1 LUIZ COSTA-LIMA NETO

1
LUIZ COSTA-LIMA NETO _______________________________________________
FROM THE HOUSE OF TIA CIATA TO THE HOUSE OF THE HERMETO PASCOAL FAMILY
IN JABOUR: TRADITION AND POST-MODERNITY IN THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF A POPULAR
EXPERIMENTAL COMPOSER IN BRAZIL
1
.
ABSTRACT
This article describes the process of creation, rehearsal and arranging of the
multi-instrumentalist, arranger and composer from Alagoas, Hermeto Pascoal, and of
the Group which accompanied him during the period 1981-1993, when the composer
and the quintet of musicians constituted a community joined by ties of neighborhood
and kinship centered around the Alagoan musician’s house, situated in the
neighborhood of Jabour, a suburban district in the city of Rio de Janeiro. In addition to
music recorded in the period specified, we analyze compositions from other phases of
the musician’s career in order to illustrate more thoroughly complementary aspects
having to do with Hermeto’s personality and experimental musical system. Finally, the
professional career of the composer is related to several important artistic movements
and musical genres of the twentieth century – for example, bossa nova, jazz, nationalist
modernism, MPB, the jovem guarda, the tropicalist avant-garde, etc. – demonstrating
the innovative role played by Hermeto Pascoal in the history of contemporary popular
music in Brazil.
1 – INTRODUCTION
“Masters of this House,
by your leave, here I come, here I come."
(Opening verse of praise of the Folia de Reis/Public domain)
In the present article on Hermeto Pascoal, the multi-instrumentalist, arranger and
composer from Alagoas (born in Olho D’Água da Canoa, June 22, 1936), I will try to
outline his singular importance to the panorama of popular instrumental music in Brazil.
The music referred to in the article will be described in a manner accessible to the nonspecialist reader, avoiding whenever possible specifically musical terminology. In order
1 This article is based on my masters' thesis titled: A música experimental de Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo
(1981-1993): concepção e linguagem, defended in April 1999 at the master's program in Brazilian
Musicology at UNIRIO, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Martha Tupinambá de Ulhôa, whom I thank
profusely. The present articlee, however, broaden the historical period which I studied for the masters', in
looking at musical examples from other phases of the career of Hermeto Pascoal, as well as addressing
aspects not considered in my thesis, such as, for example, the way in which esthetic experience and
religious experience are interconnected in Hermeto's musical system. See also, COSTA-LIMA NETO,
Luiz. ‘The experimental music of Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo (1981-93): a musical system in the making’.
In: REILY, Suzel Ana (org.). British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 9/i, Brazilian Musics, Brazilian
identities. British Forum for Ethnomusicology, 2000. This article it has been translated into English by
Prof. Dr. Tom Moore.
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to provide a sample of Hermeto's musical system I will refer to about fifty examples
composed and/or recorded by him, beginning with the LP Hermeto Pascoal: Brazilian
2
Adventure (1972*).
I make use of the term ‘biombo cultural’ (cultural divider) coined by Muniz
Sodré, originally used by him in order to describe the way in which the dichotomy of
choro-street/samba - yard at the house of Tia Ciata symbolized the differing positions of
3
resistance of the black community of Rio de Janeiro in facing the elites after Abolition.
I use the notion of ‘cultural divider’ in order to symbolically move through the
principal spaces in Hermeto's house in the neighborhood of Jabour, in the West Zone of
Rio de Janeiro. In this house, Hermeto and the Group, made up of Itiberê Zwarg (1950),
Jovino Santos Neto (1954), Márcio Bahia (1958), Carlos Malta (1960) and Antonio
4
Luis Santana, known as Pernambuco (1942[1940?]), rehearsed daily, from 2 to 8 PM,
over the course of twelve years, between 1981 and 1993. Movement through the spaces
in the house, such as the kitchen, the pool, the hidden room where Hermeto would
compose, and the rehearsal room for the Group on the second floor, as well as the habits
of the residents - such as the feijoada on Satudays - and the participation of pets in the
recorded music, shows how the process of composition, arrangement and rehearsal for
Hermeto and Group took place in the period mentioned, as well as demonstrating interrelated aspects of the personality, biography, personal cosmology and musical system of
Hermeto Pascoal. When the musical examples analyzed in the article were recorded in
other phases of the musician's career, the dates referring to these examples will be
followed by an asterisk.
In the final part of this article, I contextualize the professional trajectory of
Hermeto, relating it to the history of popular music in Brazil in the twentieth and early
twenty-first centuries. I show how Hermeto Pascoal's innovative musical system blends
2 Record label - Buddah Records/Cobblestone. I note that some sources indicate 1970, 1971, 1972 or
even 1973, as being the date of issue of this first disc under Hermeto's name. Confusion can also be noted
in relation to the correct spelling of Hermeto's surnname: ‘Pascoal’ ou ‘Paschoal'? I believe that the date
of issue is 1972, according to information in SANTOS NETO, Jovino. Tudo é som: the music of Hermeto
Pascoal. USA: Universal Edition, 2001, p. 9. The correct spelling is ‘Pascoal’, in accordance with the
autograph manuscript photocopied for Calendário do som, in which Hermeto himself signs his name. See
PASCOAL, 2000. Op. cit., p. 17. I note that the names of Tia Ciata and Pixinguinha were also written in
various ways: Siata, Aciata, Assiata or Asseata, and Pizindim or Pizinguim. See the bibliography.
