A L u a V e m D a Á s i a

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 29:16] 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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"´A Lua vem da Ásia´. It's never too late to say it: fulfilling the arduous task of trying to put into words an Art (such the Music) that has always seemed to me ´untranslatable´ (and that, in the case of Otacílio, it´s even more challenging), there´s, from what I can deduce, a Mixture of
1) Dreamlike remote/outlying reverberations/echoes of fascination/incantation/bewitchment that has O.M. - like Ulysses before the singing/the song of the Siren(s)? - by Elizabeth Fraser/Cocteau Twins;
2) Mazy/delicate electronic layers;
3) Advanced/undulating harmonies of contemporary lineage;
4) Flirting, heterodoxly, with spectrality: a canonical atmosphere, sometimes providently apocalyptic; perhaps reaching to the verge of sci-fi. ´Mantric´ however hovering between (on the one hand) oriental balance of mind and, interchangeably, (on the other hand) its antithesis. Deserving highlight: there´s, ergo, a certain surreal ongoing ambience (more specifically: inspired by the motifs of author Campos de Carvalho, countryman of Melgaço. Not the issues in their specific connotations but - perchance I can say as follows: an articulated propensity to ´resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality´).

´Surrealism is not a poetry but a poetics, and even more, and more decisively, a World Vision´, said Octavio Paz. Now, a magnetizing ´World Audition´ too." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"´At sixteen I killed my Logic professor. Claiming self-defense – and what defense might be more legitimate? – I was found innocent by five votes against two and went to live under a bridge over the Seine, even though I was never in Paris. I (...) spent the nights stargazing ...´ (W.C.C.)

Walter Campos de Carvalho (1916 – 1998) was a Brazilian writer. An outsider (it´s worth reiterating: as is, in totum, Mr. Melgaço) in the literary circles during his lifetime, his writing was characterized by ironic humour, iconoclasm and unreal, bizarre, unusual themes.

The two sound Pieces - here - pay tribute to Carvalhian novels; in an approximate translation:

The Moon comes from Asia;

Cow with the subtile Nose / The still Rain / The Bulgarian Pucaro.

Otacílio Melgaço becomes increasingly sophisticated the ´decanting´ of its multi-referentiality in this concise mesmerizing album.

The skill with which he interweaves various sources (whether of literature, cinematography, sculpture, poetry, dance, painting, ... , plus mythology, anthropology, ethnology, philosophy, psychology and so on) has an extraordinary range of possible perceptions and assimilations. There are no boundaries. Part of his concoctions points to the future: is visionary, prescient, unparalleled, personal. Part of its creation, as the composer and multi-instrumentalist has held, is dedicated to ´remake and reinvent the history of Mankind´. Full of rhizomes, transdisciplinary. It´s therefore not unexpected how some of his records represent a reinterpretation of the vast spectra of human legacy (and beyond) in countless homages and elegies, adaptations and citations, interferences and deconstructions, ... , latitudes and longitudes (in the exact meaning of the terms, also as immeasurable metaphor).

The Moon - comes from Asia -
and the ´Melodies´ - by Melgaço -." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Campos de Carvalho was born in Uberaba, in the state of Minas Gerais (the same state where Otacílio was born). In 1938 he graduated in law, having retired as State Prosecutor of São Paulo, where he lived with his wife Lygia Rosa de Carvalho.

His life has always been linked to literature, initially published Banda Forra (humorous essays) in 1941, and Tribo (novel) in 1954 later wrote more novels: A Lua vem da Ásia (1956), Vaca de Nariz Sutil (1961), A Chuva Imóvel (1963) and O Púcaro Búlgaro (1964). The author also collaborated with O Pasquim and worked in the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, in the period 1968-1978. After 1978 he retired from writing;

II - "A Lua vem da Ásia" (in Portuguese / pdf)

www.goodreads.com/ebooks/download/10387105-a-lua-vem-da-sia

III - "Campos de Carvalho & The Revenge of the Iconoclastic Icon" by Sinvaldo Júnior e Nelson de Oliveira (in English / Agulha Revista de Cultura)

textifique.com/campos-de-carvalho-the-revenge-of-the-iconoclastic-icon/

IV - Another reflection of Melgacian kaleidoscope: the choice of the last considered Vincent van Gogh painting "Tree Roots" to appear on the cover of this phonographic disc, suffering interference from O.M. himself, suggests the already mentioned iconoclastic and unheard-of scenario that prevails throughout the whole work.

...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.