“Cazuza”

Cazuza was born on 4 April 1958, in Rio de Janeiro. His father was discloser of the recorder Odeon. His mother was a dressmaker. They were not rich but he studied at an expensive school. Cazuza took a university entrance exam of Communications, only because his father promised to give him a car. But he gave up the course. He started to take drugs. And his father had to get him free from prisons, charged by carriage and usage of drugs. And, in 1976, got a job for him in the recorder “Som Livre”. There, Cazuza was a discloser of artists in the recorder and, after seven months of a photograph course in Bekerley University, it was given some paces as a photographer. But nothing of that satisfied him. Howevwe, thanks to a theater course, Cazuza could find himself. He could sing. It was in the assembly of the play "Pára-quedas do coração” that he had loosened the voice, and he liked it very much.

In 1981 he found himself with the people that would be his companions on the road. He knew Roberto Frejat, Dé, Maurício Clays and Gutti Goffi (guitar, short, keyboards and battery, respectively) who were trying to find a vocalist for the Barão Vermelho band which, at this time, did not have their own work. They got in touch with some theaters, did the difficult work of divulging them until the producer Ezequiel Days heard the demo of the group. He showed it to Guto Grace Mello, artistic director of the Som Livre and they had to convince Cazuza’s father, João Araújo, to throw his own son.

In January 1985, Barão Vermelho had a successful participation in Rock 'n Rio Festival .In July 1985 the band got separated, because there were many misunderstandings. Some days after, Cazuza was sent to hospital with an infection. Afterwards, he started to sing alone and the album "Cazuza", launched in November 1985, inaugurated the individual phase of the singer and a series of partnerships. In October 1987, after an admission in a clinic of Rio de Janeiro, his parents led him to Boston, in the United States.There, he faced two critical months, submitting himself to a medical treatment with AZT.

When he came back, he recorded the disk "Ideologia", where he spoke of his experiences through the perspective of death and also worried with matters related to the social questions of the country. In the following year he won the prize SHARP as the best singer of pop-rock and for best pop-rock music. The show "Ideologia", driven by Ney Matogrosso traveled throughout the country, turned to a program in the Net Globe and was recorded in a disk, "Cazuza ao vivo, o tempo não pára". This disk has sold more than 560 thousand copies and is the record of the greatest success of his career.

He appeared in a weekly magazine assuming that he was with Aids. It was a national crash. He was the first public personality to assume this illness.
In October 1989, after four months following an alternative handling in São Paulo, Cazuza traveled again to Boston, where he stayed in a hospital until March of the following year. His condition already was really delicate and, on that circumstance, there was not much more to do about it. It was when he died, little afterwards – on the 7™ of July 1990. The burial was in the cemetery “São João Batista”, in Rio de Janeiro.

Project from
Ana Carolina and Juliana Rufino
Progress 3
Teacher Fernanda O.

Centro Britânico
Pompéia Branch