j a X p e r i e n c e
- pieces for double + electric bass
& drums -

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:05:41] all rights reserved

Dedicated to Iberê Camargo

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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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"´I lean over this mysterious well, unfathomable, that exists in every man.´ (I.C.)

Iberê Camargo. 2014 is his birth centenary. ´One of the greatest expressionist artists from´ Brazil. More than this: I believe that he´s side by side with global references such as Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning and Lucian Freud, taking into account the peculiarities of each stylistic - obviously.

This magmatic homage on the part of Otacílio Melgaço is more than fair.

The work of Iberê - an invaluable source - seems quite able to be translated into the music and it was time to come to the fore the initiative of a talented and capable artist. An artist with the stature of being face to face with Camargo, eye to eye; brush to baton (conducting).

´The self-portrait of the painter is a question that he asks himself, and the answer is also a question.´ (I.C.)

What caught my attention in ´jaXperience - pieces for double + electric bass & drums ´ was the extreme acumen and perspicacity of his
c-r-e-a-t-o-r. Between inquiries and answers forming an ouroboros, between self-portraits and eternal questions: if the work is inspired by a painter, we hope that - among other things - should be full of colors... At least the ´typical´ colors of the painter in focus, many or few. Otacílio almost eliminates the colors of his phonograph album! If the work is inspired by a painter, we hope that - among other things - should be full of shapes... At least the ´typical´ shapes of the painter in focus, few or many. Melgaço almost eliminates the shapes of his phonograph album! And so on...

´The painter is the magic that immobilizes the time.´ (I.C.)

Support for a ´cryonic time´ that will return to life, the use of bass and drums and only - it´s perhaps a blank canvas! It will be filled as we heard the disc! Inspired by elements coming from the Iberê Camargo biography, O.M. makes us painters (and musicians - before that) excited to also audiblely & visually create all the time and so each canvas is inseminated with clangorous´n´reverberating oil pastel acrylic watercolor ink hot wax fresco gouache enamel spray paint tempera... Merely by ´this´ perception of Melgaço, these sound Pieces are justified and deserve notoriety.

Syne figurative to more abstract and vice versa and furthermore, none of the artistic phases of the honoree escaped from the Melgacian sonic transfigurations. What should be, in any way, described - was; what would be suggested, was. What were the signs and clues? Since the explicitness of titles until the more undecoded composition! There´s musically impeccable balance between expressivity and unpin (of our hearings) forms and formats. In other words, equilibrium between the nonobjective, nonrepresentational, a sonorous compositions which may exist with a ´degree of independence from references in the world´ and the antithesis of that. Dwell amid the ether and the gesture.

´A painting for me is a gesture, is the last gesture. ´ (I.C.)

Guignard was one of the masters of gaúcho Iberê. Alberto da Veiga Guignard. Brazilian painter who became famous for portraying landscapes of the state of Minas Gerais, cradle of Melgaço. But was Giorgio de Chirico - from whom Camargo as well took lessons - that once said: ´Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men. To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.´

´The figures that populate my paintings engage in the sadness of twilight days of my childhood.´ (I.C.)

* Restinga Seca, a municipality in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, is the hometown of Iberê;
* Porto Alegre, the capital and largest city in Rio Grande do Sul. Where Camargo lived for a long time as well the place where he died;
* Gaveta de Guardados and No Andar do Tempo are books written by him;
* Núcleos, Estruturas e Desdobramentos refers to a phase in which there was more gestural aspect quite close to the informal abstraction;
* Os Carretéis, Os Ciclistas, As Idiotas, Fantasmagorias and Tudo te é falso e inútil are his series of more relevant and known paintings.

´The reality is an enigma that the time does not make it banal, and the man not deciphers. She is the Sphinx that devours us.´ (I.C.)

To keep these devourers enigmatic blanks available and so we´re free to move around them / interfere with them / ´to be activated´ by them: no musical expression would be more appropriate that the Free Jazz. Otacílio convinced me. By its fluidity; improvisatory lightness; unconstrained impetuosity; ability to suggest and not to determine; undulating expressionism...

´The true about the work of art is the expression that it gives us.´ (I.C.)

