圖 騰 - 1 2 C o s m o p o l i e d e r
O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o
[duration 43:13] all rights reserved
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The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link:
otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)
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"´For German speakers, the term ´Lied´ has a long history ranging from 12th century troubadour songs (Minnesang) via folk songs (Volkslieder) and church hymns (Kirchenlieder) to 20th-century workers songs (Arbeiterlieder) or protest songs (Kabarettlieder, Protestlieder). In Germany, the great age of song came in the 19th century. German and Austrian composers had written music for voice with keyboard before this time, but it was with the flowering of German literature in the Classical and Romantic eras that composers found high inspiration in poetry that sparked the genre known as the Lied. The beginnings of this tradition are seen in the songs of Mozart and Beethoven, but it is with Schubert that a new balance is found between words and music, a new absorption into the music of the sense of the words. Schubert wrote over 600 songs, some of them in sequences or song cycles that relate a story — adventure of the soul rather than the body. The tradition was continued by Schumann, Brahms, and Hugo Wolf, and on into the 20th century by Strauss, Mahler and Pfitzner. Austrian partisans of atonal music, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, composed Lieder in their own style.´
Two innovations perpetrated by Otacílio Melgaço lead the Lead to another level now. 1- A pretty single reading using a range of possibilities that offers the Contemporaneity and I draw attention to the extraordinary pianistic vocabulary and often the original sound engineering; 2- Exploration of the voice as an instrument of maximum audible poetry from several languages; a conceptual Piece (圖騰) that expands orality through amazing cosmopolitan idiomatic tentacles.
Emphasis on vocals and piano in intercom. Sometimes leave us perplexed by subtle and unexpected creative joints but there are a flawless ´fit´. Sometimes seem ´independent´ (itself a challenging feature of the melgacian compositions) but offer us a higher interpenetration, no doubt.
I remember the John Coltrane's A Love Supreme poem and there are three highlighted words in it. ELATION--ELEGANCE--EXALTATION. Serve as predicates to 12 Cosmopolieder. These songs are indeed Giant steps." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)
"Totemism. 圖騰 means Totem in Chinese.
´Lévi-Strauss looked at the ideas of Firth and Fortes, Durkheim, Malinowski, and Evans-Pritchard to reach his conclusions about the subject. Firth and Fortes argued that totemism was based on physical or psychological similarities between the clan and the totemic animal. Malinowski proposed that it was based on empirical interest or that the totem was 'good to eat.' In other words, there was rational interest in preserving the species. Finally Evans-Pritchard argued that the reason for totems was metaphoric. His work with the Nuer led him to believe that totems are a symbolic representation of the group. Lévi-Strauss considered Evan-Pritchard's work the correct explanation.´
A symbolic representation of the group ...
Rational interest in preserving the species ...
Based on physical or psychological similarities ...
Thinking macrocosmically, 圖 騰 is a phonograph record with quite universalistic spirit; valuing the idiosyncrasies of global cultures - makes us the proposition of coalition, alliance. The twelve (I suppose, could be any other) elected - Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Romanian, English, Persian, Swedish, Icelandic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Latin - are the tip of the iceberg. Twelve languages representing all the people of planet Earth here. This is the most beautiful cosmopolitanism on behalf of mutual complementation. Not seem unintentional Melgaço have chosen poetry and voice (principally the s-p-o-k-e-n voice expressing the poetic summit - accompanied by peerless piano) for this magnificent creation. If Lieder are songs, Cosmopolieder (term coined by O.M.) expands the original form and throws us into a broader, engaging, supportive horizon. A horizon in planetary brotherhood. If such melgacian offspring were ´solely´ an elevation of Lied, would be more than enough to deserve our rejoicing. But goes beyond that. A humanist pointing is inevitable here. In a world supposedly globalized however still full of segregation - in many connotations, we are - artistically and metaphorically - facing a superb work! If are musically and aesthetically fascinating songs, this totemic sense - that I cam - closes with a flourish, with a golden key the new Melgacian epiphany.
Post Scriptum - Why the title in Chinese characters?
Some assumptions ... Relate the term Totem to an ancient culture; use the plastic beauty of an ideogram (word and image in attractive harmony to us Westerners); if the Work suggests the eclipse of global cultures, nothing more appropriate than a Western composer visit the East etc. However I believe it is more than that. There is also a sign of protest. October 2014. At the same time that in Hong Kong the umbrella revolution occurs; in the same period in which the artist Ai Wei Wei remains under house arrest in Beijing (and for the social, political and cultural reasons well known), ..., I am quite sure that Melgaço not randomly used the Chinese lexicon. There is a message embedded in it and I can say that the connotation of totemism defended by melgacian creation is the proposal of an achievement even if revolutions (not bloody or warlike but with their umbrellas and cosmopolieder) are necessary. And make no mistake, they are." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)
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I - Lied (plural Lieder) is a German, Afrikaans and Dutch word literally meaning "song". It usually describes the setting of romantic German poems to music, especially during the nineteenth century, beginning with Carl Loewe, Heinrich Marschner, and Franz Schubert. Among English speakers, "Lied" is often used interchangeably with "art song" to encompass works that the tradition has inspired in other languages. The poetry forming the basis for Lieder often centers upon pastoral themes, or themes of romantic love.
II - Typically, Lieder are arranged for a single singer and piano, the Lied with orchestral accompaniment being a later development. Some of the most famous examples of Lieder are Schubert's "Der Tod und das Mädchen" ("Death and the Maiden") and "Gretchen am Spinnrade". Sometimes Lieder are gathered in a Liederkreis or "song cycle"—a series of songs (generally three or more) tied by a single narrative or theme, such as Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, or Robert Schumann's Frauenliebe und -leben and Dichterliebe. Schubert, Schumann and Johannes Brahms are most closely associated with this genre, mainly developed in the Romantic era.
III - A Totem is a being, object, or symbol representing an animal or plant that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, group, lineage, or tribe, reminding them of their ancestry (or mythic past). In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem. Normally this belief is accompanied by a totemic myth.
Although the term is of Ojibwe origin in North America, totemistic beliefs are not limited to Native Americans and Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Similar totem-like beliefs have been historically present in societies throughout much of the world, including Africa, Arabia, Asia, Australia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the Arctic polar region.
...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...
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Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.
