B r u t a l i s m

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 31:47] 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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"{Paraphrasing Norman Mailer´s quote: ´I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we are not here for shrink from the immensity of the purpose´, ie the immensity of the lofty purpose of each one of us, I affirm with conviction, must be recognized, assumed, embraced, fulfilled.

I N N E R M O S T | P R O L O G U E

All reviews made about the Melgacian works are under our full responsibility; Mr. Campbell and I, both the curators. I'm incrementing the note above. The referential comments are not issued by the artist himself, but by our direct writing. How should an appropriate epistemology.

That said, I would like to properly bring out a brief introductory remark - if you, ladies and gentlemen, allow me. Perhaps to the eyes of people a little more (two euphemisms) ´prudish or demure´, our analyses (when we approached the creations of Otacílio Melgaço) may look - how could I say? -: ´pompous´.

[The overwhelming majority of you who are - here - reading, are not the focus of my preface. For you, it will be as a general reflection that I propose. I hope it´s constructively interesting. However, for those who identify with the content, recognizing themselves in my words - I suggest, amicably, that can fundamentally review their paradigms and behaviors. Will do, kindly and generously, a favor to mankind because this is the justification for the existence of my preamble. At one specific internetical niche, I read occasionally such kind of ´rhetoric´ - praising the Melgaço music but stressing that some of our notes would be ´pompous´ (plus other ´cozy´ synonyms). Such kind of ´rhetoric´ (as we all know the irrefutable pandemic fad of gratuitous dissension) not always ´elegantly explicited´ as it should be. As we also enjoy a rhizomatic and dynamic mondial panorama, I will - with your license - put into practice here and now, in an adequate territoriality and synchronicity, a civilized replica. This column was not made for it but I will open an exception.]

I inexorably respect democracy and free expression. If we are provided with responsibility, respect, honesty, ethics, sensitivity, mature arguments, humanist sense etc.: we all have to reaffirm the conquest of perform any notorious exposition of what we want ... ever. Nevertheless, I think the scenario to which I refer - now and here - is a little more complex and abysmal.

'The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.' (Friedrich Nietzsche; from Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

We live at a time so ´liquefied´ that (I make mention of the artistic universe but this happens generally) any grandiose manifestation can be viewed with suspicion or yet ludicrous irritation. Everything has become so fragmented, pulverized and still trivialized that it may sound pretentious a description if more monumental or a compliment if more effusive. Even with justice, lucidity, basement, merit. It seems to me a growing human tendency: a misreading of that recognition of what is exuberantly significant in otherness should be translated (by sheer inability, nescience or with bad faith) as a way that some people feel itself, for example, ´reduced´, degraded before it. A mutts syndrome. And from that, they believe, in paradoxical but obvious reactivity, they have the right to pursue a bellicose posturing. Being I averse to mincing words: we´re face to face with pathetic rebels without a real cause. A version without cause, grace and ludicity of L'armata Brancaleone. Perchance thus make their lives more bearable - are perhaps the ´small enjoyments´ highlighted by Jacques Lacan. We routinely witness it on the internet - in this case, a more favorable protectorate to anonymity, infantilism, ephemerality, cowardice, imbecility - a propos, it was very well exposed by Umberto Eco - and indiscriminate bestiality. It's an absurd, excuse me. Without further fanfare: ´pompous´? This was never our intention nor directly or indirectly; by the way, I believe that the key problem is quite another. It has become very (dubiously) easy or ´mischievously strategic´ to confuse high deserved predicates with lacking in humility; to mistake the finding of tangible values of a splendid work for snobbery; to tarnish the true eminence of an identity with hyperbolic stains. It's a crass misconception or a farcical cheap trick. Because that work (or that artist) is no longer actually absorbed, appreciated with exemption, brought to fruition ... as that possible audience takes a defensive prejudiced posture (its mongrel complex) and consequently (macrocosmically) deafened.

Let's extrapolate a bit: notice how the figure of ´genius´, latterly, has to be seen as mandatorily extinct or at least strangely, an encumbrance. I do not care about denominations, categorizations, classifications or ... labels, what worries me (and it´s deeply lamentable) is that it seems to be a shallow attempt to censorship, to castration [as if everything should be leveled down; should be condemned if did not muzzling its distinction; should conform to a pre-established stature based on a dictatorial equality that, notwithstanding, craves everything sterile and dwarfed (although many reactionary and anachronistic politicians demonstrate nowadays that want to build new barriers between nations, someone needs to tell, to warn these people - here focused - that the Berlin Wall - and all its particular symbology - has been overthrown long ago. Maybe that's what I'm doing, incidentally)]. And so the large-hearted reverberations are renewed: never more any reproach to ´the possibility of - and vocation for - glimpsing the heights!´ (still talking about, besides everything else, Art and its immeasurable potentiality). Any IMMENSITY - presently - is an affront, an insult to a narrow, reductionist world because simply unmasks and deconstructs this tepid modus vivendi. Lilliputian world - or rather, the sadist camarilla that prefers to dwell in it. That I can not accept, sorry. Today, a figure as kaleidoscopic, indomitable, Gargantuan as Leonardo di Ser Piero da Vinci; he would be burned in public cyber square - guilty of repudiating any imposition of being (what centuries later could we call) a Kafkaesque insect (one more in the realm of those who want all being ´entomologized´. Thanks but I refuse such a forced metamorphosis). A personality like Wilhelm Richard Wagner and his titanic concept of ´Gesamtkunstwerk´; he would be virtually stoned as a pedantic megalomaniac. And so on. I could cite many instances but these are enough. ´Miseriae nobiles right away!´ Definitely, that ... I cannot accept and never would.

