B o d a s D e l A m o r O s c u r o
- A S p a n i s h I n T h e W o r k s -

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 33:09] 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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"´Esta luz, este fuego que devora.
Este paisaje gris que me rodea.
Este dolor por una sola idea.
Esta angustia de cielo, mundo y hora.

Este llanto de sangre que decora
lira sin pulso ya, lúbrica tea.
Este peso del mar que me golpea.
Este alacrán que por mi pecho mora.

Son guirnalda de amor, cama de herido,
donde sin sueño, sueño tu presencia
entre las ruinas de mi pecho hundido.

Y aunque busco la cumbre de prudencia
me da tu corazón valle tendido
con cicuta y pasión de amarga ciencia.´

Lorca and his Blood Wedding. Lorca and his Sonnets of Dark Love.
One of the most faithful Portrait of a complex and extremely Spain.

Otacílio Melgaço embraces the past and the future when musically invokes echoes of Spanish bygone eras and simultaneously points to mixtures of sound styles, instruments, ... unusual aesthetic glances.

If Spain is passionate, owns a peculiar virility that is independent of genres - if we take into account the ´bailaoras´ and the ´toreadores´ - for example; if is a country that goes from one vertex to another; epic and sensual; intense and coloric; proud of his valiant profile and captive of a fierce religiosity; ...; we will find these and many others fascinating ribs connected to a Hispanic backbone that O.M. now brings to us like an Offering under his universal (and here especially exciting) sonic syntax." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"Five Sketches of Spain by Melgaço. Amid a maze of mirrors in which we see reflected the foreheads of García Lorca, de Falla, Joaquín Rodrigo, Bizet, ..., Gil Evans, Miles Davis ... indeed is the face of Otacílio that targets us.

Post Scriptum (or Scritpun?) - ´A Spaniard in the Works´ is a book from 1965 by John Lennon. The book consists of nonsensical stories (undoubtedly, one way or another, linked to James Joyce) and drawings similar to the style of his previous book, 1964's In His Own Write. The name is a pun on the expression ´a spanner in the works´. Certainly the subtitle of the Melgaço´s recording Piece is a double pun!
(In an immediate reading, Otacílio becomes a Spaniard, ... above all: a Spanish and thereby engages in such works. Body and soul completely dipped). But continuing on conjectures ... Private ruminations. If I am led to add two words taking
Lennon as starting point
[Spa(i)n + Yard]; starting from Melgaço, I would reach
Spa(i)n + (W)ish. Still is an almost delirious quite interesting, I think.
Do not forget: ´I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together´... isn´t it? Make a wish!" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Manuel de Falla y Matheu (1876 – 1946) was a Spanish composer. With Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century. His image was on Spain's 1970 100-pesetas banknote.

II - Joaquín Rodrigo Vidre, 1st Marquis of the Gardens of Aranjuez (1901 – 1999), commonly known as Joaquín Rodrigo, was a Spanish composer and a virtuoso pianist. Rodrigo's music is among the most popular music of the twentieth century. In particular, his Concierto de Aranjuez is considered one of the pinnacles of the Spanish music and of the guitar concerto repertoire.

III - Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca, known as Federico García Lorca (1898 – 1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director.

IV - The music of Spain has a long history and has played an important part in the development of western music and has been a particularly strong influence upon Latin American music. Outside of Spain, the country is often associated with traditional styles such as flamenco and classical guitar but Spanish music is in fact diverse, reflecting the large differences in traditional music and dance across its regions. For example, flamenco is a style of the south of the country, whereas the music in the north-western regions are centered on bagpipes. Spain played a notable role in the history of western classical music, particularly from the 15th to the 17th centuries; from composers like Tomás Luis de Victoria, the zarzuela of Spanish opera, the ballet of Manuel de Falla, to the classical guitar music of Pepe Romero.

V - Georges Bizet (1838 – 1875), registered at birth as Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer of the romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire.

VI - Miles Dewey Davis III (1926 – 1991) was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, together with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, and jazz fusion.

VII - Ian Ernest Gilmore "Gil" Evans (1912 – 1988) was a Canadian jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader. He played an important role in the development of cool jazz, modal jazz, free jazz and jazz fusion, and collaborated extensively with Miles Davis.

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
Wikipedia was the main 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.