In 1926, a certain Professor Charles who was a representative of the harmonica manufacturer Hohner, arrived in Pelotas where he held a contest in which about 300 students from the Gonzaga and Pelotense schools took part. The prize for the winner of the contest was 200 mil reis. A preliminary round was held and fifteen finalists were chosen to participate in the competition to be held at the Teatro Guarani. Edu was one of them.

    Because Edu’s father was not faring well in his business, he decided to send his elder son to São Paulo in January 1933 to try to land a job and help out with the family upkeep. "Here are 300 mil reis. It’s the most I could manage. Go and make out for yourself. I don’t care how you go about it, but I’m sure you can do it."

    Conscious of the responsibilities of the task he was taking on and aware of the hostile attitude in São Paulo towards gaúchos (natives of Rio Grande do Sul State) because of the revolution of 1932, he decided to go to Santos first, and later on, to the state capital.

    There were two dozen harmonicas. After choosing one of them, Edu started playing at the shop door. In less than two hours, he had sold all of them. Having succeeded in his first enterprise, the seventeen-year-old boy started his life as a traveling musician. His initial repertoire consisted of the Opera Fantasy, which is what he called the selection of opera melodies with which he had won the competition, along with some tangos and rancheiras (lively Brazilian folk dances).

    In 1934 a group of friends invited him to go with them by car to Rio de Janeiro. They arrived on the Saturday of the Carnival festivities and ended up at the door of the Galeria Cruzeiro, now the Avenida Central building.

    The atmosphere in Rio de Janeiro was much friendlier and cultural life was at a very high pitch. At the famous Café Nice, Edu quickly fell in with the famous people of the day. Mário Lago, Luiz Barbosa, Frazão, Nássara, Carlos Galhardo, Franciso Alves, Custódio Mesquita, Lamartine Babo, Braguinha, Jorge Murad and Nonô were among those he first met.

    That same year he was taken to Rádio Mayrink Veiga where he met César Ladeira who hired him to play the opening theme of his new radio program. They chose the theme from "Laurel and Hardy". There was a small problem, however – said César. The name "Eduardo Nadruz" wouldn’t sound well over the radio. After a moment’s thought, he suggested: "How about Edu e sua Gaita ("Edu and his harmonica")? - Edu is a nickname for Eduardo; it is short and forceful!" From then on, as if by the touch of a magic wand, Eduardo was transformed into Edu da Gaita by the same man who gave Carmen Miranda de name of "pequena notavel" ("the remarkable little one").

    However, his new job was not to last for more than two months, as the technical limitations of the old instrument did not allow him to widen his repertoire. The old harmonicas did not have a half-tone key. It was something like playing a piano that had only white keys. In spite of having lost his job, he didn’t give up. He played in circuses, at the doors of cinemas, theaters and restaurants.

    From 1935 to 1939, Edu did everything imaginable to make a living: He was a street vendor, a piano-player in brothels, a bookmaker’s clerk, a tango singer, a typist and a vendor of school books. There were, of course, occasional performances with his harmonica.

    In the beginning of 1937, he got an offer to take part in a show at the Copacabana casino. But he would have to have a work card. He went to the Ministry of Labor to get one. There followed a dialogue, which ended up with the issuance of one of the most surreal documents in the history of professional music in Brazil: "Impossible! He has no definite profession...he says he is a harmonica player... that doesn’t exist in any musical or artistic category!" Someone else came and made the following comment: "Mr. Furtado, if a person makes music, he is a musician, whatever his instrument may be. If he plays the piano, he is a pianist; if he plays the violin, he is a violinist. One who plays the harmonica can only be called a harmonica player." Furtado retorted that Edu would have to be classed as a musician and not as an instrument player. After a heated argument, Eduardo Nadruz was given work card N^o 70748, Series N⁰ 27, stating his profession as an "eccentric musician". (In 1948 when Edu was already a famous and acclaimed musician, a second work card was issued to ratify the first one …).

    Once again his new job didn’t last long and for the same reason – the technical limitations of the harmonica. As a result, in the beginning of 1939 he decided to give up the instrument that had been the source of so much distress. Nevertheless, he could not bring himself to say that he had abandoned it.

   One day, on arriving at the Café Nice, he was taken by surprise by a question from Nonô. "Edu, don’t you play the harmonica any more?" Edu answered that the problem lay in the limited technical resources of the instrument. Seated at the next table, Fernando, the guitarist of Romeu Silva’s famous orchestra, overheard the conversation and called out: "I’ve just come from the New York World Fair where I bought, out of curiosity, a harmonica that has a key on the side. When used, it raises the original pitch by a half-tone". Edu grasped Fernando’s hands and started to shout: "It exists. I knew I couldn’t have been mistaken! I’m saved!"

    At nine o’clock that night, Fernando returned, bringing a case containing a 64-voice chromatic harmonica. Edu was trembling so much he could hardly open the case. He held the harmonica in his hand, looked at the instrument, set the key in position and blew gently. All around him in the middle of a street in Rio de Janeiro, composers, musicians, singers, waiters and customers at the Nice Café waited expectantly for the demonstration. Edu started to play and a surprising thing happened. Everything that had been stored in his subconscious now emerged in his playing, to which the public that had gathered responded with the warmest applause.

