Brazilian singer-songwriter Rogê’s nostalgic journey
The 40-something artist is performing his music with a look of satisfaction. Brazilian musician Rogê sits cross-legged on a stool, wearing a white suit jacket, sneakers, and a pork-pie hat, strumming and finger-picking an acoustic guitar. To his right is multi-instrumentalist Stéphane San Juan, tapping or brushing a drum kit, and occasioning singing or giving an approving smile. In Santa Monica’s KCRW Annenberg Performance Studio in 2023, Rogê sings songs from his just released Curyman album, his first to come out in the United States. During the interview with host Ro “Wyldeflower” Contreras, Rogê speaks about how easily the album came together, using American musicians he had never met. Rogê’s new Los Angeles home hasn’t steered him away from his samba roots, noting “Sometimes when you leave Brazil you become more Brazilian.” He may not have felt that way a few years earlier when he moved his wife and children from Rio de Janeiro to Hollywood and struggled to pay the rent. When the pandemic kept him from touring and performing.
“For me, the best Brazilian music is from the 60s and 70s,” Rogê told Will Hermes in an interview for the December 2024 issue of Uncut. I would be lying if I said I didn’t agree. Jorge Ben, Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso, Baden Powell, Os Afro Sambas, the list goes on. On Curyman, and Curyman II, the second volume released in November 2024, the music is drenched in the sound of that period. Listening to each track is like a game of “guess the influence,” like playing Name That Tune. Producer Tommy Brenneck used tape and analogue equipment to create the vintage flavor in both albums and released them through his new California-based label, Diamond West. Curyman’s music could be labeled samba-funk, and songs are wrapped in luscious strings provided by legendary Brazilian arranger Arthur Verocai. On grammy.com, Jessica Lipsky describes Curyman as “a masterclass in what happens when you ‘jump into the darkness’ and take artistic risks.”
The Diamond West website describes Rogê as “Charismatic and scruffy, with a distinctively raspy yet boyish voice.” Rogê spent twenty years as a musician in Brazil before he moved to the States in 2019. Born Roger José Cury, he grew up in Arpoador, a region in Rio de Janeiro between Ipanema and Copacabana. He picked up the Curyman nickname from another musician who struggled to pronounce his stage name (it’s pronounced haw-zheh). The singer got an early break in 2008 when he began a decade-long run playing a Sunday set at the samba club Carioca da Gema in the Rio neighborhood, Lapa. “This was my university,” Rogê told James Gavin from the Los Angeles Times. “I thought, ‘What I have here they can never teach me in school.’” His first opportunity to record solo for a major label came in 2014 with the live disc Baile do Brenguelé, that also had a companion DVD of the performance. In 2014, ESPN picked Rogê to create marketing videos for the World Cup in Brazil, and two years later, when Brazil hosted the 2016 Olympics, he co-wrote the theme song for the games. He released several albums in Brazil, including the 2016 Latin Grammy nominated Na Veia, with samba singer Arlindo Cruz.
By 2019, concerns about political changes in his country, and the safety of his family, convinced Rogê to move to the U.S. “It meant uprooting his wife and their two sons, who couldn’t speak English; his own was limited,” wrote James Gavin in the Times. “He started over as an unknown, playing at Townhouse [in Venice Beach] on Sundays. Supporting his family, he admits, was ‘very hard. Some days I went to bed early to not think too much about how I would pay the bills next month.’” His friend, musician Seu Jorge, offered him an opportunity to record an EP in the Netherlands, followed by a tour. The two completed Night Dreamer: Direct-to-Disc Sessions in 2020, but the pandemic kept them from completing a tour. Undeterred, Rogê played guitar every day and picked up session work in Los Angeles. At one session, he met Tommy Brenneck, who plays with The Budos Band, and produced the “lost in the 60s” Love in the Wind album for the vocal group, Sha La Das. After hearing Rogê demo his songs, the Brooklyn musician/producer moved to Los Angeles to launch his new West Coast label with Curyman as the first release. “I was floored instantly,” Brenneck told Lipsky. “Rogê recorded 12 songs in like an hour and a half. His guitar playing was outrageous. The songwriting was incredibly sophisticated. His singing was amazing. So it was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do a record.’”
Brenneck suggested they make the Curyman album like they were made in the seventies, with everyone playing and singing together. The American musicians had not played with Rogê before, but they were all fluent in Brazilian music, and basic tracks were completed in four days. Rogê wanted to add strings, so after convincing Brenneck that he really was friends with Arthur Verocai (he made a FaceTime call to convince him), the two flew to Rio to watch the arranger enhance the music. Verocai’s 1972 self-titled album is a Brazilian classic, and he wrote strings for albums by Jorge Ben (Negro É Lindo) and Cal Costa (Índia). Hearing the gorgeous arrangements Verocai created for the songs was an emotional experience for both the singer and the producer. There’s an Instagram post from a studio in Rio de Janeiro, showing Rogê sitting on a piano bench, listening to Verocai conducting the orchestra. At one point he turns to the camera, drops his mask, and gives a childlike smile of delight.
Curyman II follows the same blueprint. Both albums fit together hand in glove and Verocai is there again to add a second helping of orchestration. The closing track on the first album, a partial cover of Dorival Caymmi’s “O Vento,” is reprised as the opening song on the sequel and renamed “Curyman” as the theme that links both records. A third Curyman record is in the works, planned as the last to complete the trilogy. I can’t wait for the third one, but I selfishly hope Rogê makes Curyman albums until the end of time. “This album is real deal Brazilian: A lot of flavors, different styles of Brazilian music,” Rogê told Jessica Lipsky in 2023 when the first volume was released. “I felt more freedom to do that here.”