Goa's Cinderella Man set for prized French gig Preetu Nair, TNN 28 October 2009, 04:58am IST
PANAJI: He wasted the best years of his life doing drugs on the streets of Colaba. After being thrown out of home at 15 for his addiction, this Class VIII dropout survived doing odd jobs in Mumbai, including some at the docks. But, after an eternity on the streets, he got tired and returned to his ancestral home on the island of Chorao, Goa. That was 10 years ago. Here, Joseph Rocha, fondly called Slow Joe, was to become a Cinderella Man. From a seemingly beaten down, out-of-luck junkie, he staged the most dramatic comeback in his fight against odds, much like the celebrated American boxer James Braddock on whom Cinderella Man was based. For, today, Rocha, 67, is waiting to fly out to France to play live at the Trans Musicales de Rennes Festival 2009, France's oldest live show. "When I was young, I was a coward and would run away from realities of life by taking drugs. When I started accepting life as it was, I learnt to live without drugs. Now I have the strength to fight. And guess what? I am turning lucky as now I am getting my due,'' he says. In Chorao, Rocha deaddicted himself and devoted himself to singing although he has no formal training. "Now I love my songs and my feni. Trust me, music, at times, is better than sex,'' he says. Occasionally, he would sing at shacks in the area. During one such evening in July 2007 he met a young foreigner. He was playing a fourstring guitar and, he recalls, "I started to sing. I had no idea that it would lead to this." Cedric de la Chapelle, a young musician from Lyon with a four-man band, was looking for inspiration. The group was so taken in by Slow Joe that they took him to Delhi for a recording. That's how 'Slow Joe & The Ginger Accident' was born with the islander as the lead singer. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/Goas-Cinderella-Man-set-for-prized-French-gig/articleshow/5170788.cms Goanet A&E www.goanet.org
