One must care for life, care for the world

Milton Nascimento and Orquestra Jazz Sinfônica
Special Appearance: Children from the Programa Curumim and Rouxinóis from Divinópolis


PESCADORES DE TI - Fishers of you
Sitting by a river, two fishermen held their sticks, awaiting for fish. All of a sudden, cries of children snap into the silence. Startled, they look forward. Nothing. They look back. Nothing. The screams continue, and they come from where they least expected.

The midstrem brought two children, nearly drowned, crying for help. The fisherman toss their rods aside and jump in. With much effort, the children are saved, when they hear more screaming and realize four more came down the stream, desperate. Still breathless, they jump in again - yet two of the babes can't be saved.

Still astounded, the two couldn't believe it when they heard an even larger crying. This time, there were eight little ones, splashing about in the water.

One of the fishermen turns his back on the river and starts to walk away. His friend intervenes: "Are you mad? Are you not going to help me?" Serenely, his friend replies: do the best you can. I'm going to find out who is throwing these babes in the rapids. This ancient Indian legend pictures how we feel in Brazil. There aren't enough arms for so many drowning. As soon as one is saved, several come down the river, in an never-ending current of pleas and hands reaching out.

We find ourselves forced to jump into the water and find out who's throwing the children in the rapids at the same time.

It is astonishing how men at the river banks can live with the screaming. Sleep, even. It is as if they didn't hear them.

We find that those responsible for the drowned aren't up the river, but yet right beside us: they are the morally drowned, people who haven't found the infinite pleasure in solidarity.

People who haven't found the pleasure in reaching out a few centimeters and touching the stars. So easy it is, to grab a star, reflected in the gleam of those whom we save from breathlessness.

From India, came the celebrated poet Rabindranath Tagore's statement on why children exist:
"They are God's eternal hope in Men".


It is indeed necessary to have undying patience, renewed with each birth, for us to be able to live with the accomplice apathy. Luckly, we have fishermen who, day-by-day, show us how children live off of men. And several ways of fishing.
None could be more beautiful than using the voice for that.
Gilberto Dimenstein

"Over 100 million children will die in this decade. They'll die dried up by dehydration, asphyxiated by pneumonia, infected by tetanus, measles and the whooping cough. These five diseases, which can be treated or avoided, to very low costs through vaccination, oral rehydration therapy or antibiotics, are the main causes of death and malnourishment of half the children in the modern world.

8 thousand children die daily because they weren't immunized; around 7 thousand die from diarrheal dehydration, whilst other 6 thousand perish due to pneumonia.

Making all the low-cost measures available today to solve these child health problems, obtainable, would cost approximately 2.5 billion dollars a year.

Considerable resources, the same spent by the former Soviet Union in vodka and as much as the United States spend with cigarette advertising alone; ten times as much as the European Common Market spends in annual subsidy to agriculture and twice the military expenses of developing countries.
Palavras do UNICEF
United Nations Funds for Childhood

In 1993, we were in New York when came word of the massacre of the Candelária children.
Milton's conversations got even more silent.
Days after, he blurts out:
"if I hadn't been born at the time I were, my proper hour, the singer Milton Nascimento probably wouldn't be."

The singer's life story hung in the hair.
The realization and perspectives of Brazilian reality became an even greater bother, and in imprinted in the record "Angelus", brought by Warner Bros worldwide.
The record made it into the American Billboard. Milton was named by Downbeat magazine one of the best male singers in the world, siding with Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and Tony Bennet.
The Brazilian children, "who ate light, in the cross's swamp", became angels. The other part, is still suffering from hunger.
Márcio Ferreira

O BERÇO É AQUI - THE CRIBB IS HERE
Mineiros have been walking, quite stubbornly, the paths they've found for making dreams and promises come true. Since the time of the inconfidentes (supporters of the Inconfidência Mineira movement), they have shown that change is simple, though it may look impossible.

Proof of that, are Tiradentes, and his obsessive pursuit of freedom; president Juscelino Kubistchek and his passion for progress; Tancredo Neves and his faithful devotion to the reconstruction of national democracy.
And once again, the mineiros are back on the track that materializes hopes. And friendships.

Now to give future generations some guarantees.
Composers, singers, maestros and musicians have sided with businessmen and Minas' authorities, seeking to unravel a movement of awareness in favor of the Brazilian children. A movement against general numbness.
This can't go on as a blind, deaf and dumb country before the Ruanda-like conditions in which thousands - if not millions - of short-pants miserables live in the fields and cities. Abandoned, ignored, condemned to exist with no future.

Milton Nascimento, the Orquestra Jazz Sinfônica of São Paulo, the Rouxinóis from Divinópolis and the children in the Programa Curumim have created a thrilling script to take to brazilian audiences the Messenger chant of hope for change.


Puro, simples. Amigo - Pure, simple. Friendly.
The stage which Milton, the Orquestra, and the little singers intend on turning into an altar to solidarity, shall bear witness to the attempt to once more recreate the sacred feelings of compassion, solidarity and citizenship.
From fraternity and also friendship.
With the support of the people, the businesses and governmental sectors, it is possible to fulfill and build beautiful things.
Minas points the way.
Friends on stage.
CREDIREAL A cada passo, um banco melhor.
GOVERNO DE MINAS GERAIS
UNICEF
FUNDO DAS NAÇÕES UNIDAS PARA A INFÂNCIA