It all started when all my family used to gather at my grandfather´s place (Edgar Bittencourt) on sunday nights to play and sing some brazilian folk tunes. My grandfather´s rights were suspended during the Military Dictatorship, and, since we were not allowed to work, we all gathered to cheer him up. That became a great family gathering. We all could sing, tell jokes, funny stories, etc. I was very young (from 4 to 12, that I remember) but that good atmosphere created by the music, that made everybody forget about their problems, fascinated me.

Then, after my grandfather´s death, in 1983, I inherited my aunt´s old acoustic guitar and started learning to play it. After that, I have been looking for information and tried to learn my instrument every time I could.

I lived in the US for a year, and that helped me to play and write, but it was at Santa Marcelina University, in São Paulo, where I graduated as composer and conductor, that I felt ready to start a professional band.

I started in Angra in a period when grunge bands were appearing and the glamourous heavy metal bands were decreasing. In the middle of all these changes of course, some melodic metal in Europe (Gamma Ray and Helloween) and some american Prog Metal bands (Dream Theater and Fates Warning) came up, as bandas with virtuosi musicians and writing songs full of melody and emotion.

All this should be combined with the sophisticated way of composing from the classic era, and we would add some of our folk songs and brazilian culture and that was the chemistry for a band with no equal.

I thought about the name Angra, which I think is strong for the project. This name existed since the egyptian times and appears in many cultures with different meanings. Always related to mysterious and powerful words. The band started 15 years ago. We have won many victories together and several are still to come. I thank God and all who helped us get this far.

Rafael Bittencourt - November 2006.