RADIO AND TV

In 1989, the christian cultural scene in Brasilia was growing really fast, and somehow I was involved in almost everything. I took photos at the 2nd Christian Art Exposition, and Ranuzia and I were always invited to participate in the exhibitions and to play at various places.

At the following year, the Government of the Federal District created Cultura FM, a radio channel, and the politician Peniel Pacheco asked the governor to start a Christianity themed radio show. After the governor’s permission, Peniel invited the famous radio hosts Jairo Ribeiro and the musician Robertinho. In a informal conversation Robertinho called me to go along with him on one of the recording days and I went to the very first one. I continued to assist him for 11 years as his musical producer. Thanks to the persistence of the great radio host Jairo Ribeiro the show called Cultura Gospel was aired for 13 years.

A FM radio show that played christian songs was something very unusual. Only on Rio and on São Paulo there were something similar, but still always in radio channels owned by evangelicals. In a “secular” radio, as far as I knew, there was none other in the country. It was a weekly show, that aired on saturdays, at 7 am, and, although the bad scheduling, this show had the biggest audience of Radio Cultura. Do you have any idea of what it means to wake up at 7 am in a saturday justo to play music? National and international record labels sent albums to us. There was always this tension with the directors of the radio because the traditional listeners couldn’t conceive that a “cultural radio” could play christian music. I lost count of the times people called just to curse us or be mean or stuff like that. We always tried to be kind and gentle so that we hide our sadness for the callings. While I was an actor or a poet there was nothing wrong, but when I started to refer to myself as a christian musical producer it sounded like I was an leprous or something like that. It was sad and tiring. Every time the direction of the radio changed me and Jairo knew that the first thing they would do was going to be to cut us off. But we went and talked to them. With politeness, we showed them organisation and professionality beyond average (we had files with all the airings we did, number of callings, geographic location and age of the callers, songs asked for etc.) and we showed them that our show wasn’t a place for proselytism. It is interesting what the prejudice can do: people judged us and were surprised that we played the songs of musicians as Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Take 6, Ray Charles and so many others. They were also surprised to hear the best of our own music (I refer to Banda Raízes, Livre Arbítrio, Estilo de Vida, Cântaro, Quico Fagundes, João Alexandre, Milad, Rodrigo Bueno, Luz em Canto, Valter Júnior and so many others). It was a huge time to learn.

Later, also came to our team the well know radio host Dilson Santafé and a young man, Calebe Pacheco, nephew of Peniel Pacheco, that, influenced by our show, years later became a famous radio host.