S p i r a l
O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o
[duration 30:13] 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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"In mathematics, a spiral is a curve which emanates from a point, moving farther away as it revolves around the point. It´s possible to make the analogy with the creative design of such winding sound Piece. Thereat, must we define this helical work mathematically? Would that be enough, would it satisfy us beyond revealing the acumen of a prodigious engenderer like Otacílio Melgaço? I do not think so. But it can be a starting point.
Another (and I will focus on it) would be the degree of particularity that the jazzist exploits of the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist possesses. It´s notorious that part of its roots when he embraces this musical language comes from Europe. Without generalizing widely (yes, there are exceptions), we observed in American jazz the persevering presence of a ´feeling´ that was inherited from the blues; with a swinging conducting wire (pronounced or subtle); palpable themes; well-defined structures; the roles of the instruments following predictable scripts and so on. Coming from the European continent, there´s a tendency to be less pelvic more intellectual; less labelable more abstract; less objectivist more subjective; less stereotyped more polymorphic. A portion of the conceptional architecture Otacílio confers to jazz lies in the prisms that were erected and developed by the Europeans (also included classical inflections and openings to a range of world cultures without frontiers). Probably because of this he always refused to be a supporter of what some nicknamed Brazilian jazz. For the sake of being something that looks like a caricature and made ´for export´. Through well-founded scaffolding and cosmopolitan background, O.M., in short, drinks in fountains situated on the old continent however ... ´Spiral´ is once again the confirmation that Mr. Melgaço has attained a very personal vocabulary; there´s a peculiar mutant stylistic through which he provides us with idiosyncratic delight.
Listen, for example, to the junction he made of hand-picked timbres. The colors of trombones, flutes, acoustic basses, vibraphones, drums, electronic effects - etc. - are fascinating when mated as well as here. Another, among many factors: follow his expertise when Otacílio transforms the unique voice of each component of his paraphernalia into layers. Each constituent (strings, winds, percussion), exposed multiplied in ´squamae´ - as Melgaço likes to say - confers a polyphonic predicate on interventions. Pay attention to how O.M. privileges improvisation too. There´s a sequence of sound landscapes that, as he removes thematic referentiality, generates or melodic fragmentation as pieces of a puzzle or even its disintegration for a freer execution of each instrumentalist. I bring to mind the last phase of John Coltrane (not coincidentally, at that point in his career, with more European/Global affinities than American). When he played, for instance, ´My Favorite Things´, the theme was turning into a slight pretext that (with a sonority very similar to certain Middle Eastern perspectives, which is an evolutionary metamorphosis that is exposed immediately) forthwith led us to a long-lasting avant-garde interaction, raising its extemporizationed performance to the pinnacle (practically a state of trance). For the master of tenor and soprano saxophones, music became a means of spiritual ascension. Spir(itu)al. (In fact, a rescue from what has historically been a monumental pi praxis - albeit, here, transporting us until the latest physical and libertarian consequences. Physical: by energy expenditure, cathartic and expansive; libertarian: far from the straitjacket of doctrines, the humanist free will in favor of a flowing and pluridirectional self-knowledge.) The parallel is perfect. For Otacílio Melgaço, playing (and listening to) music is a total experience. It´s not distraction or entertainment. It´s not limited to that. The fruition of the senses happens, nonetheless it´s not confined to that. There are dimensions of other nature proving to be endowed with synergy and the human being (each one that constitutes its audience) is considered integrally. (...) Extrapolating any paradigm, Otacílio is already spokesman for a Melgacian jazz.
That said, and to be more exact, I would not call it ´jazz´ anymore. A new name will be invented or nor will it be necessary. Inasmuch as paroxysmal arts do not fit into definitions, they can not be circumscribed even linguistically. As is this volute case. As I mentioned Trane, I remember when they asked Miles Davis, before stepping on the stage of the festival of the Isle of Wight (1970), what was the title of the music that would play; how it should be called. He, with that typical piquant way, simply replied: ´Call It Anything´. Today, forty-seven years later, Ladies and Gentlemen: Call It ´Spiral´." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)
"The study of spirals in nature has a long history. Christopher Wren observed that many shells form a logarithmic spiral; Jan Swammerdam observed the common mathematical characteristics of a wide range of shells from Helix to Spirula; and Henry Nottidge Moseley described the mathematics of univalve shells. D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson's On Growth and Form gives extensive treatment to these spirals. He describes how shells are formed by rotating a closed curve around a fixed axis, the shape of the curve remains fixed but its size grows in a geometric progression. In some shell such as Nautilus and ammonites the generating curve revolves in a plane perpendicular to the axis and the shell will form a planar discoid shape. In others it follows a skew path forming a helico-spiral pattern. Thompson also studied spirals occurring in horns, teeth, claws and plants. A model for the pattern of florets in the head of a sunflower was proposed by H Vogel. Spirals in plants and animals are frequently described as whorls. This is also the name given to spiral shaped fingerprints.
