 cents and much more than that too. I was extremely satisfied. For you see the change in perspective. I was a musician, that musician who goes and earns his money.

 BÁRBARA: You played in several places, right?
SÉRGIO:Then we played in Cachoeira a few times and Sine started playing in Salvador. And then Morrão Fumegante was a band that people liked, it had an already growing audience.

 BÁRBARA: Did you start to notice that people followed the band?
SÉRGIO:They followed. It already had a loyal audience. Faithful and growing. And I said this to Vitor: “Vitor, this will work”. Okay, by chance too, as I joined, I left the band. Because I played with other people and then they painted a show to do with someone and they painted it after that show, they painted one of Morrão Fumegante at the same time and they couldn't find me to do the show. Then they played without me. Then Kennedy came in, right? And naturally I followed the process. Then Morrão recorded and started playing in larger venues, at Novo Tempo. Then I wasn't there anymore. Then it caught the attention of Cristóvão Rodrigues, this whole story. They set out to record their first album. But I didn't want to leave reggae anymore. Then came the story of forming another reggae band, other than Sine's work, with me, with Cardoso, with Aurelino drummer. Then, it was me, Aurelino Marcos Guimarães, Artur and Sandro, who played with Marcos and Artur on the night too. We rehearsed and we didn't have the band name yet. And we started putting on some songs.

 BÁRBARA: And what were the songs you were rehearsing at that time?
SÉRGIO:We rehearsed four songs that didn't work out and the fifth song that came in was Adão Negro. After we rehearsed the fourth song, everyone was looking for a name and I called Guimarães and said: “Guimarães, I have a name”. Then he said: “What's the name of the band?” “Adão Negro”. “Boy, very heavy”. He thought it was heavy. He thought it was heavy, but the name kept wandering. Artur liked it a lot, because Artur was much more engaged in the black movement thing, indirect protest and so on. Racial contestation, which becomes social, which becomes economic. Artur liked the name and then due to lack of another name, they didn't paint any more names that caught our attention, so we ended up leaving Adão Negro, which is my idea, right? But everyone embraced it well. In fact, Artur embraced it too well, because he wrote the song Adão Negro. As he wrote the song Adão Negro, it was the only one that remained from that first moment. At that time, the CD itself was new on the market. So making a demo CD was something that was daring and also like that, it gave another story, right? And we had at the beginning, we wanted to put together a repertoire to play. We wanted to put together the repertoire soon, we wanted to leave it to play later. But then Ska Reggae appears, the Ska Reggae block. We had left a demo there and by then we already knew everyone, right? Ska Reggae then called us to play one weekend. We put together a repertoire, the rest of the repertoire very quickly, we did the presentation and interestingly, since that day we haven't stopped playing. Then Valdo came in, right? Who is also a great musician, who also knows a lot. I already knew a lot more than the reggae people. Valdo yes, I had already played with Rasbuta, there was already a reggae band called Javana, which recorded an album, but it didn't succeed. And then, that's it, more or less formed the group that is there today. Then Dino Cerqueira came in, which is dread, who already played reggae, but who also played with me in other places. It got to the point that in the growth process of Adão Negro, when we weren't making money, everyone also played in other bands. Being a musician, we would make money. I was already in college, I started teaching and stopped playing with other people. So Adão Negro started playing on Babilônia, for free. In this process. In a little while we will add 1 real. Do you believe this? It started there. It was like the Morrão process. It already had a growing audience. Morrão hadn't burst yet, it was in that process, bursting, but not bursting. But there was a great effervescence, right? And we were on the way, because we were close. I even think that the public really saw the closeness that we had. This certainly favored Adão Negro in relation to other bands that were also starting out at the time. Bands that are just as good, but that, because of this maybe thing, are further away from what I call “Centrão”, from the people of Cachoeira, the public guessed this somehow and favored Adão Negro a lot, for sure. In the same process, Cristóvão Rodrigues also became interested in our work, and it was the same story. An independent album was released and we are still fighting. Talking about influence, Valdo says that I am the spitting image of Nengo (Vieira) and I agree. He thinks that from Adão Negro, I have more of a foot in Cachoeira in my compositions.