3 See SODRÉ, Muniz. Samba, o dono do corpo. Editora Mauad, 2007, 2ª. Edição, [1979], p. 9-18.
4 According to Jovino Santos Neto the year of birth of the percussionist Pernambuco was 1942 or
perhaps 1940, on Sept. 15. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate the percussionist to confirm his exact
date of birth. In 1988, Hermeto’s son Fabio Pascoal joined the Group.
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tradition, modernity and contemporaneity, and evaluate, in conclusion, the strategic role
of the Internet as a form of post-modern cultural resistance.
2 – FIRST
PARTE
- TWO
HOUSES IN THE HISTORY OF POPULAR VOCAL AND
INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC IN BRAZIL
2.1 - A MODERN POPULAR HOUSE, PÇA. ONZE, 1916
Jammed into Praça Onze, together with other houses belonging to families of Bahian
origin headed by women responsible for the cult of the orixás (the famous Tias), the
5
house of the mulata Hilária Batista de Almeida, known as Tia Ciata, is considered by
researchers to be the "mother church" of popular urban music in Rio de Janeiro, where
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one of the first recorded sambas, “Pelo telefone” (Donga, 1916), was born. Muniz Sodré
identifies particular ‘cultural dividers’ in Tia Ciata's house separating the rooms, the
spaces of the house, and the musical genres cultivated there: in the salon next to the street,
choro and dances for partners (polkas, waltzes, lundus etc.); and, in the backyard at the
rear of the house, partido-alto samba or samba-raiado and the rhythmic patterns of
Candomblé. The polarized separation of the ‘cultural dividers’at the house of the
respected babalaô-mirim Tia Ciata, symbolized, according to Sodré, “the strategy of
musical resistence to the curtain of marginalization raised against the Negro following
Abolition" (Sodré, 2007[1979], p. 15). Thus, continues Sodré, at the front of the house close, therefore, to the eyes of the white elite - there was the instrumental music of choro
and the more "respectable" dances, while in the back, hidden from the authorities and the
police, was samba, with the "black elite of swing and dance", and the batucada of the
older people "where the religious element was present". (idem)
The house of Tia Ciata is considered by the researcher to be a microcosm of the
Brazilian socieity of the time, exemplifying racial prejudice and the marginalization of the
Negro and his culture by the white elite. Musicians such as Pixinguinha (1897-1973),
Donga (1889-1974), Sinhô (1888-1930), João da Bahiana (1887-1974) and Heitor dos
Prazeres (1898-1966) were constantly crossing the subtly permeable frontiers between the
terrain of choro and dances with European influence, on one side, and the terrain of the
5 Born in Salvador, on 23/4/1854, having arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1876. See NAPOLITANO, Marcos,
A síncope das idéias: a questão da tradição na música popular brasileira. São Paulo: Fundação Perseu
Abramo, 2007, p. 18.
6 Nelson Fernandes, cited by NAPOLITANO, Marcos, ibidem, states that before “Pelo telefone” at least
two other sambas had been recorded.
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partido-alto samba and African Candomblé on the other. In crossing these frontiers or
'biombos', these musicians re-elaborated elements from African cultural tradition, making
possible new forms of affirming black ethnicity in Brazilian urban life, affirmations
represented by, in chronological order of their appearance, choro7 and samba.
2.2 - A POST-MODERN POPULAR HOUSE, JABOUR, 1982
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“There is sound in these walls”...
(Comment made by Jovino Santos Neto and by Mauro Brandão
Wermelinger during a recent visit to the house of the Hermeto Pascoal
9
Family in the neighborhood of Jabour)
Originally a one-story house, Hermeto's residence in Jabour, a neighborhood in the West
Zone of the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, was enlarged when, after an international tour with
the Group, Hermeto began the construction of the second floor. Thus, unlike Tia Ciata's
house, where the musicians and guests traveled on the same horizontal plane in order to
cross the successive ‘cultural dividers’ which symbolically linked Europe (choro and
social dances in the salon next to the street), to Brazil and Africa (samba and Candomblé in
the backyard), Hermeto Pascoal's house in Jabour was laid out vertically, with two stories.
Hermeto would compose silently on the first floor, without instruments, writing in
score and seated on the sofa of a room hidden from the eyes of visitors, while the
musicians of the Group (Itiberê Zwarg - contrabass, electric piano, baritone horn and tuba;
Jovino Santos Neto - electric piano, keyboards, clavinet and flutes; Antônio Luis
Santana/Pernambuco - percussion; Márcio Bahia - drums and percussion; and Carlos
Malta - winds), would rehearse on the second floor. All the musicians came to live close
7 A genre which appeared in the later decades of the nineteenth century, initially as a syncopated sytle in
which popular musicians played European dances such as the waltz, polka, mazurka, schottisch etc. The
choro was consolidated by Pixinguinha and other musicians at the beginning of the twentieth century. See
KAURISMAKI, Mika, Brasileirinho: grandes encontros do choro contemporâneo. DVD, Rob
digital/Studio Uno, and also, CAZES, Henrique. Choro, do quintal ao Municipal. São Paulo: Edit. 34,
1998.
8 Hermeto settled in the neighborhood of Jabour em 1977, according to information posted in the blog:
http://www.miscelaneavanguardiosa.com
9 I thank the teacher and musician Mauro Brandão Wermelinger for the interviews which he granted me
on 24/01/2008 and 17/02/2008 and for the rich information with respect to the architecture of Hermeto's
house in Jabour. Mauro W. was a privileged observer, since he daily frequented - over nine consecutive
years - from 1984 to 1993 - the house where Hermeto and Group would rehearse every day.
