B A O B A B

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:01:30] 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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"From time to time, O.M. replants its feet on African soil. Or, upside down, he leave them - like inverted roots or antennae - directed towards the sky while the head and mind return into the belly, the womb, the venter of that sacred land.

BAOBAB can be considered as one of the most darkling (in the sense of uncircumventable mysterious) soundtracks of such (iterant) telluric transubstantiated re-generation.

In function of a penetrating underline in terms of this astounding Melgacian launch, a brief contextualization:

African music is a tradition mainly played at gatherings at special occasions the traditional sound manifestation from that continent, given the vastness of the mainland, is historically ancient, rich and diverse, with different regions and nations of Africa having many distinct traditions. It is very important when it comes to religion. Songs and music are used in rituals and religious ceremonies, to pass down stories from generation to generation, as well as to sing and dance to. It is passed down orally (or aurally) and is not written. In sub-Saharan African music traditions, it frequently relies on percussion instruments of every variety, including xylophones, djembes, drums, and tone-producing instruments such as the mbira or ´thumb piano´. Like ´the vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion´ of Asia, India and the Middle East, it is a highly rhythmic music. Consists of complex rhythmic patterns, often involving one rhythm played against another to create a polyrhythm. The most common polyrhythm plays three beats on top of two, like a triplet played against straight notes. Beyond the rhythmic nature of the music, African music differs from Western music in that the various parts of the music do not necessarily combine in a harmonious fashion. African musicians aim to express life, in all its aspects, through the medium of sound. Each instrument or part may represent a particular aspect of life, or a different character; the through-line of each instrument/part matters more than how the different instruments and parts fit together. It does not have a written tradition; there is little or no written music to study or analyze. This makes it almost impossible to notate the music – especially the melodies and harmonies – using the Western staff. There are subtle differences in pitch and intonation that do not easily translate to Western notation. African music most closely adheres to Western tetratonic (three-notes), pentatonic (five-note), hexatonic (six-note), and heptatonic (seven-note) scales. Harmonization of the melody is accomplished by singing in parallel thirds, fourths, or fifths. Another distinguishing form of it is its call-and-response nature: one voice or instrument plays a short melodic phrase, and that phrase is echoed by another voice or instrument. The call-and-response nature extends to the rhythm, where one drum will play a rhythmic pattern, echoed by another drum playing the same pattern. Afro music is also highly improvised. A core rhythmic pattern is typically played, with drummers then improvising new standards over the static original patterns.

Melgaço's approach when exploring that solid legacy, has points in common although aims very distinct norths too. I will quote some of these convergent and (not exactly divergent but)
extrapolative-ascendant references.

1- The rituality and ceremonial features of musical praxis;

2- The rhythmic complexity;

3- The perception of another criterion of ´harmonization´. The combination of modular components does not follow a rigid (aesthetic-normative) line, yet the genuine intention to manifest life itself in the form of sound;

4- Performative extrication that subverts templates under the wings of expansive improvisations ...

... are instances of how there is legitimate intercommunication.

Albeit it is the variances / deviations that symbolize the steps taken ahead and so Otacílio inserts its patent in an infrangible tradition.

1- When craved and justified, the ´Delphic purport´ brought by him goes further the African molds. Its source is more ethereal, subtle; reaching an abyssality that goes far beyond, although it also embraces it, the visceral articulation.

Warning: if you are prone to ´fantasticality´ (and if so, with my respect), read laboriously and willing to try what I will declare. If you are not, for the sake of all the subject-matters involved: an ethnological or anthropographic curiosity can be enriched. And even an exercise of a selectly corporeal nature (pioneering the ever startling zone of sensations and emotions).

Mysticism is the practice of ecstasies (religious experiences during alternate states of consciousness), together with whatever ideologies, ethics, rites, myths, legends, and magic may be related to them. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various practices and experiences. The term has Ancient Greek origins with various historically determined meanings. Derived from the Greek word μύω múō, meaning ´to close´ or ´to conceal´, referred to the biblical, liturgical, spiritual, and contemplative dimensions of early and medieval Christianity. During the early modern period, the definition of mysticism grew to include a broad range of beliefs and ideologies related to ´extraordinary experiences and states of mind.´ In modern times, has acquired a limited definition, with broad applications, as meaning the aim at the ´union with the Absolute, the Infinite, or God´. This limited definition has been applied to a wide range of religious traditions and practices, valuing ´mystical experience´ as a key element of mysticism. Broadly defined, can be found in all religious traditions, from indigenous religions and folk religions like shamanism, to organized institutions and movements. Since the 1960s scholars have debated the merits of perennial and constructionist approaches in the scientific research of ´mystical experiences´. The everlasting position is now ´largely dismissed by highbrows´, most academics using a contextualist approach, which takes the cultural and epochal context into consideration.

