Meet Zé Cavaco

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Zé Cavaco a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Zé, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?

When I started taking music seriously, around high school, I had the realisation that if I wanted to become great and fulfil all of my huge dreams, my work ethic would have to match that. The problem was, I had no motivation whatsoever to work for more than 30 minutes at a time. I would always lie to myself and give weak excuses to justify my lack of drive. That’s when I had an idea, andI turned to my dad – throughout my whole life, I always admired my dad for how hard he worked, he seemed to always be on top of everything, never run out of motivation, and all without even looking like he was breaking a sweat. All of this without a single complaint, he’s always so humble with it. So I asked him – ” How do you do it? How do you work so hard, even on the days when you really don’t want to?”. He just said – “Well, I just do it. If I don’t do it nobody’s gonna do it for me.” It took me a couple years to realise the genius of this, but eventually I started just doing it. And it worked. After a couple of months of hard work, I understood how unreliable motivation and inspiration are. They serve as a little extra fuel but that’s about it. After realising this, I was more motivated. I had improved at what I wanted, and was complaining less and giving less excuses – the work was speaking for itself.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I am a film and television composer, which is just as fun as it sounds. I feel tremendously grateful and lucky to be able to learn so much everyday and be surrounded by such a diverse and creative community. I am so in love with composition for film and television, truly. I like to think of myself as a musical storyteller, and what drives me everyday is the pursuit of new ways of harnessing emotion through music. I want to be an innovator, come up with new ways to create soundtracks, new sounds, new textures. It’s the novelty and infinite possibility that draws me to doing what I do. I have only one focus while composing, and that is to maximise the emotional power of my music. I wish to break the barriers of what we know the power of music is. It might sound insane, and maybe it is, but I am happy trying.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Number 1 – Being proactive! Younger me needed to hear this, cause this held me back. Nothing will come to you just because you want it to. You have to go after it, you have to make it happen yourself. No one is entitled to their goals, you have to get out there and work for it.

Number 2 – Being as kind as possible. The more you go out of your own way to help others, the more others will go out of your way to help you. It seems simple, but this is one that to this day I still have to remind myself of.

Number 3 – Believing you can do it. Saying things to yourself like “I can’t do it”, or “I’m definitely gonna fail this exam”, is a one-way ticket for those things to come true. Your mind will chase whatever you feed into it, so start feeding it kindness and giving yourself the benefit of the doubt. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot before you even start.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

I am always looking to partner up with filmmakers to create beautiful stories. It’s my passion and I love being able to do it in a collaborative format. If you have a movie or short that needs a soundtrack, reach out! If you want to just talk about music, reach out. If you want to just talk about movies, reach out. I’m always down to learn something new! You can get in touch with me through my email, don’t be shy! – zecavacofilmscoring@gmail.com

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Thomas Nguyen

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