Seu Jorge says he ‘felt like Elvis,” when he landed the role of Pele dos Santos in Wes Anderson’s 2004 movie, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

            “Elvis,” says Jorge, speaking by phone from Miami, “had similar luck in his first film.”  Relatively speaking this is true, although it’s also fair to say that Jorge’s idiosyncratic, Portuguese-language interpretations of David Bowie songs in The Life Aquatic are otherwise dissimilar form Elvis singing Love Me Tender, in the movie of the same name.

            The Brazilian singer and actor fit easily into Anderson’s acutely whimsical cinematic world as easily as he fit into Fernando Meirelles’s 2002 critical smash, City of God, set in the slum of Rio de Janeiro.  Jorge, who played the good-guy-gone bad character Knockout Ned, grew up in those very same slums (or favelas) and was homeless for a time on its notoriously mean streets.

            He was born Jorge Mario de Silva.  “Seu” came later, a telling nickname that literally meaning “Your” as in “Your Jorge.”  He feels it implies that he “belongs to the people,” adding, “I try to make universal music.”  This concept is underscored by his own characterization of the music he creates- in the context of Brazilian music, he prefers the description “blues from the favela.”

            For Jorge, music is the emotional counterweights to his work on the screen (most recently in The House of Sand, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival), which he approaches from a “technical and professional” standpoint, an attitude developed during studies in a Rio drama school.  This training completely altered his perspective on he own life.

            “Brazil is essentially a racist country, where you’re very marked by the racism.  Black people often don’t believe they’re really going to find a place for themselves, a successful place in society or in a profession they aspire to, but the theatre gave me that confidence.  It was critical to break down certain complexes I might have had about where I come from.”

            His music, on the other hand, comes from someplace other than the technical, or as he puts it, “My music is based on emotions, on living in the moment.”  He’s not interested in performing in concert halls where people attend out of “social obligation” – he wants an audience that’s “hungering for something new, a new day, and a new outlook.”

            On a more prosaic note, he enthusiastically declares, “I want my audience to sing and dance.”