Approximately the same age as the members of the group, Mauro was also adopted by the Pascoal family.
He eventually produced shows by the Group, and participated in various of Dona Ilza's feijoadas on
Saturdays.
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by so as not to waste time traveling daily from their residences to the distant neighborhood
of Jabour.
A visitor little-used to the streets of the West Zone neighborhood, having to ask the
neighbors several times how to get to the house of the illustrious resident of Jabour, would
only be certain that he had finally arrived at the right address when he heard, from outside
the house, the sound of the music played by the Group. After identifying himself by the
intercom, answered by the lady of the house, the visitor would enter through the service
entrace letting on to the kitchen. Before entering the kitchen he would see, on the right, in
an area next to the exterior gate, birds in their cages, the parrot Floriano and possibly the
doges running back and forth, as well as glimpsing part of a small swimming pool.
Continuing into the house proper, directed by the strains of the ever-louder music, the
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visitor would cross the kitchen of Dona Ilza da Silva from Pernambuco and pass through
a small ante-room (the L-shaped floor plan of which hid from the visitor the "secret" room
where Hermeto would compose), until going up the stairs which led to the second floor.
Arriving on the second floor of the house, the visitor would then identify two
spaces: a little rest area with a refrigerator, chairs, and a nearby bathroom, and the large
room with the instruments of the Group: piano, keyboards, percussion instruments, winds,
electric bass, as well as other objects that would make sound when struck, and piles and
piles of manscript scores. In order to provide acoustic isolation, straw mats bought cheaply
at stores selling materials for Umbanda were glued to the walls of the rehearsal room,
giving the space the appearance of a rustic hut. Finally, through the windows could be seen
the houses in the neighborhood, and above them, the unlimited space of the sunny blue sky
which made its presence known through the almost unbearable heat, which heat the
cement slab in the hot days.
The architecture of the little house was thus made up of two principal ‘cultural
dividers’: the private space on the first floor of the house, where Hermeto would
compose "secretly", without being seen or heard by anyone, and the second floor, more
accessible, occupied by the musicians during their daily rehearsals. The second
‘biombo’ allowed a glimpse of the third space, external to the house, filled in turn by the
houses of the neighborhood with the sky above. The windows made an exchange
possible: the music played by the Group leaked out into the neighborhood, while the
10 Whom Hermeto married, in Pernambuco, in 1954. They lived together for 48 years and had six
children. Unfortunately, Dona Ilza died several years ago. See SANTOS NETO, op. cit.
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sounds of the landscape - birds, dogs, parrot, cicadas etc. invaded the house and came to
permanently inhabit some of the music recorded during this period.
The characters in the house included the owners Hermeto Pascoal e Dona Ilza,
the sons and daughters of the couple, “the boys in the Group” (as Hermeto paternally
called the musicians who accompanied him), as well as the factotum Mauro Brandão
Wermelinger and, finally, the birds in their cages, Floriano the parrot, and the dogs
Spock, Bolão and Princesa.
The spaces of the house and characters mentioned above appear in particular
songs included in the six LPs recorded by Hermeto and Group in the period 1981 to
1993, whether in the titles, in the sound referernces or in the home-made recordings
which ended up being included on the records. For example: “Ilza na feijoada” (1984), a
modal tune with Northeastern rhythm, a piece which we should note in passing was a
true hit in the shows of the period, in which we hear the voices of the members of the
Group and a laugh from Dona Ilza; and “Aula de natação” (1992), a “música da aura”,
that is, an atonal piece of music which had as its melody the dialogue between
Hermeto's daughter, Fabíola - a swimming teacher – with the children in the swimming
pool of the house. Other examples, in chronological order, are: “Cores” (1981), in
which is included the high-pitched call of a cicada recorded in the tree in front of
Hermeto's house, and tuned to the instruments of the Group; “Spock na escada” (1984),
a forró in which were included the syncopated barks of Hermeto's dog; and “Papagaio
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alegre” (1984), in which the parrot Floriano is soloist. Other examples of the musical
use of animal sounds (not recorded at the house in Jabour) are, to mention only two
composition: “Arapuá” (1986), in which the instrumental timbres, textures and
dissonant harmonies simulate the sound of the Arapuá bee, with its low buzz; and
“Quando as aves se encontram nasce o som” (1992), a track where various bird-songs
are used as rhythmic-melodic phrases which are harmonized and arranged by Hermeto
12
for the instruments of the Group.
Making a comparison with the public and private spaces of Tia Ciata's house, the
first floor of Hermeto's house - where the musician would compose far from the eyes of
11 Hear, also, “Caminho do sol, Tributo ao papagaio Floriano” (1999*), a song the instrumentation of
which is made up of a whistling section, zabumba and prato de choque, simulating a
Northeastern banda de pífanos [group of flutes with percussion].
12 See COSTA-LIMA NETO, Luiz, op. cit., 1999, for a more complete list of the songs by Hermeto in
which animal songs are included, as well as other forms of utilizing animal sounds in Hermeto's
musical system.
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the others living in the house and of the visitors - would correspond to the backyard of
Tia Ciata's house, the place where samba and the batuques of Candomblé took place
secretly, while the second floor of Hermeto's house, a space with open windows and the
sound produced by the Group spilling out, would be associated with the salon close to
the street, where Pixinguinha and the other choro musicians at Tia Ciata's house would
play their polkas, waltzes, lundus, schottisches, and choros.