    In 1939 Sílvio Caldas took him to Rádio Mayrink Veiga, this time on a permanent basis. He worked there for eleven years.

    On being introduced to Joaquim Rolla, the owner of the Urca casino, Edu was hired to start work at the casino in Icaraí. However, he was not to keep this job for more than three months due to the lack of support for his pretension to be a soloist. Jaime Redondo, the artistic director, was of the opinion that Edu’s performances were intended to be mere curiosity pieces and were not expressions of a definite art form. In short, a short-lasting eccentricity. Returning to Rio on the Cantareira boat, the artist was fully convinced that the misunderstanding with Jaime Redondo had marked the beginning of a struggle that would last his whole life.

    At Rádio Mayrink Veiga, things were not very different. He therefore went to speak to Edmar Machado, the radio superintendent, to make him see that his career would not make any progress unless he had orquestral support for his performances. The mistaken notions about his instrument had to be done away with, once and for all. Edmar agreed, but didn’t know how to solve the problem.

    When Edu was leaving, a musician entered Edmar’s office to ask for an advance in his salary. He had overheard the conversation and told Edu: "I want to talk to you. Wait for me." This musician was Printeas Passos, one of the best Brazilian trombone players of the day. He played with the Rádio Mayrink Veiga orchestra and was one of the attractions of the famous Fon-Fon ensemble. "I’ve never orchestrated anything for anyone, but I’m sure I’ll have no trouble in doing it. Do you want to give it a try?"

    They went to the music studio and Edu played a selection of Spanish melodies which included La Leyenda del Beso, Lady of Spain, La Violetera and El Relicario. Passos asked for two weeks to do the orchestration job. It turned out very successfully and won the approval of the orchestra members.

    This marked the beginning of a new phase in Edu’s career. The Spanish Fantasy was the first of many other orchestra arrangements which would take him back to the Urca casino, this time as its star performer. He continued to play in the casino until gambling was outlawed in 1946.

    Some time between October and December 1945, an event occurred in the radio station’s Studio A which would change the course of Edu’s career. He met João Corrêa de Mesquita, a violinist, who was practicing Paganini’s "Moto Perpetuo.

    "What’s this, Mesquita? Are you going to play the Moto Perpetuo?", he asked. Mesquita said he wasn’t going to, but that he used to practice the piece to improve his technique. Edu got interested... "I wonder if I could manage to play at least some bars on my instrument.." The answer was: "Well, you may get to play some bars, but if you were able to play the whole piece, it would be a feat, since you would be the first musician ever to "blow it out" on a wind instrument..."

    By then, Edu had became famous by performing pieces that no one thought could be played on his modest instrument. Having made progress in his studies, he believed that the time had come for him to take his place in a more serious musical context. Sparked by his enthusiasm and envisioning a future that would underscore the role of the harmonica in the world of art, he decided to face the greatest challenge of his career.

    It took him eleven years of practice to overcome the technical difficulties presented by the piece – 2400 notes played without any pause whatsoever, and in not more than four minutes.

    In June 1956, Edu made a recording of Paganini’s Moto Perpetuo in the record-breaking time of 3 minutes and 21 seconds. This made him the first musician in the history of music for wind instruments to accomplish this feat. It also served to display in full the technical range of his instrument. Aside from his personal triumph, his paramount objective was to show that the harmonica is an instrument with an ample range of resources and should be considered on the same level as other instruments.

    Unfortunately, the harmonica is still neither taught nor studied in music schools.

   His labors were not all in vain: On November 22, 1958, Edu gave the premier performance of Radamés Gnatalli’s Concerto for harmonica and orchestra, accompanied by the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer himself. This same year he won the prize for classical music given by the Rio de Janeiro city government. This marked the opening of an important field in music composition, paving the way for the simple harmonica to become an instrument to be respected in its own right. Edu continued to work for many long years for Rádio Nacional and also performed in programs presented abroad.

   Toward the end of the 1960s, the country he loved and to which he dedicated his triumph with the Moto Perpetuo piece and the rest of his accomplishments, started to forget him. Edu never wanted to leave his homeland, despite his friends’ advice. Although forsaken by most, he continued to devote himself resolutely in the solitude of his home to the art which he never dishonored nor betrayed. He died a poor but honorable man.

   "Music was the reason of my life". These were his last words, said on the morning of August 22, 1982, when his son, his wife and a few friends paid him tribute by playing his recording of Paganini’s Moto Perpetuo on a small record player. Edu still found the strength to express his thanks. Eduardo Nadruz, one of the greatest musicians of Brazil, died on August 23.

    Bringing Edu’s accomplishments to public attention contributes not only to the preservation of Brazilian culture but also to show, especially in other countries – where almost nothing is known about his work – the level of technical prowess that may be achieved in playing the harmonica, paving the way for others to succeed him and even surpass him in the future.