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Prociss​ã​o Nordesti​ç​a {Otac​í​lio Melga​ç​o} [duration 01​:​13​:​36]

by Otacílio Melgaço

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P r o c i s s ã o N o r d e s t i ç a

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:13:36] all rights reserved

Dedicated to César Guerra-Peixe

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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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"The breadth of this work of art is already noticed from the cover. The scalding hallucinatory sun and surreal aspects of the mythological deep Brazilian Northeast; Spectra of the original Roman sequence of peregrination; Adrien Moreau Carnival Procession; refinements of Commedia dell'arte etc.

´Many elements may be used to make a procession more significant than just ´people walking in the same direction´: A special mode of transport; Music; Order of precedence; Bearers of banners, fans, icons, treasure...; Scent, provided by flower bearers or censers of incense; Skilled performers; Special lighting; Spectacle; The dispensing of gifts... Functions: Advertisement; Change in government; Display of power; Entertainment; Solidarity; Events; Christian processions.

Processions have in all peoples and at all times been a natural form of public celebration, as forming an orderly and impressive ceremony. Religious and triumphal processions are abundantly illustrated by ancient monuments, e.g. the religious processions of Egypt, those illustrated by the rock-carvings of Boghaz-Keui, the many representations of processions in Greek art, culminating in the great Panathenaic procession of the Parthenon Frieze, and Roman triumphal reliefs, such as those of the arch of Titus.´

A little of each element and each function is present in ´Procissão (Procession) Nordestiça´. Directly or suggestively. Thus, there´s a hybrid event that blends historical periods; cultural diversity; personal and collective expressions; physical and spiritual experiences etc. Certainly an ascensional rituality in all cases and the musical is what interests me first.

First of all, we find evidence of musical anthropology and ethnography as well. This only contributes to increase our admiration. Plural should be the support means to the artist: means living in the womb of sonic universe as well as dance, literature, film, sculpture, theater etc. Means that pervade the sciences, philosophy, mythology, semiotics, languages and so infinitely.

But I propose we start from the sonorous uterus, I repeat.
Fifes, zabumbas (percussive instruments), triangles, sanfonas (accordions), violas of repentistas... The viola caipira (Portuguese for country guitar) is a ten-string, five-course acoustic guitar. Repentista refers generally to a popular poet in Portugal or in Brazil, an improviser, from a mote, spontaneously delivers a poem in the form of a sudden. Repentistas poets fall into the tradition of oral literature and literature of string from a particular region or country. The viola repentista the interior of Northeast Brazil is called ´Cantoria´ in which parades improvised verses in numerous ways; stanzas, setilhas, decimals, ´outavas´, ´hammers´, ´gallops´, etc.

More: the Aboio! Aboio is a typical canticle of the Brazilian Northeast also common in Minas Gerais, Goiás, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul. Consists of a wordless chant sung by cowboys driving cattle when the pastures or to the corral. It's a slow song, the rhythm of the movement of animals, ending urging the herd...

These and other northeastern sonic idiosyncrasies are the accoutrements that as well O.M. uses for his incredible audible landscape. Human landscape in motion, in progress, in process, in procession. An artist traces the genealogy cartography of a country and allows review of intrinsic folksy mapping; it´s a folk avant rereading; is the reinvention of folk through the intersection between tradition and avant-garde (I beg your pardon by terminology such alien nowadays, dear netizen, but nonetheless endowed with pragmatic concern, as is my desire).

Personalities like Guerra-Peixe and Villa-Lobos and Camargo Guarnieri, in the Brazilian scene of yore, performed this ´task´. I highlight three differences between Melgaço and examples of predecessors (of course, all this greatly influences when this context is revisited): Otacílio does not remain faithful to formal structures; his use of technology is unparalleled (even taking advantage of contemporaneity, could he abstain from such use or do not have the craftsmanship - is not the case, quite the contrary); there´s a striking freedom in O.M. to transcend easily identifiable sound glossaries that categorize the ancestors - even considering their respective proven qualities and versatilities.

