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



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