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O B L U Z - a Brazilian Rhapsody - {Otac​í​lio Melga​ç​o} [duration 30​:​17]

by Otacílio Melgaço

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1.

about

O B L U Z

- A B r a z i l i a n R h a p s o d y -

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 30:17] all rights reserved

Invented by Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa, the word

´OBLUZ´

means ´Light that increases´, ´Light advancing´.

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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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"Melgaço to Pay in the Backlands ...

In a stupendous Work, O.M. merges two strands of extremely skilled mode:

1- Matrix rhythms of Brazilian culture since the discovery of the country

and

2 - Interventions arising from contemporary music.

A real thorough anthropological study.
Worthy of the most captivating sonoral ethnology.
From Indigenous roots to the vast legacy of afro black culture as having intervention elements propitiated by the colonizers, ie, mostly Europeans and accoutrements of Western music (in contemporary face). The Third ´bank of the river´ (a beautiful and poetic and metaphysical metaphor) - the Triad of Brazilian civilization is present, amalgamated and artistically is present in wonderful synergy.
Therefore, Melgaço establishes sophisticated layers on the basis of visceral primal rhythms - as sonorous cultural/religious manifestation or purely rhythmicity: Congado, Candomblé, Bumba meu Boi, Lundu, Maracatu, Frevo, Baião, Samba...are some of the matrices - and vicinals - that give content to this creation -. (I suggest that listeners can surrender to the rhythmic cells as a trance!) He goes so far as coalesce beats of African ritual drums and liturgical European organ! African and European twinned liturgies taken to the extreme!

In a way, the composer and instrumentalist tells the History of his country, Brazil, through a Rhapsody (an Odyssey in mixtures of ethnicities, cultural shares ...) and there would be a more appropriate musical form for this ambitious endeavor? Rhapsody is a juxtaposition of scarce formal unity of folk melodies and familiar themes. Ergo - associated with improvisation piece with core themes (in folk inspiration). Melgacian Opus ´that is episodic yet integrated, free-flowing in structure, featuring a range of highly contrasted moods, colour and tonality. An air of spontaneous inspiration and a sense of improvisation make it freer in form than a set of variations´. And so each sonic particle follows a saga that makes us wander along a country of continental proportions (states, regions, paths ... with idiosyncratic characteristics). Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are faced with a kind of Epic!

From a current perspective - in a completely different context chronologically as stylistic - we can compare this mission to the legacy of Villa-Lobos. Exuberant Brazilian musician who, along the career, made ​​this merger with distinction: the folklore and classical music in the same mold. Perform the formal marriage between popular culture and scholarly requires skill, creativity, originality, inventiveness and a ´sonic jewelery´. Against caricature and against an undesirable ´cubist result´.
Melgaço found an interesting point of balance. OBLUZ becomes a page of Brazilian History, more than a page: a (musical) score that can be instructively read, heard mainly ... as a learning ... besides facing our exciting fruition. Ave, Mr. Melgaço!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"´Light that increases´, ´Light advancing´. Both were born in the same state - Minas Gerais -, Otacílio turns to his mentor, Guimarães Rosa, aiming to flood with light the title of his Rhapsody. Word of phonetic features that hold our attention. Through the important aesthetic creations, the paths of music (in ways that are seen as a North) end up being filled with light, bright, brighter! OBLUZ is exemplary. Compass. A journey into a country. Into a complex culture. Toward ourselves!

Goethe's last words seem well-suited to close the life of an old ´sturm und drang´ romantic. He thundered, ´Mehr Licht!´ (´More Light!´).
In living brave new world, individuals - despite all the interconnecting means, increasingly individualized - without any light...lasting less than warholian fifteen minutes printed in next 'selfie' - showing how there is an existential emptying - myopic visions focusing on the obscurantist/isolationist phantasmagoria of themselves ...; for a Humanity often blinded by abusive and alienating egotism and consumerism; Humanity enslaved to a Technology that can be lobotomic (compulsive ´technodictatorship´) and soulless (when aborts self-knowledge and also m-u-t-u-a-l); here's what O.M. offers through his Art: more and more Light! An antidote, an elixir, ..., an invitation for us to know and respect each other and more than that - have admiration. Be facing each other in the eyes (existences, stories, origins, habits, expressions, particularities, trends, desires, pleasures, sufferings, destinations...) and not through protective screens. I'm referring to reciprocity, empathy, ...in sum... transcultural eclipse.

