C a r r a n c a

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 50:50] all right 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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"'When I write, I repeat that which I’ve already lived. And for those two lives, only one lexicon will not suffice. In other words, I would like to be a crocodile living in the São Francisco. I would like to be a crocodile because I love great rivers, because they’re profound like the souls of men. Their surfaces are vivacious and clear, but their depths are tranquil and dark like the suffering of men.' (João Guimarães Rosa)

'Carranca' is a Melgacian Sonic Saga that runs deep folklore of his profound native land, Minas Gerais, mixing ghostly/phantasmic echoes inspired by pristine canticles and contrapuntal/rhizomatic nature of contemporary interventions.

While it can be understood as the intricacies of a surreal dream - an onirical/unfathomable route -, also suggests to us a supernatural odyssey properly acclimatized (even scripted & resonantly materialized) - cruising the waters & the mythology of an iconic river. Otacílio guiding us across the São Francisco, maybe a confluence of Lethe, Cocytos, Acheron, Phlegethon and Styx.

The Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist who moves so well by the more ubiquitous cosmopolitanism, never fails to paint the 'own village'. 'If you want to be universal, start by painting your own village,' said Leo Tolstoy. From time to time, masterfully O.M. prefers not contradict the Russian novelist." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"Ancient figureheads as guardians on the river.
A discographic record as guardian of a culture.
In this way, Otacílio Melgaço invites us to repeat in loud and clear the words of Victor Hugo: 'I am an intelligent river which has reflected successively all the banks before which it has flowed by meditating only on the images offered by those changing shores.'

A Carranca (Portuguese, literally 'scowl') is a type of figurehead attached to river craft which is attributed with power to protect the boatmen from the river's evil spirits. They were once commonly found on the higher Rio São Francisco (Minas Gerais, Southeast) and lower in Brazil's Northeast Region (Nordeste). The Carranca is most commonly a figure of a human or an animal. They were used to identify traders operating on the S.F. and, as with ancient figureheads, serve the superstitious as guardians on the river.

The São Francisco is the longest river that runs entirely in Brazilian territory, and the fourth longest in South America and overall in Brazil (after the Amazon, the Paraná and the Madeira). It used to be known as the Opara by the indigenous people before colonisation, and is today also known as 'Velho Chico'. It originates in the Canastra mountain range in the central-western part of the state of Minas Gerais. Called 'the river of national integration' because it unites diverse climes and regions of the country, in particular the Southeast with the Northeast.

'Not even if you bury it in silence can a thing that doesn’t make sense be dealt with. (...) To travel at night, in pitch darkness takes instinct–your feet have to guess what you can’t see on the ground. You imagine big holes. You expect to hear voices. A few scattered stars; the night a solid mass. (…) At certain times, nothing has meaning.' Until you get to the great river, the river and its three banks.

'Carranca': The Melgaço to Pay in the Backlands. The Melgaço, in the Middle of the Whirlwind, walking on the River.

A discographic record as guardian of a culture.
Ancient figureheads as guardians on the river.
In any other way, Otacílio Melgaço invites us to repeat in clear and loud the words of Heraclitus: 'No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.'" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Classic figurehead versions, dating from the early 19th or even late 18th centuries, were painted, frequently chalk white with black hair, gaping red mouths and white fangs. The most common tourist versions follow similar schemes. A more modern, decorative unpainted version is often in natural wood and even polished;

II - lavidaenfotografia.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/marcelgautherot_trabalho_12a3.jpg?w=739

...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.