 BÁRBARA: Did you watch any of the extinct Remanescentes's shows?
SÉRGIO:I attended. I watched Remanescentes on Casa d’Itália... Yes, I watched Remanescentes playing on Casa d’ Itália. So I had a lot of respect because I saw that they were great musicians. I remember that Rangel (Wesley Rangel, owner of the record label WR)... Remanescentes actually recorded an album, right? In WR and such. They were greatly admired by Rangel. They still are to this day. And Rangel, when Remanescentes split up he said that “Remanescentes didn’t split up, Remanescentes flourished”. Because if we look at Nengo, Nengo's work is a finished job, right? He didn't lose anything. Sine too, didn't miss anything. Like Marcos Oliveira too. Musically this musician is perhaps the best performer of all, Marcos Oliveira. And I already had an admiration, and I still do, for all of them, individually, for their work individually. So that's what I think. I, from Adão Negro, am the most influenced by Cachoeira's music, by Cachoeira's reggae. Now, if you look at it from a general perspective, similarities and differences, I was always considered by the boys (from Cachoeira) to be much more urban. I don't know if urban. So Sine, from his perspective, he already saw that I wasn't as bluesy, I wasn't as rootsy, I wasn't as rural, whatever the word may be, as him or as Marcos Oliveira. And I know it really is true. I see it not as something better or worse, but as a fundamental difference. Because at the same time we started hearing Edson Gomes in Salvador, we heard Metallica, we heard Iron Maiden, I heard Camisa de Vênus. I listened to a lot of things that also influenced me a lot. Vitor already had stacks of vinyl from Van Hallen, Iron Maiden, Stevie Vai, Joe Satriani, big names in rock, instrumental music like that, which were also my much more direct influence than they were for Sine, Nengo and so on. And that's why the boys thought I was like that. And I see myself much more like this, urban. Hence, Adão Negro developed the language further with a different background. Because the boys from Cachoeira had a huge influence from religion, right? This gives a completely different perspective to the song, the message. I was really a rocker, Guimarães and I. I cut my hair now, but we were rockers. Another thing, the choice of equipment. Sine, Nengo, Marcos Oliveira, were much closer in terms of instrument choices, with that sound that was the essence, the reference. We were much more relaxed about it. We used digital equipment, which gives a completely different sound. So through contrary, convergent and divergent movements, we ended up hearing HIP HOP. HIP HOP has also appeared on Adão Negro's second album, which is close to being recorded. And we have also reached an audience, because we are at university, we played a lot at universities. We played to an audience that was already an audience that already had a big difference, right? A more urban audience, with different minds. So I think that, in general, this also influenced the creation of Adão Negro. I think that Adão Negro today goes through a similar process to that of Remanescentes.

 BÁRBARA: In what sense?
SÉRGIO:In the sense that everyone has a lot to say, everyone has a lot of influences. And may this be the natural path. Artur already has 20 songs ready. So, for example, when I went to do Adão Negro, the name already came from my thoughts. I already saw João Guimarães Rosa, I was already here at the university. We were looking for a name. I was reading João Guimarães Rosa. Then, reading everything I could from João Guimarães Rosa, in one of his interviews, he says the following: "I don't write about politics because the writer who writes about politics thinks about a minute of man's history and I think about more than a minute, I think about eternities. I think about the resurrection of man." That, Barbara, that left me... Then this thing about the resurrection of man had enchanted me. In Judeo-Christian mythology the beginning is Adam. Adam is the figure that represents the beginning, right? So the morally resurrected man, the intellectually resurrected man, a resurrected man needs to be a different man. Then I thought Adam had to be different. Adam had to rise again. And then I put Adão Negro.

 BÁRBARA: Why Black?
SÉRGIO:Why Black? First I knew, intentionally that the name was a strong name. And I thought that even though I didn't agree with everything the black movement said, a lot needed to be discussed and I knew that by putting this name in the spotlight, a lot would be discussed. So much so that Marcos found the name heavy and Artur loved it. And the name placed us within a circuit of cultural movement in the city, of the black movement, of discussions at the university as well. A very emblematic name, right? People from the black movement loved it. Used the name Adão Negro. It was a pamphlet, right? The name Adão Negro bothered and bothers a lot of people. I can't tell this on the radio, I never tell it on the radio, there's no time. I never tell on television, there's no time, but in general, I put it like this, that we needed a name that covered all the questions, that could cover all the questions that we wanted to ask and could put that to people.

 BÁRBARA: And in relation to reggae here at Bahia, what do you have to say?
SÉRGIO:Reggae, for example, as you talk to Rick Husband, who is not Jamaican, but is the son of a Jamaican, who has had contact with reggae music today outside of Bahia and Brasil, he says that reggae in Bahia is against the grain of history, And there is a recording of Adão Negro that I say this, that reggae in Bahia It's against the grain of history. Because the music that is much closer to this roots reference is the reggae music that Marley played, in fact, reggae from the 70s, which is very strong in Bahia. A little less strong, with a little less intensity in Brasil. Natirrutis also says this, that Brasília's music is roots music, and that we don't think it's so roots anymore, just as we don't think Maranhão's music is so roots anymore, from our perspective. But the reggae music in Brasil goes against the grain of history. In the whole world, no one plays the kind of music we play anymore. And I think it's good. I think it's good because it creates a situation, creates a state of things that will shape a unique song. As was the case with samba-reggae. A series of factors, such as the re-Africanization of the carnival of Salvador, along with the access that the boys of Olodum had, the thinkers of Olodum, João Jorge and the board, access to these things of Marcus Garvey, Malcom X. This whole thing about the black movement gave rise to samba-reggae, which is a historic moment that will never be repeated. It has not been repeated and will not be repeated. All over the world. Samba-reggae is from Bahia. I see this with optimism. I think it gives vent to its own individual influences and in groups, individually, it will shape a type of music that will only happen here. I find this extremely positive. And even if I don't think it's positive, there's no other way, understand Bárbara? I think that the sum of the influences is what will make Bahia different from Maranhão, Brasília and Rio de Janeiro, just as it will make Brasil different from the reggae music that is made in the rest of the world. Even if I didn't think so, it will be different. I think reggae music in Bahia will continue. I think it is a movement that has enough strength to continue on the margins, in quotation marks, “on the margins” of the Bahian music market, which is also something for us to calmly analyze, the Bahian music market. It is capable of continuing to produce great artists, regardless of whether it reaches the market or not. Because the Remanescentes was something that didn't fall apart. For those who know Remanescentes, you know that that was something that influenced so many people, right? And it is so present in our lives. So regardless of whether it hits the market or not, I think that Bahia's reggae music will still produce a lot of good things. There is a reggae market that hasn't reached the top yet, but today you can see that reggae has become a reference in the market, after Sine, with his music taking over during Carnival.