This album is originally dedicated to César, I suppose, on behalf of the warrior, combative, fierce way that Guerra-Peixe (is not coincidental, ´War´ means ´Guerra´ in Portuguese!) defended the national art (in substance) and, especially, the northeastern universe in its telluric face. 2014 is also the centenary of his birth. Despite all the extrapolations of Melgacian creation, in the dedication he left a signature of commitment to a gifted cultural immanence but while being irreversibly open to transmutations.

Transmutations are not as the funeral of relevant bequests in favor of experimentalisms vacuums just to personify hipness (frighteningly decadent perspective);
Transmutations are not as signs that ´everything is art´ (anachronistic posture and open to all kinds of dupe), as if we were naive or without criteria and insights to accept any chouse or quackery that so many want to foist on;
Transmutations - under the grip of a materialistic version
purely marketing and commercial - are not as mass culture of a nation cripple or deform or crush genuine expressions of another through the oppressive power of Profit/Usury (as if everything summarize ´the business´ and the end justifies the means) and not through a mutually beneficial artistic interface...

Transmutations are felt frankly that embody existential developability including through musicality. This phenomenon makes us know ourselves better as well as the expressions of other people around the world. So we value our peculiarities as well as the diversity present in other cultures. This phenomenon then updates the traditions without having to annihilate them. And so we are always looking to the forward, giving evidence of how the entire heritage of humanity was a lesson. Even to avoid repeating past mistakes.
I am not digressing.
Everything I wrote above is the core of the work that I am reviewing now.

Otacílio Melgaço therefore invites us to a pilgrimage. High-spirited, venturous, adventuress, ludic, perchance Bacchic, ..., as if predicates for Immanence and Transcendence become Eclipse!

Being part of the Body of the procession is to be open to a metamorphosis, becoming part of another; is to be yourself and the other simultaneously; is a supreme intersection.

This could also be a definition of the Art in the light of O.M." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"´According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the procession, as practiced in the Roman Republic, was identical to the Greek procession, which, combined with the similarity in sacrificial rituals, games, and practices of the general meeting, reception of foreigners and the cessation of hostilities were evidence that Rome was founded, not by barbarians, but for Greeks.

The procession took place before the game, was led by the chief magistrates, beginning at the Capitol, went through the Roman Forum and the Circus Maximus ended.

The procession was followed in sequence:

1 - The sons of the Romans who were in the age to become adults; were riding those whose parents were Roman knights, and walking the destined to serve in the infantry;
2 - Handlebars of carriages, chariots...;
3 - Those who compete in the games, with their naked bodies except for a garment covering the genitals;
4 - The first division of dancers, men;
5 - The second division of dancers, young;
6 - The third division of dancers, children;
7 - Dancers representing satyrs, who imitated and satirized the movement of other dancers;
8 - The minstrels (the players on flutes);
9 - The players on the lyre;
10 - People who carried the incense;
11 - The images of the gods.´

To Otacílio Melgaço, here's a starting point to create his ´Procession Nordestiça´. The composer and instrumentalist transplanted the tradition of old Rome (a dubious ritual) directly into the simultaneously visceral and metaphysical backlands of Brazilian northeastern.

Considering the Melgacian productive horizon, he´s one of the most cosmopolitan artists I know. Soon, it would be conceivable that he also unravel the worldwide audience his point of view about the art of his homeland.

We are immersed in a cycle Brazilianist. There telluric elements in other phonograph albums - such as, for example, ´Brenn And´

melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/brenn-and-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-55-11 - but more pronounced on condition that I call The Cycle are - hitherto -:

>>work proto-Brazilianist (Afreeka)
melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/a-f-r-e-e-k-a-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-48-21

>>conjunctural Brazilian Piece (Obluz - a Rhapsody)
melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/o-b-l-u-z-a-brazilian-rhapsody-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-30-17

>>auratic panorama of Minas Gerais (Mauritia Flexuosa)
melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/mauritia-flexuosa-11-pe-as-para-viola-caipira-transubstanciada-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-01-12-58

>>auratic panorama of Nordeste (the Northeast)
Therefore: this ´Procissão Nordestiça´.