An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovksy In A Summer Cottage. ´Always to shine, to shine everywhere, to the very deeps of the last days, to shine (...). That is my motto - and the sun’s!´
That is our solar motto, motto continuous. If we can shine, if can we have brightness: only together. Obluzly... In the Light; in deLight. ´Mehr nicht!´" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

see also
melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/a-f-r-e-e-k-a-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-48-21

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I - The Brazilian population was formed by the inrush of Portuguese settlers and African, mostly Bantu and West African populations (such as the Yoruba, Ewe, and Fanti-Ashanti) slaves into a territory inhabited by various indigenous tribal populations, mainly Tupi, Guarani and Ge. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in what is known as Great Immigration, new groups arrived, mainly of Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and German origin, but also from Japan, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.

II - João Guimarães Rosa (1908 – 1967) was a Brazilian novelist, one of the greatest novelists born in the 20th century. His best-known work is the novel ´Grande Sertão: Veredas´ (translated as ´The Devil to Pay in the Backlands´). Some people consider this to be the Brazilian equivalent of ´Ulysses´.

III - The word "Rhapsody" is derived from the Greek rhapsōdos, a reciter of epic poetry, and came to be used in Europe by the 16th century as a designation for literary forms, not only epic poems, but also for collections of miscellaneous writings and, later, any extravagant expression of sentiment or feeling. In the 18th century, literary rhapsodies first became linked with music, as in Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart's Musicalische Rhapsodien (1786), a collection of songs with keyboard accompaniment, together with a few solo keyboard pieces (Rink 2001). The first solo piano compositions with the title, however, were Václav Jan Tomášek’s fifteen Rhapsodies, the first of which appeared in 1810 (Randel 2003). Although vocal examples may be found as late as Brahms's Alto Rhapsody, op.53 (1869), in the 19th century the rhapsody had become primarily an instrumental form, first for the piano and then, in the second half of the century, a large-scale nationalistic orchestral "epic"—a fashion initiated by Franz Liszt (Rink 2001). Interest in Gypsy violin playing beginning in the mid-19th century led to a number of important pieces in that style, in particular by Liszt, Antonín Dvořák, George Enescu, Ernő Dohnányi, and Béla Bartók, and in the early 20th century British composers exhibiting the influence of folksong composed a number of examples, including Ralph Vaughan Williams's three Norfolk Rhapsodies, George Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad, and Frederick Delius's Brigg Fair (which is subtitled "An English Rhapsody") (Thompson and Bellingham 2002).

IV - Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 – 1959) was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer to date. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and by stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, as exemplified by his Bachianas Brasileiras (Brazilian Bachian-pieces).

...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.

credits

released January 1, 2015

Hear more here:
soundcloud.com/otaciliomelgaco

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O t a c í l i o
M e l g a ç o {conception | composition | arrangement | synopsis | instrumentation | orchestration | engineering & sound design | art design | production | direction}

Special Guests: Nausícaaa Ensemble | Zycluz Quartett

Estúdio Yoknapotawpha/BR + Unidade Euromobile

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Otacílio Melgaço Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Composer, Arranger, Conductor, Multi-
Instrumentalist
from
Minas Gerais,
Brazil.
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Official (English) Site
otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/omenglish
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PORTAL O|M
(Portuguese)
otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/otaciliomelgaco
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Site to be viewed exclusively on Mobile Devices (smartphones, etc.)
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"Music is like a bewitched Mistress." (Paul Klee)
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