Expressionism: Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke mostly moods. Moods and even ideas are affected by subjectivity to the extent that the Subject of the painting itself (owner of a personal perspective, feelings, beliefs, desires, discoveries...) is transplanted to the canvas and - obiter - the soundtracks.

The Subject: the Painter, the Musician; am I / are You / are We.

´There's no an ideal of beauty, but the ideal of a poignant and painful truth that is my life, it's your life, it is our life, in this walk in the world.´ (I.C.)

Subjectivity: When we close our eyes - our vision is even more powerful ... and the hearing too.

´Only the imagination can go further in the world of knowledge. Poets and artists intuit the truth. I do not paint what I see, but what I feel.´ (I.C.)

A work of art must narrate something that does not appear within its outline. The objects and figures represented in it must likewise poetically tell you of something that is far away from them and also of what their shapes materially hide from us..., even De Chirico's notes.

´Perhaps the most amazing sensation passed on to us by prehistoric man is that of presentiment. It will always continue. We might consider it as an eternal proof of the irrationality of the universe. Original man must have wandered through a world full of uncanny signs. He must have trembled at each step.´

Step that, here, allocates a pushful encomium.
Encomium certainly pregnant with presentiments, irrationalities of the universe, originalities and uncanny signs!

Step such as that given now by Melgaço." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

"´Art is timeless but save the face of an era.´ (Iberê Camargo)

We already knew that the art of O.M. is timeless but the sonorous
face that he showed based on the silhouette of Iberê Camargo is amazing and exuberantly exciting!

Melgaço drew a parallel of Iberean expressionism and Free or avant-garde Jazz.

I.C. was a man and an artist of strong temperament, embattled. Also for this reason, I come to the conclusion that the Free Jazz (in intrinsic impactful powerful fierce striking Frontispiece; full of bravery ethics and aesthetics; owner of an indelible expressivity) is perfect to generate this Melgacian ´double´. I am sure that once again the sphinxian Brazilian composer and instrumentalist ergo composed and instrumentalized his insight and wit and inventiveness in a highly original manner. It´s certainly unprecedented such an analogy in the case of Camargian works.

Crisscrossed emplacements:

1- ´Defining the essence of free jazz is complicated; many musicians draw on free jazz concepts and idioms, and free jazz was never entirely distinct from other genres. Many individual musicians reject efforts at classification, regarding them as useless or unduly limiting. Free jazz uses jazz idioms, and like jazz it places an aesthetic premium on expressing the ´voice or sound´ of the musician, as opposed to the classical tradition in which the performer is seen more as expressing the thoughts of the composer.´

The music in ´jaXperience´ is not only an expression of the thoughts but expression direct, visceral of The composer and instrumentalist. Expression of himself. Expression of Self. No intermediate. The painter turns him own into ink and canvas; the musician into sounds ... and do not use devices as mediators. Are inexorable freedoms. And forms of transubstantiation too;

2- ´The practitioners of free jazz were serious about pursuing this approach, and their music employed concurrent developments in 20th Century art-music theory and practice also used by John Cage, Musica Elettronica Viva, and the Fluxus movement.´ Now the 21th is also included and the unknowns/ambiguities that announces...

The restlessness and metamorphosis/development, intrinsic to Iberê and Otacílio, are impressively fertilized in their acts of creation. A paradoxical achievement for few and bold musicians/painters: While accompanying and dictate historical cultural evolutivities, they have mastered the art of remaining magnetically immanent;

3- ´Some forms use composed melodies as the basis for group performance and improvisation. Free jazz practitioners sometimes use such material, and sometimes do not.´

Melgaço chose not to use. ´Other compositional structures are employed, some of them very detailed and complex.´ What happens? The more O.M. raises the level of improvisation, more deconstructs conventional concepts such as melody, harmony. Allegorically, I would argue that the sound pieces take on a 'quantum' aspect, generating a frantic dynamics that challenges and ascends our perceptual acuity.

A feature of this guideline seems great!: Melgaço leaves open what is figurative in Iberê. If the Melgacian proposal is libertarian (therefore giving birth to an avant-garde projection of abstractions), he leaves us free to be given wings to our imaginations. Der Himmel über Belo Horizonte. Der Himmel über Porto Alegre... ´A departure from reality in depiction of imagery´. Music is enriched by prodigious directions simultaneously with the fact that is being built by four hands: hands of the composer and instrumentalist and our hands of listeners active (not passive). How O.M. achieves this? Through the quintessentially!