It seems to me primordial an outlook connected to Nature if we consider the ´Spiral´ of Otacílio Melgaço. Both 1) molding telluric elements representing an attractive aesthetic link for us before Nature and 2) the nature of the sonic work itself as a fluxuous connotation of identity (the spiraling Melgacian DNA) gifted with jazzy immanence/transcendence.
Spiral shapes, including the swastika, triskele, etc., have often been interpreted as solar symbols. Roof tiles dating back to the Tang Dynasty with this symbol have been found west of the ancient city of Chang'an (modern-day Xian). Spirals are also a symbol of hypnosis, stemming from the cliché of people and cartoon characters being hypnotized by staring into a spinning spiral (one example being Kaa in Disney's The Jungle Book). They are also used as a symbol of dizziness, where the eyes of a cartoon character, especially in anime and manga, will turn into spirals to show they are dizzy or dazed. The spiral is also found in structures as small as the double helix of DNA and as large as a galaxy. Because of this frequent natural occurrence, the spiral is the official symbol of the World Pantheist Movement. The spiral is also a symbol of the dialectic process and Dialectical monism.
Therefore, the symbolicity. Of the sun, of hypnosis, of micro and macrocosmic structures; all this and still affluents of the dialectic. Unquestionably sparks of each of these possibilities are present in the intriguing syntax of such sound Piece, instigating (audible) tortile fingerprint of Otacílio.
O.M. masterfully synthesizes what constitutes us (hence introjective) and what covers us but involves, encompasses us ... under an ascending premise.
Ergo, I add my voice to that of Julia Margaret Cameron and I proclaim: whether in life or in art, ´growth is a spiral process, doubling back on itself, reassessing and regrouping.´ According to a stated line of thought, ´a circle is the reflection of eternity. It has no beginning and it has no end - and if you put several circles over each other, then you get a spiral´. Hearing these little more than thirty minutes of mesmerizing music (which resonates to me like an ´endoexogenous´ eternity), how to disagree?" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)
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I - The spiral has inspired artists throughout the ages. Among the most famous of spiral-inspired art is Robert Smithson's earthwork, "Spiral Jetty", at the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The spiral theme is also present in David Wood's Spiral Resonance Field at the Balloon Museum in Albuquerque, as well as in the critically acclaimed Nine Inch Nails 1994 concept album The Downward Spiral. The Spiral is also a prominent theme in the anime Gurren Lagann, where it represents a philosophy and way of life. It also central in Mario Merz and Andy Goldsworthy's work. The spiral is the central theme of the horror manga Uzumaki by Junji Ito, where a small coastal town is afflicted by a curse involving spirals;
II - A spiral like form has been found in Mezine, Ukraine, as part of a decorative object dated to 10,000 BCE. The spiral and triple spiral motif is a Neolithic symbol in Europe (Megalithic Temples of Malta). The Celtic symbol the triple spiral is in fact a pre-Celtic symbol. It is carved into the rock of a stone lozenge near the main entrance of the prehistoric Newgrange monument in County Meath, Ireland. Newgrange was built around 3200 BCE predating the Celts and the triple spirals were carved at least 2,500 years before the Celts reached Ireland but has long since been incorporated into Celtic culture. The triskelion symbol, consisting of three interlocked spirals or three bent human legs, appears in many early cultures, including Mycenaean vessels, on coinage in Lycia, on staters of Pamphylia (at Aspendos, 370–333 BC) and Pisidia, as well as on the heraldic emblem on warriors' shields depicted on Greek pottery.
Spirals can be found throughout pre-Columbian art in Latin and Central America. The more than 1,400 petroglyphs (rock engravings) in Las Plazuelas, Guanajuato Mexico, dating 750-1200 AD, predominantly depict spirals, dot figures and scale models. In Colombia monkeys, frog and lizard like figures depicted in petroglyphs or as gold offering figures frequently includes spirals, for example on the palms of hands. In Lower Central America spirals along with circles, wavy lines, crosses and points are universal petroglyphs characters. Spirals can also be found among the Nazca Lines in the coastal desert of Peru, dating from 200 BC to 500 AD. The geoglyphs number in the thousands and depict animals, plants and geometric motifs, including spirals;
III - After the craze of the late 1960s and 1970s in Europe, improvised music began to influence and became influenced by other genres of music. In the United States, Europe and the rest of the world, musicians continued to play free improvisational music, but also looked to other genres for inspiration. This term 'improvised music' may of course be used in the common dictionary sense, and it is particularly useful in references to the pan-genre eclecticism which has characterized much music-making from the 1980s onwards, as musicians draw freely from, or meld together, not only jazz and contemporary art music but also aspects of various mainstream popular musics (blues, rock, soul, pop, etc.) and 'world music' (this last term comprising any and all ethnic traditions, worldwide);
IV - Taking into account the thematic, also check:
melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/golden-ratio-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-01-16-31
...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.
