GETTING CLOSER: JOYCE MORENO

Joyce Moreno stands as one of the key female figures in Brazilian music, whose career marked by defiance and resilience in the face of a male-dominated industry. From her early years, she broke boundaries with music that transcended political and social barriers, speaking truth with beauty and strength. And she still does - inspiring and embodying the unbreakabla spirit of a woman who refused to be silenced.

Anastasiia: By the age of 30, you have achieved so much in both spheres—your career and private life. By the age of 30, you have already become a grown-up, mature personality. Nowadays, they say that 30s are the new 20s. And in their 30s, people hardly know how to arrange their life. I feel like there is a huge difference between being 30 in the '70s and being 30 now, when people are just trying to get established, to build any kind of plans.

Joyce Moreno: We, the baby boomers, are a generation that was born right after World War II. And I think that somehow might have made a difference because we broke so many rules and so many standards. And we still do! We all started very early in life doing things.

Most of us in our 20s were already writing music that remains standard                                                                    until now.

And we were super young. I mean my contemporaries from that generation. The male ones, of course, because I was always the girl on the block. But we're still doing our thing. We're still touring, composing, creating. So it doesn't end. And in Brazil, in the '60s, we had the beginning of a long-term military dictatorship that lasted for 21 years. So the first time I could vote was when I was 44 years old, which is absurd. So my generation of songwriters, composers, and artists spent the first 20 years of our lives trying to dodge the censorship by using metaphors in our lyrics. That was very hard, but on the other side, it was a big period of learning how to deal with difficulties.

Can you remind us of the strongest metaphor composed by you?

For example, there's a song that I wrote in 1976 called "Banana." And I was talking about all the fruits that exist in Brazil, the huge variety of them. And at a certain point, it is compared to the variety of feelings that we had in Brazil. Also, I compared us to the animals that were being killed in the forest, how easy it was to hunt and kill an animal.It's hard to explain because it's not very translatable. I don't think it was very well understood at that time, but later on, people started to understand more about what was being said.

You mentioned the thing of being the only girl in a male group. Being such a strong figure in the music business that was obviously mostly male-dominated, how did it feel for you?

I was very confident about myself and my music all the time.                   It never occurred to me that I couldn't do                  certain things.

It's that famous expression, "Not knowing that something is impossible is often the key to a breakthrough." I went there and did it. I still keep on doing it and always trying to do it better and better, breaking more and more barriers. Of course, it brought a lot of criticism from conservative journalists, but I think the music itself proved worthwhile during all these years.

Did it feel like a fight?

At the very beginning, there was a deep feeling of loneliness. Being the only girl among all the boys, being accepted in the club with some reservations, but still gaining respect…

For some of my friends, it took like 40 years                                                                    to invite me.