Six years ago, musician Hegell Borges de Oliveira, 34, decided to venture into the streets of different cities to discover himself as an artist. On his journey playing through South America, the paths he took brought him to Campo Grande. Without an exact date to leave, Hegell entertains the public passing through Avenida Mato Grosso and Avenida Conssul Assaf Trad in the mornings with his violin.
Since 2018, traveling and performing in public places, the artist has visited Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. His years on the road taught him a lot about altruism and inconstancy, as he explains. “This concept of altruism is that you cooperate with your fellow man, and the inconstancy is because you will not make plans or you will make plans according to the days in which you are living”.
The artist began his journey in the north of Brazil, headed south and now passes through Campo Grande. Here, he says he found the most welcoming and warm audience among all the capitals he visited. “Here the public accepts more and appreciates more. I know many regions of the country, and this expression and popular acceptance has been warmer here in Campo Grande”.
Hegell reports that his biggest inspirations are Mozart and Beethoven, but his repertoire also includes popular songs from Brazilian culture, electrohits and themes from big movie hits, citing the soundtrack for Titanic as an example.
Music brings peace, both to the listener and the performer. My main proposal is this, to take classical art from the concert hall to the street. Take away from the four walls what was reserved centuries ago. Art emerged like this, with street artists, it was only taken to more reserved environments, says Hegell.
When he entered music college at UFG (Federal University of Goiás), he initially wanted to play in concert halls and recitals, but he says that the street became for him “an open stage, a stage on which art flowed more” . Initially, he taught private guitar and music theory lessons. “I played little, I studied theory more. This lack of experience with instruments led me to frustration as an artist.”
The decision to become a street artist and travel around the country carrying his jacket and his violin – which, according to the artist, are his two indispensable items – came about because he also wanted to break away from the academic world. The kickoff was after working with a music producer who encouraged him to perform as a street artist.
“I had a lot of prejudices at the time and I didn’t know how I was going to do it. Then, when I lived in Paraná, I watched a lot of jugglers and then I started to remember excerpts from the history of music that I studied. And it started to make sense, it started to bring one thing together. So, I asked myself, why not? I could do this with an instrument, but with an instrument that is expressive”, he explains.
To begin his journey, Hegell says he decided to leave his mother’s house and start planning his adventures. He explains that leaving family life was an essential point for him to be able to rediscover himself on his own. “These are the key concepts of my art: the search for the essence of being. The street performance made me expand the artist’s figure, the visibility of the artist’s figure”, he concludes.
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