The basic arrangement (front - back - exterior) of the ‘cultural dividers’ of Tia
Ciata's house, thus has a correspondence with Hermeto's house, and will be used to
show how the process of composition, arrangement and rehearsal would take place for
Hermeto and Group, as well as addressing aspects of the personality, biography,
cosmology and musical system of Hermeto.
3 – A THICK DESCRIPTION
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3.1 - HERMETO E GRUPO
From the room where he composed, Hermeto could easily hear the musicians. Thus,
when he finished writing the score with the melodic-harmonic sketch of a new
composition, Hermeto would go upstairs, put the score under the door to the second
floor, and go back downstairs to his spot. As Hermeto's writing was doubly difficult,
due to dissonant chords difficult to analyze in terms of traditional harmony, and to a
hand that left doubts to the exact placement of the notes on the staff - due to Hermeto's
visual deficiency - generally the musicians of the Group would re-write the manuscript
parts left by the Champion. This was the nickname given to Hermeto by the "boys in the
Group", although it is worth nothing that the hierarchy was frequently inverted, since
the "boys in the Group" were also called Champions by Hermeto. After the musicians
finished making clean copies of the manuscript parts, they would play them on their
instruments, and at this point, Hermeto, on the first floor, would hear everything with
his perfect pitch, and correct their transcriptions from down below: "Jovino, it's not G
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with a major seventh, it's minor!"
Immediately thereafter, the composer would once
more go upstairs in order to resolve technical details of performance and do the
13 “Thick description” is a type of ethnographic description which seeks not only to narrate the facts as
they superficially present themselves to the eyes of an observer, but to interpret what these facts
signify in a particular context, in accordance with codes socially established by the natives of a
specific cultural group. See GEERTZ, Clifford. A interpretação das Culturas, 1989, p. 13-41.
14 According to the statement of Mauro B. Wermelinger, in the interview already cited.
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arrangement. The creative process functioned according to these stages, and sometimes
a song was "finished" rapidly, in only three hours of work.
A brief parenthesis. The list of visitors and musicians who were at the rehearsals
15
in Jabour is long, and includes names such as Chester Thompson, Alphonso Johnson,
Pat Metheny, Ernie Watts, sections from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Mauro
Senise, Márcio Montarroyos, Zeca Assumpção, Nivaldo Ornellas, Paulo Moura, etc. In
addition to these top musicians, a true stream of Brazilian and international students
made the pilgrimage to Jabour in order to be present at the rehearsals of Hermeto and
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Group.
There were popular musicians, classical musicians, choro musicians, jazz
musicians, musicians from the Brazilian popular music avant-garde, fusion musicians,
etc. If it is not posible to fit all these visitors into a single musical genre, I believe that
they all shared a common point of view: Hermeto's house represented a redoubt, far
from the South Zone of Rio and the popular genres of vocal music which dominated the
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scene during the eighties, such as BRock, for example. A dispute in the press, between
the journalist Arthur Dapieve and the cartoonist Angelli, provides a good view of the
musical scene at the time. Dapieve was defending the Rio band Blitz from an accusation
of plagiarism made by Angelli, who had accused Blitz of copying Arrigo Barnabé
(1951-). The collision between those on the side of BRock, supported by Rio journalists
and large record labels, on the one hand, and the independent artists from a university
milieu linked to the São Paulo avant-garde, on the other, exemplifies the opposing
forces which polarized the musical scene at the time. Hermeto's music, in turn, had
nothing to do with either the São Paulo avant-garde (influenced by tropicalismo), nor
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with the rock and roll of Blitz.
It should be said that the medium which Hermeto has chosen to work in is
neither the classical nor popular avant-garde. Tropicália, an example of the avant-garde
in Brazilian popular music, was a movement with which Hermeto had few links, as the
15 The Friday rehearsals were open to the public.
15 I went to four rehearsals in Jabour between 1987-1992. In 1998-1999, during my master's, I went to
the house several times to interview Hermeto.
17 See DAPIEVE, Arthur, BRock: o rock brasileiro dos anos 80. São Paulo, Editora 34. (5ª edição), 2000
[1995], p. 55.
18 However, I note that in spite of the marked musical differences, Hermeto and Group, on one side, and
the artists and groups of the São Paulo Avant-Garde, on the other, shared some common territory, as
for example, the independent São Paulo recording company Som da Gente, used both by Hermeto and
Group and by São Paulo avant-garde artists linked to the Lira Paulistana theatre.
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reader will realize in reading this article. The avant-garde, in spite of "facing serious
difficulties in seeing its work realized", which sometimes "may not take place"
generally is absorbed by tradition and its conventional channels. This is because "nonconformists came from an artistic world, were trained in it, and to a considerable degree
continue to face in its direction". (BECKER, 1977, p. 15)
19
This is not the case for
Hermeto, a self-taught musician, who came from the rural environment, and was always
battling with any kind of institution, for example with the transnational record
companies, and the conventional communications media. For this reason, elsewhere
(Costa-Lima Neto, 1999), I preferred to state that Hermeto was an experimental popular
musician, even though the composer himself does not include himself in any existing
20
current, artistic movment or label.