It does not matter whether from a perpetual or circumstantialist prism, something we can see is how irrefragably Music has always been historically allied to such affair. This is neither belief nor superstition, it is a fact. And if we are asked to take a position on it, what could we manifest? And if a sound Work, directly or indirectly, ´spouts up esotericism from its core´; how will it act on us? Specular effect: how are we likely to react to it?

A priori, I reiterate that when ´religion´ is mentioned, in our panorama it is not about a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations. Refers to etymology. Despite some controversies, we adopt the most essential: the Latin word ´religare´, which means ´to tie, to bind again´. Consequently, ´to allow yourself to be possessed by such kind of trans-ontologism´, in the vision that we encircle (under the stimulus of BAOBAB DNA), it would not depend on any link to structured collective institutions. Here we emphasize how much is - and can be - an autonomous involvement. No outside guardianship; no acolyte kneeling before a totem. No castration. No litany. Keeping this series of lucubrations, that is, carefully observing the courses to which these hypotheses can lead us (theoretically or / and empirically): You are the one who will intuit or assign to what ´to reconnect´ to. And now the serpent bites its own coda; my question would not be more inviting: to the Music? A Melgacian addendum: like never before.

The next words could only be verified and proven through each person's background. It is not about the domains of a science if unconditionally Cartesian or of a monochordic rationalness in which we will be moving. So, we either propose to be invaginated into sensations, perceptions, intuitions or in a Shakespeared Nietzschean eternal recurrence (Ewige Wiederkunft): ´there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.´ We will be hovering over Hamlet's spells and that's it. So, we either propose the introjective vehicularity of instincts, impressions, feelings or a percussion is (aye) a percussion, the beat is the beat (ever); we: the buried alive in the literalness-of-things because ´rose is a rose is a rose is a rose and pages ages page ages page ages´.

For the last time: ´To be invaginated into intuitions, perceptions, sensations´. What I just described does not differ from the realms of Art itself, does it? Anyway. Fortunately, then, there are no laws, paradigms or dogmas to prevail, but our irreplaceable, private, intimate committal to be willing to live an ´Odyssey´ that ´goes beyond our waking state´. No alienations. No manipulations. It may be due to the organic impetuosity of our corporality put to the test; it may be due to inscrutable metaphysical inspirations, ... evermore I hope that everyone can follow its most non-transferable inclinations, aptitudes, surmounts ... - if willingly and spontaneous -.

All this proem to get here. I beg your pardon for the unavoidable and parabolic use of tropes ... even so ... as we assimilate BAOBAB: if we ´dive ourselves in this indescribable immersive experience´, if we ´levitate towards these preterhuman stratospheres´ ...: there is a luminous acquaintance of being transported to a surpassing ´orb´ (for some: ´dimension´ or ´plane´; for others ´altered status of conscience´ but, I think, at any rate, lexicons must be invented to clarify) revealing how there is a thrill of saptical transcendence in such stream that, by all means, cryptically flows in its notes and chords and silences and forgive me afresh the figures of speech since they are attempts to portray the ineffable;

2- Back to the surface. Otacílio ascends polyrhythmicity to a perspective that often refutes any patterns. An ultra-freedom is established and, to the most distracted or indolents, it can seem chaotic. In certain circumstances, it must be really ´in pandemonium´ and eddies / vortices are rightful compositional arms of Melgaço. But it is worth saying that we are also faced with a proposal of pulsating intricacy that requires a level of understanding and decoding raised to the summit;

