G l o s s o l a l i a
part I - B i f i d
part II - G l o s s o l a l i a
part III - T [w] o M i r r o r [s] > X e n o l a l i a
O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o
[duration 01:26:42] 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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"With the exception of the last part, a Work composed entirely of voices. Not sung or in the form of melodies but spoken.
Glossolalia or speaking in tongues, according to linguists, is the fluid vocalizing of speech-like syllables that lack any readily comprehended meaning, in some cases as part of religious practice in which it is believed to be a divine language unknown to the speaker. The term is constructed from the Greek word γλωσσολαλία, itself a compound of the words γλῶσσα (glossa), meaning ´tongue´ or ´language´ and λαλέω (laleō), ´to speak, talk, chat, prattle, or to make a sound´. The related term ´xenolalia´ or ´xenoglossy´ is used to describe the phenomenon when the language being spoken is a natural language previously unknown to the speaker.
Otacílio Melgaço intersects masterfully such concepts and sound poetry.
While it is sometimes argued that the roots of sound poetry are to be found in oral poetry traditions, the writing of pure sound texts that downplay the roles of meaning and structure is a 20th-century phenomenon. The Futurist and Dadaist Vanguards of the beginning of this century were the pioneers in creating the first sound poetry forms. Prominent sound poets include Henri Chopin, Bob Cobbing, Ada Verdun Howell, Allen Ginsberg, bpNichol, William S. Burroughs, Giovanni Fontana, Bernard Heidsieck, Enzo Minarelli, François Dufrene, Mathias Goeritz, Maurizio Nannucci, Andras Petocz, multidisciplinary artist Jean-Jacques Lebel, Henrik Aeshna, a Paris-based poet, artist and performer who experiments with Noise, shamanism and visual poetry, and Jaap Blonk, a Dutch sound poet who often works with improvising musicians.
Leaving aside the religious context (though an opening, in my view, to a certain shamanic involvement/hypnotic rapture) and reaching the artistic, the poetic ... Absorbing - either in Portuguese, English, Italian, French, German, Spanish and Russian - pearls of universal literature (a good example is the poem ´O Espelho´ - ´The Mirror´ - by Machado de Assis - in the third part > highlighting its exceptional character because that´s the only section of a reading - or recitation - ´pure´ & accompanied by other instruments) Otacílio Melgaço, in order to generate a peculiar sound poetry, engenders a mesmerizing vocalic (´prosodicorthoepic´) polyphony." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)
"In 1972, William J. Samarin, a linguist from the University of Toronto, published a thorough assessment of Pentecostal glossolalia that became a classic work on its linguistic characteristics. His assessment was based on a large sample of glossolalia recorded in public and private Christian meetings in Italy, The Netherlands, Jamaica, Canada and the USA over the course of five years; his wide range included the Puerto Ricans of the Bronx, the Snake Handlers of the Appalachians and the Spiritual Christians from Russia in Los Angeles (Pryguny, Dukhizhizniki).
Samarin found that glossolalic speech does resemble human language in some respects.
> Mr. Melgaço has as its starting point in fact languages but overlapping. And, why not?, contrapuntal. <
The speaker uses accent, rhythm, intonation and pauses to break up the speech into distinct units. Each unit is itself made up of syllables, the syllables being formed from consonants and vowels taken from a language known to the speaker:
It is verbal behaviour that consists of using a certain number of consonants and vowels [...] in a limited number of syllables that in turn are organized into larger units that are taken apart and rearranged pseudogrammatically [...] with variations in pitch, volume, speed and intensity.
[Glossolalia] consists of strings of syllables, made up of sounds taken from all those that the speaker knows, put together more or less haphazardly but emerging nevertheless as word-like and sentence-like units because of realistic, language-like rhythm and melody.
That the sounds are taken from the set of sounds already known to the speaker is confirmed by others. Felicitas Goodman, a psychological anthropologist and linguist, also found that the speech of glossolalists reflected the patterns of speech of the speaker's native language.
> Mr. Melgaço preserves such structures. And potentiates them under a compositional perspective.<
Samarin found that the resemblance to human language was merely on the surface and so concluded that glossolalia is ´only a facade of language´.
> Mr. Melgaço transcends the similarity and makes an interesting act: the source reveals recognized languages but if heard concomitantly: creating a third parlance. And here, yes, perchance a supernatural or superhuman feature: and if we had the ability to pronounce two or more words at the same time? Forming simultaneously two or more sentences in favor of a multi-polissemic cognitive understanding? [Even as a metaphor seems so consistent with human communication - in its pros and cons.] Between this and that: a third speech - if heard in the merged unit - can be interpreted - with due poetic license - as (renovated in connotation) glossolalia.<
He reached this conclusion because the syllable string did not form words, the stream of speech was not internally organized, and – most importantly of all – there was no systematic relationship between units of speech and concepts.
> Yes, here, the syllable string forms words, the stream of speech is internally organized, and – most importantly of all – there is systematic relationship between units of speech and concepts. But when these normative aspects intertwine with each other, we listen a babelic content. And here, in the most exciting way. <
Humans use language to communicate but glossolalia does not.
> There´s a communication perspective in the Melgacian work. It turns out that we have the option, at the time of listening to composition, favoring a double - sometimes triple, quadruple etc. - cognition (there may be a double - sometimes triple, quadruple etc. - simultaneous decoding) or (okay, relinquishing of understanding and communication itself) we look at everything as a new language despite being coming from other recognized. <
Therefore, he concluded that glossolalia is not ´a specimen of human language because it is neither internally organized nor systematically related to the world man perceives´.
> Mr. Melgaço makes such corruption and potentially reaches the untranslatable through translatable arrays. And so because of synchronicity, the vertical factor. <
On the basis of his linguistic analysis, Samarin defined Pentecostal glossolalia as ´meaningless but phonologically structured human utterance, believed by the speaker to be a real language but bearing no systematic resemblance to any natural language, living or dead´.
> Mr. Melgaço proves to us that ´his´ languages are real, natural but capable of being understood or not by a hearing device belonging to the listener's ability to decide which path will take. <
In short:
accent,
rhythm,
intonation
and pauses.
Variations in
pitch,
volume,
speed
and intensity.
Therefore, we can enjoy this prosodic and recitative Piece as if (and it is) a musical Piece. A duet of voices as if it were a duetto of any other instruments. In another passage, a confluence of several voices as, I repeat, a sum of instruments. That seems to me the splendid key point.
Should not be overlooked the fact that exacly when the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist utilizes his native language - Portuguese -, takes place using a new designation: Xenolalia. A renewed proof of his irony and shrewdness. At this (further key) point, such a voice no more human is. It´s generated by a computer. Above the dead and the living!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)
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I - According to Dale B. Martin, glossolalia accorded high status in the ancient world due to its association with the divine. Alexander of Abonoteichus may have exhibited glossolalia during his episodes of prophetic ecstasy. Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus linked glossolalia to prophecy, writing that prophecy was divine spirit possession that "emits words which are not understood by those that utter them; for they pronounce them, as it is said, with an insane mouth (mainomenό stomati) and are wholly subservient, and entirely yield themselves to the energy of the predominating God."
As part of his attack on early Christianity, the Greek philosopher Celsus may include an account of Christian glossolalia. Celsus describes prophecies made by several Christians in Palestine and Phoenicia of which he writes, "Having brandished these threats they then go on to add incomprehensible, incoherent, and utterly obscure utterances, the meaning of which no intelligent person could discover: for they are meaningless and nonsensical, and give a chance for any fool or sorcerer to take the words in whatever sense he likes";
II - Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values.
...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.