In reality, in addition to the unmistakable style of the music created by Hermeto,
other details made his house in Jabour a really unique place for all the musicians,
famous or anonymous, who frequented it. Indeed, there came to be a certain "mystique"
around Hermeto, comparable to that which surround various classical composers. I do
not intend here to lend support to the cult of the composer's "eccentricities", which have
already been the subject of sensationalism in the press, but simply to highlight various
musical skills which he possesses to a high degree. Firstly, his infallible perfect pitch
and the rapidity with which Hermeto would compose without instruments, using only
his internal ear to imagine the sounds which he noted in the score. In addition to this,
Hermeto is a multi-instrumentalist and at the same time a virtuoso improviser. On the
LP Hermeto Pascoal ao vivo em Montreux (1979*), for example, he demonstrates that
in a single solo he can alternate between instruments such as electric piano, electronic
keyboards, wind instruments and percussion, sometime using two instruments
21
simultaneously, and voice as well. Mauro Wermelinger
reports that another
uncommon characterist for Hermeto was that he would write down the score, and
already begin to play it as if he had known the newly-created music for a long time. In
addition, Hermeto would compose in the most unlikely situations, such as during the
22
television broadcast of a soccer game, (a sport which he adores), or mentally, during
19 In VELHO, Gilberto (org.). Arte e sociedade – ensaios de sociologia da arte. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge
Zahar, 1977, p. 9-25.
20 See NYMAN, Michael. Experimental music: Cage and beyond. London: Studio Vista, 1974.
21 In the interview already cited.
22 Mauro's information is confirmed by the footnote written by Hermeto in Calendário do som (for
10
an interview, or finally, immediately after lunch. For this reason he always used to walk
around the house with a blank piece of score paper folded in his pocket.
In addition to the fact that Hermeto referred to classical musical forms in the
titles of his compositions, as for example, the “Sinfonia em quadrinhos” and the “Suíte
23
Pixitotinha (neither recorded commercially), the “Suíte Norte, Sul, Leste, Oeste” and
“Suite paulistana” (1979*) and also the “Suíte Mundo Grande” (1987), associations
between Hermeto and classical music also include the great importance of written music
in the process of creation, interpreation and arranging during the period 1981 to 1993.
With the exception of the percussionist Pernambuco, the other members of the Group
passed through classical music and abandoned it to dedicate themselves to popular
music. Thus, this ensemble had characteristics resembling those of a chamber music
ensemble, and at the same time those of a popular band. Hermeto used to teach them:
“You have to compose and write as if it were improvised and play as it were written.”
24
In reality, in spite of the fact that it is indubitably influenced by jazz (especialy with
respect to harmony), improvisation as practiced by Hermeto goes beyond the model of
some American schools of jazz, based on melodic unfoldings of harmonic structures.
For Hermeto, improvisation is existential. More than the capacity to create phrases
based on harmonic schemes x, y or z, improvisation is the permanent search for the new,
present both in improvisation and in written composition.
25
The daily rehearsals of the group, from Monday through Friday, from 2 to 8
PM, preceded by daily practice in the mornings, when the musicians practed the
more difficult passage of their individual parts - as well as the rapid creative
process for Hermeto and Group - made possible something unheard of in Brazilian
those celebrating birthdays on August 2 ): “Música feita vendo o jogo molenga de nossa seleção.” See
PASCOAL, Hermeto, 2000*. Calendário do Som. Editora SENAC, p. 63. I note that Hermeto seems
to have the same capacity that Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) had, according to reports by observers
who stated that the classical composer would write and compose music with no concern for the noise
of radio, TV, children playing nearby, people talking, etc.
23 See also the “Sinfonia do Alto da Ribeira” and
http://www.hermetopascoal.com.br/orquestra/audio.asp
24 According to the report by Jovino Santos Neto, in my interview with him in 1997.
25 I note that particular improvisational models of folk origin are also used by Hermeto, as, for example,
the embolada, a poetic-musical genre in which “the difficulties of diction transform the song into a
game of vocal dexterity which moves the attention of the listener from the semantic content to the
"sound value" of the words". See TRAVASSOS, Elizabeth. “’O avião brasileiro’: análise de uma
embolada”. Rio de Janeiro: 7 Letras, 2001, p. 91. In this respect, hear the vocal improvisation
“embolada” by Hermeto in “Remelexo” (1979*) as well as “Viva Jackson do Pandeiro” (2002*). See
COSTA-LIMA NETO, Luiz, op. cit., 1999, chapter III, for a more detailed explanation of the concept
of improvisation in Hermeto Pascoal.
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instrumental music: the keeping-up of a repertoire of hundreds of songs to which
more compositions were constantly added. Thus, independently of new
compositions, composed daily, Hermeto and Group had a fixed repertoire with
"cards up their sleeve" for show, that is, around 200 songs, which they always
rehearsed. When they got to the show itself, they would play only a small part of
this total, since the songs, played live, grew in proportions due to the
improvisations, (much) larger than in the rehearsals. Thus, each show lasted for at
least two hours, but depending on the locale, it might last for three or four hours or
longer. The record took place in Pendotiba (in Niterói / RJ), during the opening of
a nightclub specializing in jazz, when Hermeto and Group played for five and a half
hours. Before the end of the performance all of the paying audience had already
left, with only the sleepy waiters remaining to listen. Precisely because of this vast
repertoire every show was completely different from the next. As Jovino Santos
Neto said in an interview: "We rehearse a lot because the repertoire is very large
and always new. In twelve years of playing with him, I never played two shows that
were the same". (Rodrigues, 1990, p. 03)
The source seemed to be inexhaustible, and the effort as well.