He focuses on two instruments:
t h e B a s s
a n d D r u m s.
>> The quintessence!
Making a free comparison: our canvas still to be filled, painted!
Other colors, shapes, forms, textures, densities, lines ... depend on our hearing, instigated by him to be effusively originative!

By the way, I analyze the disc title and suppose two possibilities,
at least. 'jaX' would be a pun in terms of 'jaZZ' - phonetically - and so we would be in front a Jazzistic Experience;
In English there is the term 'already'. The equivalent in Portuguese is 'já'. A linguistic eclipse: 'jaXperience' could mean an Experience to be lived now, urgently, already! >> The quintessence of time and space / sounds, atmospherics and silences...

Apropos, I'm ecstatic with the artwork. It´s certainly a illuminated reference to Camargo's shadowy paintings and if I recall jazz discs that flirted directly with distinguished visual artists, would be impossible not to make a parallel with the iconic ´Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation´ - the sixth album by saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman, released on Atlantic Records in 1961. The original LP package incorporated Jackson Pollock's 1954 painting ´The White Light´. The cover was a gatefold with a cutout window in the lower left corner, allowing a glimpse of the painting; opening the cover revealed the full artwork.

O r n e t t e C o l e m a n / J a c k s o n P o l l o c k
O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o / I b e r ê C a m a r g o

White Light/White Heat. >> The quintessence of a lucent and scorching marriage between what we hear and see. I dare say that we have reached the summit of listening with eyes and see with ears, so;

4- ´This breakdown of form and rhythmic structure (giving an impression of the rhythm moving in waves) has been seen by some critics to coincide with jazz musicians’ exposure to and use of elements from non-Western music, especially African, Arabic, and Indian.´

If unveil our backyard to the world makes us truly universal, the fetterless expression contained in Melgaço and Camargo mirrors possibilities that can be learned and enjoyed by anyone on Earth. I reiterate: The two artists absorb vital influences without losing the authenticity. On the contrary, all contribute to the authenticity exist and develop. This rhizomatic character makes them universal ... and, following the backbone of ´jaXperience´, perhaps no other jazz (beyond the freely embraced herein by Otacílio) shed do it flowered so...;

5- ´The atonality of free jazz is often credited by historians and jazz performers to a return to non-tonal music of the nineteenth century, including field hollers, street cries, and jubilees (part of the ´return to the roots´ element of free jazz). This suggests that perhaps the movement away from tonality was not a conscious effort to devise a formal atonal system, but rather a reflection of the concepts surrounding free jazz. Eventually, jazz became totally ´free´ by removing all dependence on chord progressions and instead using polytempic and polyrhythmic structures.´

Atonality; polytempic and polyrhythmic structures; removing all dependence on chord progressions...: that was the path elected by O.M. Much discrepant of the jazz produced nowadays (lion's share), a more commercial and easily palatable; Otacílio Melgaço consummates a tribute to a great Brazilian painter and, flapping wings of desire (for more and more freedom), goes ahead. Miles and miles ahead...

A d d e n d u m

In music might call m-u-z-a-k; is generally disposable and profitable slot machine. About ´a more commercial and easily palatable´ art and who rebels against it - as Otacílio -, let us open unavoidable parenthesis. (Iberê Camargo and his wisdom:

i - ´I admire the rebels, even if they are the defeated persons.´ Note: It becomes clear that 'the defeated people' - cited in Camargo phrase - are, in reality, ´people´ - and here I stress: ´artists´ - who have not ´sold their souls´; who do not perverted ideals for easy money; who not exchange their character for despotic fame and hedonistic celebrity; who not prostitute their gift instead of embracing advantageous fads; who is nonetheless ethical to become someone that values power, influence, advantages, gombeen above all; who not ´stepped on the head´ of another people in favor of a career advancement - in the best style ´lupus est homo homini/man is a wolf to man´ - etc. I confess that would like to give the following name to liberating and rebellious music on this discographic album: Neo-Barbarism! Barbarian Invasions Ave!;

ii - Interview excerpt granted to Paulo Reis - ARS - São Paulo - vol. 1 no. 2 São Paulo Dec. 2003:

P.R.: ´What bothers you currently in Brazilian art?´

I.C.: ´This national stupidity. Why people are idiots? Television is the worst thing that could have happened. I can not stand it. I see that there are artists who are valued and not have meaningful work. I see there are so many compliments exchanged only by the desire of a market, has no truth in it. All this bother me, so do not take part in it.´;

iii - ´It is necessary that the fruit that is within the mature artist in the roam time. He who is in a hurry to sell it, make fruit wax or will pick them up on Orchard neighbor.´ Close parenthesis.)