There are many conclusions implicit in my peroration, but I will delegate to your arising dialectics, honorable Netizens. So are all welcome here. All who have an open mind and a free spirit. Our purpose is always to go beyond - in an ascension sensory, emotional, cordial, mental, intellectual, animic (whatever the meaning it has for you) and all that´s conceivable ... jointly, twinned, in favor of a broad and sincere transcultural communion. For that - now and forever - nor the sky´s the limit, Ladies and Gentlemen. For that and undoubtedly for the pinnacled in-
genious Melgacian Music & Art.

Quod erat demonstrandum.}

A B O U T
B R U T A L I S M

There´s not much time´n´space for resumption of breath here. The first compasses of the three Pieces do not let me lie.

For me, it´s a perfect Triptych of a free, a living music; music made in sync with our Era (at least spectra of a desirable Zeitgeist able to ´dismantle´ a nihilist Age as seems to be the current) and beyond. Endpoint, nothing else need to be said.

Nevertheless, many may assume it's (avant-garde) Jazz. Well. Taking this into account, should I express myself. If anyone in their right mind still had any doubts about the jazzistic ascension possibilities even today, such question marks were extinct now. This exclamatory sound petard which also brings elements of contemporary music, electronic, noise rock etc represents an indelible achievement level among current cutting-edge instrumental works and here accessible to the most demanding listeners." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"If the Brutalism favors the ´constructional truth´ of the buildings in order to never hide their structural elements, I dare say: this was the north that O.M. proposed himself attain.

Brutalist architecture is a movement in architecture that flourished from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, descending from the modernist architectural movement of the early 20th century. The term originates from the French word for ´raw´ in the term used by Le Corbusier to describe his choice of material béton brut (raw concrete). British architectural critic Reyner Banham adapted the term into ´brutalism´ (originally ´New Brutalism´) to identify the emerging style.

In its ruggedness and lack of concern to look comfortable or easy, Brutalism can be seen as a reaction by a younger generation to the lightness, optimism, and frivolity of some 1930s and 1940s architecture. In one critical appraisal by Banham, Brutalism was posited not as a style but as the expression of an atmosphere among architects of moral seriousness. ´Brutalism´ as an architectural critical term was not always consistently used by critics; architects themselves usually avoided using it altogether. More recently, ´brutalism´ has become used in popular discourse to refer to buildings of the late twentieth century that are large or unpopular – as a synonym for ´brutal´.

The Melgacian Brutalism: impactful, rapturous. Ethic a-n-d Aesthetic. The aesthetic 'honesty', the compositional sculptural qualities, the uncompromising, nature of the style. We are facing a hyper designed creation uniquely progressive and progressivist.

Arousing passion and (philoprogenitive) fury in equal measure, the sonorities present in this recording make me repeat the words of Jonathan Foyle, chief executive of the World Monuments Fund Britain: ´I feel that Brutalism is a modern take on gothic architecture. Both were designed from the inside out – the purpose of the building and what happens inside is the important part.´ Certainly there is no musical scores for such resonant work, but: X-rays!

Addendum - The graphical reference to the (´menschliches, allzumenschliches´) highest architectural human ambition,
the Tower of Babel (pregnant with valuable metaphors) is proof of the trans-conceptual talent of Mr. Melgaço." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Brutalism became popular with governmental and institutional clients, with numerous examples in Britain, France, Germany, Japan, the United States, Canada, Brazil, the Philippines, Israel and Australia. Examples are typically massive in character (even when not large), fortress-like, with a predominance of exposed concrete construction, or in the case of the "brick brutalists," ruggedly combine detailed brickwork and concrete. There is often an emphasis on graphically expressing in the external elevations and in the whole-site architectural plan the main functions and people-flows of the buildings. Brutalism became popular for educational buildings (especially university buildings), but was relatively rare for corporate projects. Brutalism became favoured for many government projects, high-rise housing, and shopping centres.