Mauro Wermelinger reported that the musician's work was really exhausting,
and that Hermeto didn't spare them: “Mauro, today they are going to die, today I am
going to get there and they will be stretched out on the floor...They are not going to be
able to play this because I think that even I am not going to be able to play what I
wrote!", Hermeto would say. Agreeing with what Mauro reported, the drummer in the
Group, Márcio Bahia, told me in an interview that sometimes, during the individual
morning rehearsals at the house, he would suffer from migraine and would have to lie
down to rest after "breaking his head" studying the extremely difficult parts written by
Hermeto. In fact, these songs - I note that Frank Zappa (1940-1993) also had a
repertoire which he called humanly impossible – are identified as such sometimes by
their own titles: "He ran so much that he disappeared" (1980*), “Unplayable” (1987),
26
“Difficult, but not impossible” (not recorded), among others. In reality, independent of
title, various songs by Hermeto can be viewed as etudes: “Arapuá” (1986), for example,
is an etude for baritone sax, in which none of the other members of the Group is spared
technically; “Série de Arco” (1982), was written initially for piano, and manifests a high
26 Hear also the humanly impossible finales of the songs “Chorinho para ele” (1977*) and
particularly “Aluxan” (2002*).
12
degree of technical difficulty; finally, the track “Irmãos Latinos” (1992) has an
extremely difficult line for electric bass, a present from Hermeto to his friend and
musician Itiberê, at a delicate moment in the bassist's life.
3.2 – THREE PERSONAS AND ONE HOUSE
As well as the dynamic of exchange between Hermeto and the Group, the ‘cultural
dividers’ of Hermeto's house illustrate how his biography is related to his musical
system, a system which, tracking the three stages of his professional career and his
personal cosmology, blends regional, Brazilian, international and universal elements.
3.2.1 - THE FIRST FLOOR (1936-1950)
On the first floor of the house, we find Hermeto the individual, a composer, linked to
rural folk roots from the Northeast from his childhood in Lagoa da Canoa, Município de
Arapiraca, Alagoas (where he was born and lived from 1936 to 1950). In the heart of the
fertile tobacco-planting interior of Northeastern Brazil, Lagoa da Canoa gave Hermeto
the bases for his experimental musical idiom, since he does his experimentation
departing from the rural traditions of his childhood. There, unable to play in the sun
with the other children, and following in the Northeastern tradition of musicians with
special needs in the area of vision (Cego Aderaldo, Cego Oliveira, Sivuca, Luiz
Gonzaga, among others), Hermeto made music his favorite toy/game, whether through
composing little tunes created by striking pieces of iron stolen from the junk of his
grandfather’s blacksmith’s workshop, or making flute duets with birds and frogs, or
playing the eight-bass accordeon pé-de-bode (literally, goat’s hoof), together with his
27
brother and father at local social dances and wedding parties.
Since Lagoa da Canoa Hermeto has followed a paradigm, that is, a fundamental
musical model, which he would broaden over the course of his career. According to this
precociosly experimental paradigm, Hermeto as a boy blended, in an improvised way,
sounds from nature, animals, from unconventional sound sources (such as the pieces of
iron mentioned above) and the melodies of speech (which he would later call "music of
aura"), with "conventional" musical styles and pitched sounds from instruments such as
the accordeon pé-de-bode and the flute. The presence of birds, of Floriano the parrot,
27 Hear “Forró em Santo André” and “Forró Brasil” (1979*), “Arrasta pé alagoano” (1980*) and “O
tocador quer beber” (1986).
13
and of the dogs by the pool, at the house in Jabour, show that Hermeto retains part of
the sonorous landscape and geography of his childhood. As he affirmed in an interview:
"Until age fourteen I was in Lagoa da Canoa, my land, in contact with nature.
Everybody thinks that nature is only this. It's not. nature can be in a car on Avenida
Brasil, at rush hour, or during a storm. For me nature is everything you see. It is daily
28
life".
Continuing to pass through the first floor on the house in Jabour - the space
which would correspond to the terreiro for Candomblé at the house of Tia Ciata - we
can note another important characteristic for Hermeto: his cosmology or personal vision
of the cosmos, related to his religiosity and spirituality, which certainly contributed to
his public image as a shaman (bruxo), wizard or magician of sound.
The ‘cultural divider’ will be useful to us once more. The room where Hermeto
composed was reached only after the visitor had passed through Dona Ilza's kitchen and
a somewhat labyrinthic stretch thereafter. I believe that this trajectory is symbolic as
well. Dona Ilza da Silva, from Pernambuco, whose Saturday feijoadas would bring
together all those living at the house - as well as invited guests and neighbors - was, like
Tia Ciata, an adept of Afro-Brazilian religions, and guarded, from the kitchen, the
entrance to the house and the rooms where Hermeto composed and the Group rehearsed.
As I reported above, she was the first person that the visitor contacted, by intercom,
even before entering the house.
Apparently Hermeto and Ilza shared some common religious beliefs, and,
according to information gleaned from interviews with members of the group, the title
of the song “Magimani Sagei” (1982) refers to the name of a Caboclo(a), that is, an
indigenous entity to whom the adepts of Umbanda attribute a very elevated spiritual
degree. In this music, rhythm predominates. Hermeto uses the drumset as a melodic
instrument, constructing seven rhytmic-melodic phrases which, double by the electric
bass, serve as a base for the theme played by flute, piccolo and cavaquinho, and for free
improvisation on bamboo flutes, bass flute, and ocarinas. As the music was being
recorded, the studio technician Zé Luiz invented, at Hermeto's request, words which
sounded like Tupi (“oirê, ogorecotara, tanajura”), while, during the instrumental breaks,
the musicians spoke disconnected words, blew whistles, and shouted. The barking of the
28 See GONÇALVES E EDUARDO, “Vivendo música”. Rio de Janeiro: Revista Backstage. 1998, 39:
46-57.