3- The way in which the various elements come together assume sophisticated guidances. An example: a genre which involves the combination of factors of West African musical styles such as fuji and highlife with American influences, with a pivot on chanted vocals, complex intersecting rhythms, and percussion: Afrobeat. The term was coined in the 1960s by Nigerian Fela Kuti, who is responsible for pioneering and popularizing the model both within and outside his country. Afrobeat reaches a stylistic limit on the use of funk. And of jazz. O.M. will resort to the most unabated avant-garde visage of it (the ´New Shebang´, the ´Free´), so he delight us with a striking passage of its sonic Piece (apropos: direct execution of ´OCOM´, dedicated to Ornette Coleman and first track on Melgacian album ´Nefelibata´). The application of horns that before was better behaved and adhered to conventional criteria, is catapulted to a phenomenal undaunted opening. Therefore, the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist takes his autarchy to the ultimate consequences as to be faithful to how he manifests the Life that is contained in its sonorous Breeding, in all traits that break down barriers even; ... no matter what it takes. Undulating with the brasses, absorb the obsessive tearing strings! The wit O.M. masters to fulfill dizzying metamorphoses between both, as if there was a Missing Link in which the timbres met and became one: this is prodigious. And with sincerity and sharpness, we must ask ourselves the question: when was the last time listening to music brought us unfading, amaranthine moments as entrancing / ´out of this world´ as this? Resequencing the thread of the skein: Life will manifest itself sonically in all compositional dashes that break down obstacles (aesthetical or behavioral or formalist or mercantilist or ... ); ... whatever the cost may be. If dissonances, if atonalism, if strategic noises besides Machiavellian cacophony ... are required: they will be so, without suspicion or reproach (including self-censorship). Again, there is a demand for greater accuracy on the part of those who listen to such progenies inasmuch as the combinatorial recurrences do not surrender to comfortable borderline impositions.

Still belonging to the extent of this topic, new attitudes towards conjugative artistry and spatial arrangement. There is a passage in which chimes are perceived. Otacílio explores a ringing multidensity to the point of many sonic layers coexist, in pluri relief, from several degrees of ´compactness & decompression´. How can my abstract lineation be noticed? Retaking the carillon. We are induced by O.M. to doubt whether what we hear in ultra-stereo indeed is happening during the execution of the Piece (as it unfolds) or if it is actually occurring immanently / exclusively in our minds!;

4- The improvisational claws become sharper. More incisive, decisive, trenchant, cutting, slashing, nippy, mordant, effective, efficacious, effectual, powerful, operative, trenchant, crucial, scathing, acute, significant, eloquent, expressive, ... transversal. If Melgaço evokes the inexistence-of-margins - if necessary -; it is the same as becoming the Deity of Art that a maestro gives birth to.

´All art is but imitation of nature´, uttered Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Is it true? African culture, proof of that? Who would give the final say? Impossible. There is no verdict and there never will be. Nevertheless, when we are raptured to a work like BAOBAB, another reflection (this turn, by John Updike) deserves to be rooted in land and air: ´What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.´" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"BAOBAB; borrowed from Medieval Latin bahobab, from Arabic أَبُو حِبَاب‎ (ʾabū ḥibāb, “father of many seeds”), from أَبُو‎ (ʾabū, “father”) + حَبّ‎ (ḥabb, “seed”).

´Father of many seeds´ would be a reliable description of who Otacílio Melgaço is. Starting point for many mythographies both about the ´ahead of the times´ Artist and the ancestral Tree, by the way.

As - hermetic-poetically - some ´connoisseurs´ have said before that O.M. is a man in which ´the arcanum of the Occult has been hidden´, a little about the woody perennial plant that names - with sap & blood, life blood, lushness, nectar, vitality, vim, vigour - the unco album in focus: ´The Baobab is embedded in the myths and history of many communities across the continent. For example, in the Kafue National Park of Zambia, legend has it that there is a 1,500-year-old Baobab tree called Kondokamwale that ate four young maidens it was in love with upon finding out that they intended to marry human men. Another famous Baobab tree in Zambia is the upside down Baobab at Ingombe Ilede (which translates to ‘sleeping cow’ referring to the position of the tree), an Iron Age site that was a settlement and trading site for the Tonga people of Southern Province from the 5th to the 17th centuries. Among the Shona tribe of Zimbabwe, there is a myth that the Baobab was among one of the first plants that God created. The Baobab grew vain and looked down on God’s other creations such as the zebra and hyena. God became angry and ripped the tree out of soil. Not wanting to completely eradicate the tree, God inserted the tree into the soil upside down with its roots exposed. This myth is used to explain the appearance of the tree. In Ghana, the Baobab tree is used in proverbs such as one that states ´Knowledge is like a Baobab tree, one person’s arms cannot encompass it´. Such precious information was collected on the Culture Trip (web)site, created for curious travelers. In another virtual source, Culture of West Africa, more golden data: ´This icon of the West African savanna ― noble, venerable, seemingly eternal ― has taken root, well beyond its semi-arid grasslands, in the rich and fertile literary landscape. From its first recognizable appearance in the early travel writings of Ibn Battuta (1352) to its emergence in both penned illustration and prose on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s imaginary planet Asteroid B-612, the mighty Baobab has inspired much ink to flow. It has graced the covers of works from Dramine Traore’s Sighs of the Baobab to Daouda Ndiaye’s poems in Wolof: The Baobab’s Shadow. In Zin-Damba Naab (The Genius of the Baobab), Jean-Noël Sibiri Ouédraogo transcribes, in his native Mòoré, the oral Burkinabe folktale of the talking baobab, while its loquacious Senegalese counterpart, the allegorical Koundjere Koudoume (The Magic Baobab), is taken on by storyteller Penda Soumare. The muse of both distant poets and local village sages gathered in its shadow, the protagonist of lore and legend, the hallowed stomping ground of spirits and mystics, the Baobab is, in a Shakespearian sense, ´such stuff as dreams are made on´; rising above the terrestrial horizon to become the conceptual ´stuff´ of maxim, metaphor, and myth throughout the whole of West Africa.´

