D a r c y m p h o n y
O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o
[duration 01:01:53] 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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"Mr. Melgaço brought to light a Series of Nine Symphonies called ´Brasilianas´. All pay homage to a Brazilian consecrated Personality and characterized by certain global penetration. ´Darcymphony´ is part of that Cycle.
The four movements, in one way or another, recount the plural existence of the honoree: 1- Contact with a pristine indigenous Brazil (anthropological/ethnological strand); 2- The making of a Thought that projectively encompasses the country - as ´New Rome´ - (sociological/academic strand); 3- Modernist developmentalist perspective (educational/political strand); 4- Perpetuation of the humanist ideals (literary/artistical strand).
Musically Otacílio Melgaço offers us an articulation that is worthy of significant compliment: a predominant electronic aura (quite onirical, alias) and the intervention of primitivist elements. The contrast is enigmatic and especially contributes for our testimony of an exotically sophisticated enthralling elegiac Piece." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)
"Darcy Ribeiro (1922 – 1997) was a Brazilian anthropologist, author and politician. His ideas of Latin American identity have influenced several later scholars of related studies. As Minister of Education of Brazil he carried out profound reforms which led him to be invited to participate in academic reformulations in Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico and Uruguay after leaving Brazil due to the 1964 coup d'état. Among other titles, Doctor Honoris Causa in Sorbonne and Copenhagen University.
In whilom, through a character with autobiographical spirit, the writer Ribeiro pointed out: ´Around me, in these Minas, flowers gentle madness.´ I believe there´s a similar perception when we hear a Melgacian creation: ´a gentle madness´. ´Madness´ (I mean the typical of visionaries) or, in other words, a high Clarity, Clairvoyance, Splendor. ´Darcymphony´ is a kind of ethnographic sonic docket; simultaneously a wild, futuristic and gentle Utopia. According to Eduardo Galeano, ´Utopia is there on the horizon. I approach two steps, she moves away two steps. Path ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps. As much as I walk, I´ll never reach it. What is Utopia? Fits this: lest I leave to walk.´ One of the lessons that Melgaço also presents us as a precious resonant legacy." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)
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I - Darcy Ribeiro was born in Montes Claros, Minas Gerais (the same state where Melgaço comes from), the son of Reginaldo Ribeiro dos Santos and of Josefina Augusta da Silveira. He completed his primary and secondary education in his native town, at the Grupo Escolar Gonçalves Chaves and at the Ginásio Episcopal de Montes Claros. He is best known for development work in the areas of education, sociology and anthropology and for being, along with his friend and colleague Anísio Teixeira, one of the founders of the University of Brasília (Universidade de Brasília) in the early 1960s. (See John Dewey). He also served as the first rector of that university. He was the founder of the State University of Norte Fluminense (Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense) as well. He wrote numerous books, many of them about the indigenous populations of Brazil;
II - Anthropologist lived ten years in the indigenous populations. This period produced some of his major works - including Kadiwéu, collection of essays on knowledge, bad luck and beauty, considered a classic of ethnology, mythology and art of the ancient Guaicurus Indians.
Another important work is Diaries Indians, in which reproduces in full the notes taken during expeditions to the Urubu-Kaapor Indians in the years 1949 and 1951, a time when working in the former SPI (Indian Protection Service). There he met the marshal Cândido Rondon, who presided over the National Council for the Protection of Indians and that turned out to influence profoundly the work developed with indigenous communities.
Made in the anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro relationship are the creations of the Indian Museum and the Xingu National Park;
III - During the first mandate of governor Leonel Brizola in Rio de Janeiro (state) (1983–1987), Darcy Ribeiro created, planned and directed the implementation of the Integrated Centres for Public Instruction (Centros Integrados de Ensino Público), a visionary and revolutionary pedagogical project of assistance for children, including recreational and cultural activities beyond formal instruction – making concrete the projects envisioned decades earlier by Anísio Teixeira;
IV - Darcy Ribeiro's ideas belonged to the evolutionist school of sociology and anthropology. He believed that people went through a "civilizatory process" beginning as hunter-gatherers. This "civilizatory process" was according to him marked by technological revolutions, and among these he stress the eight more important as the following:
the agricultural revolution
the urban revolution
the irrigation revolution
the metallurgic revolution
the livestock revolution
the mercantile revolution
the industrial revolution
the thermonuclear revolution
Ribeiro proposed also a classification scheme for Latin American countries where he identified "New Peoples" (Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Venezuela etc.), that merged from the mix of several cultures; "Testimony Peoples" (Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and Bolivia), remnants of ancient civilizations; and Argentina and Uruguay, former "New Peoples" that became "Transplantated Peoples", essentially European, after massive immigration.
...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.