In Brazil, the style is associated with the Paulista School (João Batista Vilanova Artigas, Hans Broos ...) and is evident in the works of Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha;

II - Brutalism is a literary movement formed in 2006 by three writers from the north of England (Tony O'Neill, Adelle Stripe and Ben Myers), and may have been the first literary movement to be launched via the social networking site Myspace where it announced itself with the following manifesto:

"Brutalism calls for writing that touches upon levels of raw honesty that is a lacking from most mainstream fiction. We cannot simply sit around waiting to be discovered — we would rather do it ourselves. Total control, total creativity. The Brutalists see ourselves as a band who have put down their instruments and picked up their pens and scalpels instead. The only maxim we adhere to is an old punk belief, which we have bastardized for our own means: Here’s a laptop. Here’s a spell-check. Now write a book";

III - "I invite everyone to frequent Miss Havillar's blog,

havillar.blogspot.com.br

- in English and Portuguese -, which directly inspired me to conceive my Preamble. Our thanks to her." (P.S.P. note);

IV - "´La cucaracha, la cucaracha
ya no puede caminar
por que no tiene
porque le faltan
las dos patitas de atrás
una vez la cucaracha
se metió en un hormiguero
y las picaras hormigas
las patitas le comieron
pobrecita cucharacha
anda renga y afligida
caminando a paso lento
escondiendose de dia
la cucaracha, la cucaracha
ya no puede caminar
por que no tiene
porque le faltan
las dos patitas de atras
la señora cucaracha
se ha comprado una bombacha
toda llena de botones
y adornada con hilachas
que bombacha mamarracha
le dijeron los ratones
pero a doña cucaracha
no le importan opiniones
la cucaracha, la cucaracha
ya no puede caminar
por que no tiene
porque le faltan
las dos patitas de atrás.´
(´La Cucaracha´, a traditional Spanish folk song.)

As an appendix to everything I've written specifically in my Prologue, I can't forget to add an incidental reference that visits my mind now. I remember a great Brazilian cartoonist, journalist and writer (as well as Melgaço, born in the state of Minas Gerais), Henrique de Souza Filho - known as Henfil - and an account of him from a stay in the United States of America (between 1972 and 1975); a description that turned into a book released in 1976.

www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fassets-brazil-cartoon.s3-us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2F-2811070678724659589.png&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fbrazilcartoon.com%2Fbrazil-cartoon%2Fwork%2F30003%3Flanguage%3Den&docid=yr1CWTpb1QpmtM&tbnid=E-vdk04L53lmCM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwjztvbevdTjAhWmFbkGHd_xAboQMwhbKCIwIg..i&w=620&h=334&bih=671&biw=1280&q=di%C3%A1rio%20de%20um%20cucaracha&ved=0ahUKEwjztvbevdTjAhWmFbkGHd_xAboQMwhbKCIwIg&iact=mrc&uact=8

He commented on how observed the approach that most Latin Americans received from many US citizens. Henfil referred to their being judged as ´cucarachas´ (cockroaches). Nor is it necessary to draw the parallel between characteristics of the insects of the order Blattodea and, from a racist conjuncture, those related to the peoples of Latin and Southern America. It is too evident. Of course there are exceptions - especially in the new Yankee generations - and they should be honored, but has it tangibly changed - either more explicitly or surreptitiously - from those years to today? Draw your own conclusions. (...) Just take into account the terminology that current US President - and media star - Donald John Trump has used recently [this additional note is being written in 2019] for those trying to enter ´his´ country through Mexico: 'infestation' ergo 'plague'. (...) [Nothing that the building of a Gargantuan, dedetizating and shameful Wall won't solve, is not true?]

Being hemophilic and contracting AIDS at a time when blood banks were quite negligent, Henfil, who unfortunately died in 1988, stressed then how much this influenced the conduct of Latins, who were seen and treated as inferior, and who began to feel this way to the point of perceiving themselves subhumanly invisible, invisibilized. In other words, viewed and faced as a Nothing. What's worse, with the self-esteem seven feet below ground, even coming to the paroxysm of looking at themselves as ´pests that deserve to be exterminated´. But generally speaking (in keeping with the above example inasmuch as, sure, there are deplorably others similar in various corners of the world), its perception is that they are insignificant, their cultures are negligible, their lives are worth less, etc., compared to the North American. Henfil shrewdly called this ´Cucaracha Behavior.´

The effect in question is doubly harmful. Because there is the prejudice suffered (externally) and also (hence the expression 'behavior') the feeling of disqualification comes to occur, be generated and inhabit them internally. Something that becomes the ruler / scale of their existence (in society and innermost). Heinous exogeny & endogeny. Anyway, the analogy and pertinence of my quote seem undeniably clear to me. I hope likewise for you. Consequently, ´nuestras disculpas´ (sic) but we frontally do not accept this (i.e., the perpetuation of what was and is veridical about it, either in the exact sense narrated or in any castrating collaterality), neither from foreigners nor from fellow countrymen, if with ´cockroach´ mentality & comportment.

Yes, ´I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we are not here for shrink from the immensity of the purpose´, regardless of our ethnicity; our civilizatory origin; our legitimate customs / habits / legacies; our idiosyncrasies; our geographical location; ... my, your, her, his, their, our daring / authentic pretension / rightful monumentality / brilliance / artistic genius and so on. Yes, the immensity of the lofty purpose of each one of us must be recognized, assumed, embraced, fulfilled; I affirm with unwalled conviction." (P.S.P. note)

...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.