Lo, inter alia, a vivacious metaphor that incarnates the Melgacian Art: ´An old Baobab tree can create its own ecosystem, as it supports the life of countless creatures, from the largest of mammals to the thousands of tiny creatures scurrying in and out of its crevices. Birds nest in its branches; baboons devour the fruit; bush babies and fruit bats drink the nectar and pollinate the flowers, and elephants have been known to chop down and consume a whole tree.´ I am not referring solely to this ability (or gift) to nest so many vivid possibilities. There is a whole ´Mythophonia´ surrounding the O.M.´s Oeuvres that doesn't range us without touching us deeply. Saying otherwise: an imaginative exuberance; a thematic Pantheon that take our breath away; a mesmerizing diversity of musical genres; a terrific humanistic extension; a palpable link between what is physical and - what we presume or presage or augur or apprehend as - metaphysical; an elan to propel us to new sensory, intellectual (and, according to some) ´incorporeal´ grasps / insights. ´Supernatural´ is a good expression as well.

Conjectured Jules Verne: ´What is there unreasonable in admitting the intervention of a supernatural force in the most ordinary circumstances of life?´ In parallel, I summon Simone Weil: ´The real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.´ The first one mentioned wants to alert us to the issue that what is ´beyond our understanding´(even if taken as weird, eldritch, mystical) can go hand in hand with the rationality; the second reaffirms genius if under the preternatural aegis of humbleness (the same ´delicacy´ that allows us to be visited and impregnated by the unforeseeable - the unseen? - and the extra-ordinary) serving as a blest fertilizer to the kingdom of thinking -.

´K n o w l e d g e

is a

L i g h t

that is in man; it is the

I n h e r i t a n c e

of all that the ancestors knew and sowed deep within us, just as the

P o w e r

of the Baobab is contained in its

S e e d.´ (Tierno Bokar, Sage of Bandiagara)

W i s d o m,
M i g h t,
G r a i n,
H e r i t a g e,
I l l u m i n a t i o n
may well represent, pentagonally, the ultra-enigmatic sonic Offspring that Otacílio now, epiphanic, presents to us." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Adansonia is a genus of deciduous trees known as baobabs. They are found in arid regions of Madagascar, mainland Africa, Arabia, and Australia. The generic name honours Michel Adanson, the French naturalist and explorer who described Adansonia digitata. The baobab is also known as the "upside down tree", a name that originates from several myths.

In the early 21st century, baobabs in southern Africa began to die off rapidly from a cause yet to be determined. Scientists believe it is unlikely that disease or pests were able to kill many trees so rapidly, and some speculated that the die-off was a result of dehydration from global warming.

Baobabs reach heights of 5 to 30 m (16 to 98 ft) and have trunk diameters of 7 to 11 m (23 to 36 ft). The Glencoe baobab, a specimen of A. digitata in Limpopo Province, South Africa, was considered to be the largest living individual, with a maximum circumference of 47 m (154 ft) and a diameter of about 15.9 m (52 ft). The tree has since split into two parts, so the widest individual trunk may now be that of the Sunland baobab, or Platland tree, also in South Africa. The diameter of this tree at ground level is 9.3 m (31 ft) and its circumference at breast height is 34 m (112 ft).

Adansonia trees produce faint growth rings, probably annually, but they are not reliable for aging specimens, because they are difficult to count and may fade away as the wood ages. Radiocarbon dating has provided data on a few individuals of A. digitata. The Panke baobab in Zimbabwe was some 2,450 years old when it died in 2011, making it the oldest angiosperm ever documented, and two other trees – Dorslandboom in Namibia and Glencoe in South Africa – were estimated to be approximately 2,000 years old. Another specimen known as Grootboom was dated and found to be at least 1275 years old. Greenhouse gases, climate change, and global warming appear to be factors reducing baobab longevity;

II - pt-br.facebook.com/otaciliomelgacoofficial/photos/p.2962347237150455/2962347237150455/?type=3&theater

...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.