What interests O.M. is to go to the depths of the real culture of his country (when he has that intention) and not ´the official culture made to be exported´. Nothing that is stereotyped or prefabricated is acceptable to him. I believe that only in this way that there´s indeed a sincere and true identities and information exchange between artists, peoples, civilizations.

Accompany the eleven steps of this procession and will be stunned!

Melgaço mentions pristine elements like Northeastern medieval reverberations while points his approach to a timeless clangorous vertex, embracing the concept of Becoming.

The abysmal level, the scope of his deepening is so prominent that the names of the sonic Pieces are virtually untranslatable. Are neologisms or inspired dialects (literary imprint) in the mythology of the innermost regions of the country. The possible parallel would be with João Guimarães Rosa or James Joyce etc.

Even the term 'nordestiça' because the normative is ´nordestina´ ('northeastern´). The suffix 'iça' reports me to ´mestiça´ (´metissé´) and is one way to emphasize the value of a mixed culture.

Another interesting aspect concerning the use of the cedilla.
Ç, ç (c-cedilla) is a Latin script letter. It was first used for the sound of the voiceless alveolar affricate /t͡s/ in old Spanish and stems from the Visigothic form of the letter ´z´. This phoneme originated in Vulgar Latin from the palatalization of the plosives /t/ and /k/ in some conditions. Later, /t͡s/ changed into /s/ in many Romance languages and dialects. Spanish has not used this symbol since an orthographic reform in the 18th century (which replaced ´ç´ with the now-devoiced ´z´), but it was adopted for writing other languages. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ´[ç]´ represents the voiceless palatal fricative. In Portuguese as a variant of the letter ´c´.

´Nordestiça' in the case of feminine. ´Nordesti-ç-o´ (masculine): the same termination of the Surname Melga-ç-o. Could be a means by which he found to detach the intersection of identities under the musical and transcultural prism (among himself and his referential focus). Out of curiosity, in Melgacian case - the 'ç' sounds identically to 'ss' in Picasso.

Joining traces the ontological profile of a folk and also establish a summation of aesthetically daring implementations to this ´canvas´, is an act of courage. Only a skilled and inventive artist would dare to do that. Failing that, the chance of us being in front of a caricature is colossal. Melgaço never run such a risk. His Brazilian Portrait (the Cycle that I mention) is phenomenal because reveals unique roots that deserve to be preserved while are funneled through a bold and innovative trans-stylistic.

Recalling the northeastern writer Ariano Suassuna:

´Here lived a King when I was a child
Dressed in gold and brown jerkin
Stone of luck on my destiny
Throbbed your heart next to mine

To me, his singing was divine
When the sound of the viola and stave
Sang hoarsely
The blood, the laughter and the deaths of the hinterland...´

The deaths and now also resurrections! I advocate a bit here the prospect of a Renaissance man, amplified and multiple. ´Procissão Nordestiça´ is a metacultural proposal for ´transubstantiations´, I believe. Not only musically. Always in the most varied, broad, polysemous senses. Because this is perhaps the noblest sense of high art. A legacy is fertilized and strengthens us as a support to urgent transmutation - fizzing and enlivening our high potential. A future is translated into our bodies and bloods, making us persevere and rise humanly...
The-and-This procession did not stop being a metaphor for life itself!" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - A procession (French procession via Middle English, derived from Latin, processio, from procedere, to go forth, advance, proceed) is an organized body of people walking in a formal or ceremonial manner;