A p p e n d i x

Writers Paul Tanner, Maurice Gerow, and David Megill have suggested that ´the freer aspects of jazz, at least, have reduced the freedom acquired in the sixties. Most successful recording artists today construct their works in this way: beginning with a strain with which listeners can relate, following with an entirely free portion, and then returning to the recognizable strain. The pattern may occur several times in a long selection, giving listeners pivotal points to cling to. At this time, listeners accept this – they can recognize the selection while also appreciating the freedom of the player in other portions. Players, meanwhile, are tending toward retaining a key center for the seemingly free parts. It is as if the musician has learned that entire freedom is not an answer to expression, that the player needs boundaries, bases, from which to explore.´ This can be a positive factor if it occurs exactly as reported above. The essential care that the musician must have boils down to not offer ´crutches tailored´ to the listener. Crutches may be synonymous of banality, mediocrity, dressage or paternalism.

A n n e x (p e r i e n c e)

Yes, antipode of banalities, mediocrities, dressages and paternalisms, Otacílio Melgaço consummates an audacious tribute to Iberê Camargo, a great Brazilian painter and, by means of a free jazzy liftoff, goes ahead. We witness an ascensional art! Miles and miles in the sky.

´j a X e x p e r i e n c e - pieces for double + electric bass & drums´ is a kind of milestone because is an expressive Return to the Future!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

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I - Iberê Bassani Camargo (1914 - 1994) was a Brazilian painter, one of the greatest expressionist artists from his country.
Shortly after his death, the Iberê Camargo Foundation (Porto Alegre/RS) was created by his widow, Maria Coussirat Camargo. Since 2008 the Foudantion headquarters and museum is located in a building designed by Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza. Thousands of paintings by Camargo are on display there;

II - Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz composers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s. Each in their own way, free jazz musicians attempted to alter, extend, or break down the conventions of jazz, often by discarding hitherto invariable features of jazz, such as fixed chord changes or tempos. While usually considered experimental and avant-garde, free jazz has also oppositely been conceived as an attempt to return jazz to its "primitive", often religious roots, and emphasis on collective improvisation. It is hard to define free jazz, because many musicians draw on free jazz concepts and idioms, and free jazz was never entirely distinct from other genres. Many free jazz musicians, notably Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane, use harsh overblowing or other techniques to elicit unconventional sounds from their instruments, or played unusual instruments. Free jazz musicians created a progressive musical language which drew on earlier styles of jazz such as Dixieland jazz and African music. Typically this kind of music is played by small groups of musicians. The music often swings but without regular meter, and there are frequent accelerandi and ritardandi;

III - Alberto da Veiga Guignard (1896 - 1962) was a complete artist, working all painting genres - still life, landscapes, portraits, paintings with religious and political themes and allegorical subjects. Guignard loved even the mountains of Minas Gerais, its sky and its colors, stains on the walls and his people. Contributed to the formation of artists who broke with the academic language and helped establish modernism in the visual arts in Minas. The period lived in Minas is also represented in the Museum Casa Guignard (OP/MG). His body rests in the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Ouro Preto;

IV - Giorgio de Chirico (1888 - 1978) was an Italian artist. In the years before World War I, he founded the scuola metafisica art movement, which profoundly influenced the surrealists. After 1919, he became interested in traditional painting techniques, and worked in a neoclassical or neo-Baroque style, while frequently revisiting the metaphysical themes of his earlier work;

V - Gaúcho or gaucho is a resident of the South American pampas, Gran Chaco, or Patagonian grasslands, found mainly in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Southeastern Bolivia, Southern Brazil and Southern Chile. In Brazil, gaúcho is also the main demonym of the people from the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

...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.