14
dogs Spock, Bolão and Princesa thickened the texture, while the tempo accelerated to
the freely improvised finale. “Magimani Sagei” suggests a tribal dances, and has deep
roots in the imagination of Hermeto and his childhood in Lagoa da Canoa, near the city
29
of Palmeira dos Índios, a settlement of the Xucuru-Cariri Indians.
Other discographic, musical and bibliographic references will help to broad the
pictures with additional relevant aspects concerning the spirituality and religion of
Hermeto. On the LP Brasil Universo (1985), for example, a ballad in binary meter,
with a long introduction for solo piano, titled “Mentalizando a cruz”, was
composed by Hermeto and dedicated to the musician Paulo Cesar Wilcox. Hermeto
seemed to be convinced that the dedicatee, who had recently passed away, had
"whispered" this music into his ears, as a sort of psychography.
31
32
30
On the LP
Zabumbê-bum-á (1979*) , as well, the songs “São Jorge” and “Santo Antônio”
33
are named for Christian saints, and include the participation of Hermeto's parents:
Vergelina Eulália de Oliveira e Pascoal José da Costa, about to whom the two
compositions are dedicated. The two tracks refer to Northeastern folk music and to
popular festivities having to do with the Catholic liturgical calendar. “Santo
Antônio”, for example, begins and ends with Hermeto's mother's voice describing
the procession for this saint's day (June 13), accompanied by modal religious
chants from the Northeast, and by Zabelê and Pernambuco imitating the voices of
children asking for alms for the church-sponsored festival in honour of the Saint
Anthony.
Another musical example which alludes to the religious universe of popular
syncretism is the “Missa dos escravos”, recorded on the disc by the same name
(Slaves Mass, 1977*).
34
This music is quite varied in rhythm, with a strong Afro-
29 Hear also “Dança da selva na cidade grande” (1980*), a song the sound of which is quite
experimental and "indigenous", in which the spoken voice is combined with percussion and
improvisation on bamboo flute.
30 According to the report of Mauro W., in the interview cited. Hear also the song “Cannon” (1977*),
dedicated ‘spiritually’ to the alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. “Cannon” is a long slow flute
solo by Hermeto, accompanied by the sounds of birds and by Hermeto's own voice, as if he were
praying.
31 At the time of this excellent disc, the Group which accompanied Hermeto was made up of Nenê,
Zabelê, Cacau, Jovino, Pernambuco and Itiberê. the disc also included the participation of Antonio
Celso on electric guitar.
32 I note that in popular Afro-Brazilian syncretism this saint corresponds to the Orixá Ogum.
33 Popularly Santo Antônio is considered to be the "marrying" saint.
34 The Group formed by Hermeto at this time was made up of : Ron Carter, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim,
15
Brazilian influence. After alternating measures with seven and five beats, “Missa
dos escravos” comes to a climax, repeating the same cycle of fourteen beats,
assymetrically divided into groups of 3, 3, 2, 2, 2 and 2 pulses. The sung phrase
“Chama Zabelê pra poder te conhecer” is hypnotically intoned in a crescendo, on a
single continuous low note, as in a recitative (recto tono) from a medieval Catholic
mass, accompanied by a dissonant flute section, and having as a basis the dancing
rhythms of the toms from the drumset. At the end, a duo of grunting pigs dialogs
with the vocal solo of laughs, crying and shouting of Flora Purim, superimposed
on a slow melody played on the transverse flute in unison with the singing voice,
apparently inspired by the chants of praying women and the folkloric chants of
popular Northeastern catholicism.
“Maracá-maracatu-maracájá-Mará”! In the lyrics for “Mestre Mará” (1979*) a song rich in non-conventional vocal resources, such as whispers, hissing,
glissandos, glottal attacks, coughing, shouting, etc - Hermeto uses words with
similar sonorities (alliterations), a technique very commonly found in the
Northeastern embolada, in order to associate the Afro-Brazilian rhythm of
‘maracatu’, with the indigenous instrument known as ‘maracá’, as well as the
forest-cat ‘maracajá’ and finally the name of the master ‘Mará’. In this song, the
melody sung by Hermeto is heard at a slow tempo, while the chorus exploring
unconventional vocal techniques is at another, quicker tempo. The unusual
superposition of two tempi in “Mestre Mará” indicates the presence of two
simultaneous dimensions. In fact, in addition to Umbanda, spiritism, and musical
traditions related to the popular catholicism of the Northeast, in this music
Hermeto reveals another facet of his spirituality in singing: “O Master, I received
your message, it was with great happiness that I set your image to music". The
"master" in questions seems to be related to another figure which Hermeto labeled
"The gift",
35
and which in 1996, gave him the "devotional" task of composing one
piece of music per day, throughout an entire year, paying homage to all those
celebrating birthdays on the planet with a Calendário do som.
36
It contains 366
Raul de Souza, Chester Thompson, David Amaro, Hugo Fatoruso and Alphonso Johnson.
