We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Ok Ragas Por La Komenco De Tempoj {Otac​í​lio Melga​ç​o} [duracion 50​:​25]

by Otacílio Melgaço

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $8 USD  or more

     

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

about

E i g h t R a g a s F o r T h e B e g i n n i n g O f T i m e
O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duracion 50:25] all rights reserved

#

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)

+

"´Ragas are prescribed for the particular time of a day or a season.´ Here, of an Era. While respecting the concept of Raga, Otacílio Melgaço could not forgo subvert it. Maximum effect! Some instances:

i- Compositionally arising accoutrements of strategic and timely atonality / multiple timbres linked to various cultures / overlays idiolects / canonical disruptions alongside traditional approaches / mixing process as an active part of the artistic confection (exerting unexpected transformations in the structure of Pieces) ... are occasionally used to provide openings quite interesting perceptual dimensions;

ii- ´Separated by scales, lines of ascent and descent, transiliences, emphasized notes and registers, and intonations and ornaments´; Technically there is the inclusion of Western elements - besides certain instruments, e.g. - which open new hearing perspectives. So there captivating intricacies of Far East and a plurality of identifying features of Western culture. Melody lines are interpenetrating and misty, vaporous; improvisations remain sui generis in harmonic uterus; sound-exoskeleton covering layers of endoskeletons ...;

iii- Thematically the title (originally in Esperanto) seems to me, with irony and creativity, a citation and tribute to ´Quatuor pour la fin du temps´, also known as ´Quartet for the End of Time´ by the French composer Olivier Messiaen.

Is valid the curious addendum. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered World War II. He was captured by the German army in June 1940 and imprisoned in Stalag VIII-A, a prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Germany (now Zgorzelec, Poland). While in transit to the camp, Messiaen showed the clarinetist Henri Akoka, also a prisoner, the sketches for what would become Abîme des oiseaux. Two other professional musicians, violinist Jean le Boulaire and cellist Étienne Pasquier, were among his fellow prisoners, and after he managed to obtain some paper and a small pencil from a sympathetic Belgian guard (Carl-Albert Brüll, 1902-1989), Messiaen wrote a short trio for them; this piece developed into the Quatuor for the same trio with himself at the piano. The combination of instruments is unusual, but not without precedent: Walter Rabl had composed for it in 1896, as had Paul Hindemith in 1938. The quartet was premiered at the camp, outdoors and in the rain, on 15 January 1941. The musicians had decrepit instruments and an audience of about 400 fellow prisoners and guards. Messiaen later recalled: ´Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension.´ Brüll provided paper and isolation for composing, and he also helped acquire the three other instruments. By forging papers with a stamp made from a potato, Brüll even helped the performers to be liberated shortly after the performance. After the war, Brüll made a special trip to visit Messiaen, but was sent away and told the composer would not see him.

Only this event already demonstrates the polysemic richness of Melgaço in ownership! There would be countless interpretations from this reference. There would be several other references, endless. Infinitely and literally an inspiring background.

Is worth remembering that Messiaen wrote in the Preface to the score that the work was inspired by text from the Book of Revelation (Rev 10:1–2, 5–7, King James Version): ´And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth. And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished.´

Under the care of contemporary composer and multi-instrumentalist Melgaço, the mystery of Music should be (r e) i n i t i a t e d!

And so, borderless. Para El (re)Inicio De Los Tiempos between India and Brazil; between America and Asia, and so on ...

And so humanistically, sensory - emotional - mental - animic intensities are deepened. And ascended!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"´The Sanskrit word Rāga is defined as ´the act of colouring or dyeing' (the mind and mood/emotions in this context) and therefore metaphorically means 'any feeling or passion especially love, affection, sympathy, desire, interest, motivation, joy, or delight.' Therefore, the word is used in the literal sense of 'the act of dyeing,' and also 'color, hue, tint,' especially the color red in the Sanskrit epics, and in the figurative sense of 'something that colors one's emotions.' A figurative sense of the word as 'passion, love, desire, delight' is also found in the Mahabharata. The term first occurs in a technical context in the Brihaddeshi (dated ca. 5th to 8th century), where it is described as ´a combination of tones which, with beautiful illuminating graces, pleases the people in general´.
With mastery, Melgaço combines tones, shades, colors, prisms ... making, I believe, an iridescent Work! If we put alongside Physics and Music, I would argue that Melgaço dilutes a rainbow in eight filaments of light. East and West after immeasurable artistic fusions - few precious, many other dubious - yet can find interpenetration of rare beauty and inventiveness! ´Ok Ragas Por La Komenco De Tempoj´ is worthy of being enshrined as part of the most significant creations of these Crossovers." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

Following the thread of a same melgacian hank,
You are also invited to enjoy
melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/oca-otac-lio-melga-o-and-mahashiva-orchestra-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-1-16-11

&

I - Many Hindustani (North Indian) rāgas are prescribed for the particular time of a day or a season. When performed at the suggested time, the rāga has its maximum effect.

II - A raga (literally "colour, hue" but also "beauty, melody"; also spelled raag, raaga, ragam) is one of the melodic modes used in Indian classical music.
A raga uses a series of five or more musical notes upon which a melody is constructed. However, the way the notes are approached and rendered in musical phrases and the mood they convey are more important in defining a raga than the notes themselves. In the Indian musical tradition, rāgas are associated with different times of the day, or with seasons. Indian classical music is always set in a rāga. Non-classical music (...) sometimes use rāgas in their compositions.
Joep Bor of the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music defined Raga as "tonal framework for composition and improvisation." Nazir Jairazbhoy, chairman of UCLA's department of ethnomusicology, characterized ragas as separated by scale, line of ascent and descent, transilience, emphasized notes and register, and intonation and ornaments.

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...

\|/

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

>>

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

Special Guests: Nausícaaa Ensemble | Zycluz Quartett

Estúdio Yoknapotawpha/BR + Unidade Euromobile

<<

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Otacílio Melgaço Belo Horizonte, Brazil

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

contact / help

Contact Otacílio Melgaço

Streaming and
Download help

Report this album or account

Otacílio Melgaço recommends:

If you like Otacílio Melgaço, you may also like: