Brazilian singer Seu Jorge was first seen and by a large North American audience in the 2004 film The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.

Playing sailor Pele dos Santos, he provided much of the soundtrack: acoustic David Bowie tunes sung in Portuguese.

Jorge, to give a concert tonight at Mershon Auditorium, called the movie a great opportunity for the dissemination of Brazilian music and culture a blessing to him during his childhood in the favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro.

Before he was approached by director Wes Anderson, he hadn't heard of Bowie.

"It was very important to me personally that Portuguese could play this role in the film," said Jorge, speaking from Miami through an interpreter. "Bowie's music is virtually unknown in the favela."

Before shooting, he was given the music without words to which he added Portuguese.

"The lyrics that I wrote for the songs," said Jorge, 35, "represented the stories of the characters in the movie, a Lot about the character I played and no relationship to the actual original Bowie lyrics."

Before the Life Aquatic invitation, he played Knockout Ned in City of God harrowing 2002 drama about survival among Brazilian gangs and slumlords.

"I play the guy in the favela who survives," Jorge said. "It has some similarity with my own life."

Then, as the first black Brazilian actor to appear in an American movie, The Life Aquatic, he managed "a tremendous step forward, personal and professional."

He took pride in showing "something of Brazil" in communicating "the Brazilian experience from my own viewpoint."

His music on the album Cm ("Raw"), re leased Sept. 6, is built largely around his captivating voice and acoustic guitar. Electronic flourishes round out the sound.

"Jorge's voice is dark-brown sugar, coarsely ground," according to a Rolling Stone review; “ in Cru's affecting, political Eu Sou Favela, he employs it to contrast the diminished hopes of his upbringing in the slums of Rio with the joyous promise of the samba."

Despite his roots in a part of the world rife with drugs, guns, unemployment, prostitution and general lawlessness, he said, "I had a great deal of happiness in my childhood. My mother and dad were a very strong couple throughout my life, and they created a family environment that Saved me from a lot of the effects that other people suffered from.

"Samba is a vehicle for happiness in the favela. There are no lyrics in samba for sadness and despair. It's about faith and believing that tomorrow you will have the money to pay the phone bill; you will be able to get water. Life will go on and will be better.

"That's the cultural orientation of Brazilians even in the slums."

The Wexner Center for the Arts will present Seu Jorge at 8 tonight standing-room-only black Box concert at Mershon Auditorium, 1871 N. High St. Bossa-nova musician Celso Fonseca will perform first. Tickets cost $13 and $15 at the box office (614-292-3535) and Tlcketmaster outlets (614-431-3600).