S a l g a d o S y m p h o n y

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 52:53] 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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"Mr. Melgaço brought to light a Series of Nine Symphonies called ´Brasilianas´. All pay homage to a Brazilian consecrated Personality and characterized by certain global penetration. ´Salgado´ is part of that Cycle.

´For me, art is such a wide concept - anything can be art´, he claims. There is no better definition of who is Sebastião Salgado. An illuminated calligrapher! A photographer is one who writes with light. And that's exactly what we hear through this monumental Symphony, O.M. - a clarified Artist - also composes with the most notable light." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

"The 'landscape' terminology is impeccable. All the vastness captured through the lens of the honoree is translated with exuberance and depth. All themes addressed by whom is bestowed with this unique tribute are treated with incomparably expressive sonic panoramas.

´I work on stories rather than individual pictures.´ (Salgado)

Everything turns into a real Melgacian Saga from which the adventurers participants become more humanized than when they started.

´There are moments that you suffer a lot, moments you won't photograph. There are some people you like better than others. But you give, you receive, you cherish, you are there. When you are really there, you know when you see the picture later what you are seeing.´ (Salgado)

A parallelism reigns masterfully. The music focuses inventively dimensions relating to the representation of the Salgadian universe as well there´s the properly exuberant artistic structure in its metaphorical formalism.

´The language that photography has is a formal language. Any photographer is doing something formal. If it's formal, then it must be an aesthetic way to communicate.´ (Salgado)

You must observe the cyclical nature of percussion that complements the respective identities of the first three movements. The fourth exorcises the percussive palpability because - through the bells that tolls - it´s pure ascension, radiance.

´We are animals, born from the land with the other species. Since we've been living in cities, we've become more and more stupid, not smarter. What made us survive all these hundreds of thousands of years is our spirituality; the link to our land.´ (Salgado)

You should pay attention to orchestral joints provided by the composer (the various facets of the cohesive strings are essential for these connotations) in favor of gradation of the Mineral & Vegetable kingdom and then Animal and finally Human. Yet reaching the subtlety of luminous scripture that records and immortalizes it all. It´s amazing how, at long last, everything is interconnected and converge to the same. Figuratively and sonically.

´So many times I've photographed stories that show the degradation of the planet. I had one idea to go and photograph the factories that were polluting, and to see all the deposits of garbage. But, in the end, I thought the only way to give us an incentive, to bring hope, is to show the pictures of the pristine planet - to see the innocence.´ (Salgado)

So when Mr. Melgaço takes his Symphony to the culmination, he defines, in my understanding, ´enlightenment´ as ´the supremacy of innocence´. Or maybe the other way around: ´the supremacy of light´ as ´innocence´. One way or/and another, if before its completion there´s a certain tension that reflects the vulnerability and uncertainty on the Earth until today (and who knows for how long), the paroxysm of his orchestral Piece (if without the ambiguity of a planetary funeral rumbling in global steeples) idiosyncratically becomes the womb of the most pristine and phonophotographic Hope." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

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I - Sebastião Salgado (born February 8, 1944) is a Brazilian social documentary photographer and photojournalist. He has traveled in over 100 countries for his photographic projects. Most of these have appeared in numerous press publications and books. Touring exhibitions of this work have been presented throughout the world. Longtime gallery director Hal Gould considers Salgado to be the most important photographer of the early 21st century. Salgado is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He was awarded Foreign Honorary Membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992 and was awarded The Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in 1993;

II - The Salt of the Earth is a 2014 French-Brazilian biographical documentary film directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado. It was selected to compete in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Special Prize. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary at the 87th Academy Awards. It won the 2014 Audience Award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival and the 2015 Audience Award at the Tromsø International Film Festival. It also won the César Award for Best Documentary Film at the 40th César Awards.

The film portrays the works of Salgado.

...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.