II - The Northeast Region of Brazil (Portuguese: Região Nordeste do Brasil) is the third largest of five geopolitical regions of Brazil composed of nine states: Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe and Bahia, and the Fernando de Noronha Archipelago (formerly the federal territory of Fernando de Noronha, now part of Pernambuco state). It stretches from the Atlantic seaboard in the northeast and southeast, northwest and west to the Amazon Basin and south through the Espinhaço highlands in southern Bahia. It encloses the São Francisco River and drainage basin, which were instrumental in the exploration, settlement and economic development of the region. The northeast was the first region to be discovered and colonized by European (principally Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch) explorers in the 16th century;

III - Brazilians of the Northeast are of mixed ethnicity including chiefly Portuguese, African and Amerindian;

IV - The northeast (Nordeste) that inspired Melgaço belongs to
2 intra-regions:

IV a) Agreste

Since the escarpment does not generate any further rainfall on its slopes from the lifting of the trade winds, annual rainfall decreases steadily inland. After a relatively short distance, there is no longer enough rainfall to support tropical rainforest, especially since the rainfall is extremely erratic from year to year. This transitional zone is known as the agreste and because it is located on the steep escarpment, was not generally used whilst flatter land was abundant. Today, with irrigation water available, however, the agreste, as its name suggest, is a major farming region despite containing no major city, contains well developed medium large cities such as Caruaru, Campina Grande and Arapiraca.

IV b) Sertão Nordestino (North-Eastern Backlands)

In Portuguese, the word "sertão" ("backcountry" or "outback") first referred to the vast hinterlands of Asia and South America that Lusitanian explorers encountered. In Brazil, the geographical term referred to backlands away from the Atlantic coastal regions where the Portuguese first settled in South America in the early sixteenth century.

Geographically, the sertão consists mainly of low uplands that form part of the Brazilian Highlands. Most parts of the sertão are between 200 and 500 meters above sea level, with higher elevations found on the eastern edge in the Planalto da Borborema, where it merges into a sub-humid region known as agreste, in the Serra da Ibiapaba in western Ceará and in the Serro do Periquito of central Pernambuco. In the north, the sertão extends to the northern coastal plains of Rio Grande do Norte state, whilst in the south it fades out in the northern fringe of Minas Gerais;

V - César Guerra-Peixe (1914 – 1993) was a Brazilian violinist, composer, and conductor. Guerra-Peixe was born in Petrópolis, son of Portuguese immigrants with Romani origins. His music can be heard in many Brazilian films, such as Terra é Sempre Terra, O Canto do Mar, Quero Essa Mulher Tanto Assim, Riacho de Sangue, Meu Nome é Lampião, and Soledade. In 1965 Guerra Peixe won the Medalha do Mérito Carlos Gomes, bestowed by the Guanabara State government, in recognition of his dedication to developing Brazilian culture. During his late years he worked as professor at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais where he helped to form a new generation of Brazilian arrangers. As an ethnomusicologist, he wrote an important book Os Maracatus do Recife (1955, second edition 1980) on Maracatu. He died in Rio de Janeiro;

VI - Ariano Suassuna (1927 – 2014) was a Brazilian playwright and author. He is in the "Movimento Armorial". He founded the Student Theater at Federal University of Pernambuco. Four of his plays have been filmed, and he was considered one of Brazil's greatest living playwrights of his time. He was also an important regional writer, doing various novels set in the Northeast of Brazil. He received an honorary doctorate at a ceremony performed at a circus. He was the author of, among other works, the "Auto da Compadecida" and "A Pedra do Reino". He was a staunch defender of the culture of the Northeast, and his works dealt with the popular culture of the Northeast;

VII - The ´Grivo´ (check out the track XI), central character in "Face of Bronze", one of the short stories compiled in "Corpo de Baile" (work of the Brazilian writer Guimarães Rosa) is the substantiation of the qualities of the word: he's decoder and encoder.

...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 [O.M., after Moreau] | 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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otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/otaciliomelgaco
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"Music is like a bewitched Mistress." (Paul Klee)
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