Г о в о р и т е,
п о ж а л у й с т а,
м е д л е н н е е

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 39:39] 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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"A work of art is not one-way. Same as it offers us is proportional to what it asks of us. If the artist has devoted quite hard to create at least the same care and dedication we should have to absorb it. Our imagination is required here and our imaginative capacity should be open to be sharp and expansive now. As should be at any rate in the face of great art.

Are two parallel paths in this amazing Otacílio Melgaço phonographic album.

There´s a fictional modern story told in Russian aura, perhaps a sonic chronic or short story. In which case, worth the title of the album/eight Pieces and voices.

There's audible moving frames, a sound narrative (and cry of protest) based on the history of a magnificent people and unfortunately victim of genocide: The Selk'nam. They were an indigenous people in the Patagonian region of southern Argentina and Chile, including the Tierra del Fuego islands. So the cover art is referenced.

Through an odyssey or another, Melgaço creates, develops and reveals impeccable musical portraits, challenging, exciting, touching and even onirical! ´Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all, as, for instance, through space and time. Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart´, words written by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Notes from Underground: one of the Melgacian keys of all polymorphic contexts is in the headline. Originally in Cyrillic, means 'Speak, please, slowly.' Inchmeal we'll turn the key! Open Sesame!" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

"The current electronic music reached - long ago - a dilemma, in my opinion.

1- Or is already part of the past, buried by predictable market mechanisms and the banal clutches of entertainment (so be it, its supporters or tribes continue to enjoy e-c-s-t-a-t-i-c hearings - I apologize for my lysergic sarcasm);

2- Or will continue through special artists who do not give up shrewd intelligence, constructiveness and visionary flashes. These rather deserve my respect and I consider them a faction of the actual descendants of men who gave birth to the electronic music since the early days, the late 19th century and others who have consecrated vital pathways throughout the next.

In reality, this crossroads is no more for me. Only the second scenario seems worthy of consideration. The rest is muzak.

And of course, when he ventures through the intricacies of this particular dialect, I well know in which of the two is Otacílio Melgaço brightly situated." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

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I - The Selk'nam, also known as the Onawo or Ona people, were an indigenous people in the Patagonian region of southern Argentina and Chile, including the Tierra del Fuego islands. They were one of the last aboriginal groups in South America to be encountered by ethnic Europeans or Westerners in the late 19th century. With the discovery of gold and expansion of sheep farming, the Argentine and Chilean governments began efforts to explore and integrate Tierra del Fuego (the "land of fire", named by early European explorers observing smoke from Selk'nam fires) into their cultures.

While the Selk'nam are closely associated with habitation of the northeastern area of Tierra del Fuego, they are believed to have originated on the mainland, and migrated thousands of years ago by canoe across the Strait of Magellan. Their territory in the early Holocene probably ranged as far as the Cerro Benitez area of the Cerro Toro mountain range in Chile;

II - The last full-blooded Selk'nam, Ángela Loij, died in 1974. They were one of the last aboriginal groups in South America to be reached by Europeans. Their language, believed to be part of the Chonan family, is considered extinct as the last speakers died in the 1980s.

In the 1880s, British introduced sheep ranches to the large open areas of Tierra del Fuego. Numerous British immigrants arrived to work in the new industry, the descendants of some of whom today remain in the Falkland Islands. The ranches created strong conflicts with the Selk'nam natives, who had traditionally hunted this territory and considered the sheep game. They had no concept of European property rights. The large ranchers tried to run off the Selk'nam, then began a campaign of extermination against them, with the compliance of the Argentine and Chilean governments. Large companies paid sheep farmers or militia one pound sterling per Selk'nam dead, which was confirmed by the redemption of a pair of hands or ears, or later a complete skull.

Repression against the Selk'nam persisted into the early twentieth century. Chile moved some Selk'nam to Dawson Island, confining them in an internment or concentration camp. Argentina finally allowed Salesian missionaries to aid the Selk'nam and attempt to assimilate them, but their culture and people were largely destroyed.

According to the 2010 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, the Ona language is extinct, as the last speakers died in the 1980s.

...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.