However, before this return, some remarkable events took place:
- In 1965, rocked by the echoes of Brazilian music festivals broadcast by TV Record — which influenced interior cities to promote their own — Sérgio, then 13 years old, and his schoolmate Renato dos Santos, the same age, composed "Tristeza de Nós Dois", a song that won first place with her colleague's voice Janet. This was Sérgio's first experience as a composer.
- Seu Jorge was approached so that his children could perform during the Wine Festival in the neighboring city of Minas Gerais, Andradas. The duo then prepared a repertoire of popular instrumental songs and, at the age of ten and fourteen, they went on stage to open the night for the great sensation of the time, the popular singer Altemar Dutra. Already on stage, probably poorly miked, they began to play to an audience eager for the main attraction. It didn't happen again, just fifteen minutes before the presentation, the audience began to get restless, asking for the presence of the 'King of Bolero'. Seu Jorge, until then tolerant, couldn't take it anymore when he heard the comment: “Imagine, instead of Altemar, we had to put up with these two little pieces of shit”. Seu Jorge was so possessed that, shouting and making loud gestures, he told his children to leave the stage immediately. At that exact moment, Sérgio and Odair were playing an arrangement by guitarist Horvildes Simões, for ‘Disparada’, by Geraldo Vandré and Théo de Barros. When they saw their father shouting at the edge of the stage, they understood the message — but, instead of interrupting the performance and leaving immediately, they acted like professional musicians: they communicated in their eyes, accelerated the tempo until reaching the last chord and only then left the stage.
- After this episode, Seu Jorge no longer wanted to expose his children to anyone who didn't care. It was then that I found out about Citizen, simple wood splitter, solitary resident in a field on the outskirts of São João da Boa Vista, known as be a lover of good music. He didn't hesitate. With their children in tow, they went to visit the hut. Sitting in the only two chairs from a dirt-floor house, without furniture or luxury, began to ring. Citizen cried. Seu Jorge, moved, Whenever they could (or needed encouragement) they went to the shack to play for a one-man audience. How do you sir he had nothing to offer, he always took a pumpkin, harvested from his small yard, in return.
- On December 23, 1966, Mariângela was born — affectionately nicknamed Badi from birth. Immersed from the early days in the family's musicality, Badi would grow up surrounded by sounds and stories, also becoming an artist, following the vocation that was already pulsating in the Assads’ trajectory.
0:00 / 4:00
Sergio and Janet. Music: "Sadness of Us Two", by Sérgio Assad and Renato dos Santos.