35 According to Mauro W., in the interview cited. See also the back cover of the 1982 LP, where
Hermeto states: "The gift for me is an image, a picture. My teacher was my gift. The musician is a
magical person, with different energy, which communicates with people through music. When he can
pass this energy, and receive the same way, it achieves the greatest success."
36 See PASCOAL, Hermeto, 2000, op. cit., p. 16-9. Hear ‘Itiberê Orquestra Família’, 2005. double CD,
16
scores, including leap-years.
Taken together, aspects having to do with Hermeto's religiosity and
spirituality revealed his particular cosmological vision, the roots of which are
strongly based in popular syncretism. Music is a transcendental vehicle which
unites him to nature and animals, to other human beings and to being from spiritual
hierarchies. In this sense, for Hermeto the wizard, music is a ritual. Through
musical ritual, spiritual experience and esthetic experience are interconnected, in
an inseparable way. Thus, going up and going down the stair that unites the two
floors of the house, Hermeto constructs and simultaneously participates in the
harmonious order of the sacred,
37
which he offers with devotion to all human
beings, in the form of music.
I also believe that a certain profane celebration was an important part of the
calendar of the house in Jabour: Dona Ilza's feijoada on Saturdays, when the Pascoal
family and the families of the musicians, as well as other guests, would join to
confraternize and rebuild the energies spent during the week. The instruments (Fender
Rhodes piano, drums, winds, etc.) were transported from the second to the first floor, to
the open area where the feijoada took place, and then Hermeto and the musicians of the
Group would alternate eating, drinking and playing, surrounded by family members and
guests, always numerous. “The money which Hermeto earned with shows in Brazil and
international tours was only for this: to eat well, pay the bills, and dress reasonably well.
They lived with just the basics. Their thing was playing". (WERMELINGER, 2008a)
The feijoada, one of the symbols of Brazilian cuisine, is a dish linked directly to the
presence of blacks in Brazil, and is the result of the mixture of European customs of
cuisine with the creativity of the African slave. Dona Ilza's feijoada is related
symbolically to the duo of solo pigs and to the "pagan liturgy" of the “Missa dos
38
escravos” (1977*), mentioned above.
In fact, music and cooking are two
interconnected areas in the imagination and music of Hermeto Pascoal, as the following
declaration reveals: “I cook up a meal, this music that I call universal. (...). It is the
world all mixed up together, but Brazil predominates. Nobody in the world eats like one
Calendário do Som, on the Maritaca label.
37 On the relation between ritual, experience and music see REILY, Suzel Ana. Voices of the Magi:
Enchanted Journeys in Southeast Brazil. Chicago University Press, 2005, p. 11-17.
38 Hear as well the slow and atonal song “Religiosidade” (1980*), the experimental “Velório” (1972*)
and also “Santa Catarina” (1984), as well as “Tacho (Mixing Pot)” (1977*).
17
eats in Brazil, with the mixtures that you have in Brazil”. (FRANÇA, 2004, p. 13)
3.2.2 - THE SECOND FLOOR (1950 A 1970)
Continuing our route, and entering the second floor of the house in Jabour, we have
Hermeto in society, the arranger and performer in contact with the Group and with the
urban and international popular music of his adolescence and youth on the radio and in
the clubs in Recife, Caruaru, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, cities where he lived
between 1950 and 1970.
After Lagoa da Canoa, in 1950 the Pascoal family moved to Recife (PE). With
his brother, José Neto, Hermeto played on a local radio station, Rádio Tamandaré, and
later, on Rádio Jornal do Comércio. Over the course of 15 years, Hermeto learned, selftaught, to read and write music, to play the 32 and 80 bass accordeon, as well as piano,
flute, saxophone, bass, guitar, percussion, and other instruments.
He began his professional career as a practical musician, playing choro, frevo,
baião and seresta in regional groups on the radio. He also played in dance bands or in
night-clubs in Recife, Rio de Janeiro (1958) and São Paulo (1961) and jazz trios and
39
quartets (SambrasaTrio and SomQuatro).
His broadened perception, the intense instrumental work in a varied repertoire
and his observation of singers, instrumentalists, arrangers and conductors of radio at
work - such as Clóvis Pereira dos Santos (1932), César Guerra Peixe (1914-1993) and
40
Radamés Gnatalli (1906-1988),
allowed Hermeto to gradually learn the art of
instrumentation and arrangement. The Festivals of Song, in which he participated as an
instrumentalist and arranger between 1967 and 1970, consolidated his abilities in
reading and writing music, and at the same time allowed him to develop as an arranger.
In 1966, Hermeto joined the Trio Novo, which then came to be called the
41
Quarteto Novo. This group represented the mid-point of Hermeto's career, marking the
transition between the instrumentalist hired by radio stations and nightspots, and the
39 With which it had one of its first recorded compositions in record, the soundtrack “Coalhada”, in the
LP of 1966. See http://www.miscelaniavanguardiosa.com
40 Hermeto dedicated to him the song “Mestre Radamés” (1984). In addition to the rich and varied
arrangement of this song, hear, in particular, the extremely difficult rhythms of the drumset played by
Márcio Bahia.
41 I thank the gentleman researcher of Brazilian music, Prof. Dr. Sean Stroud, for having given me
copies of rare discs by Hermeto, prior to the record by the Quarteto Novo. I note that these records
were found in stores in London, England (!) It's not only recently that some foreigners seem to value
Brazilian music more than many Brazilians do.
18
arranger and composer known internationally. In addition to Hermeto Pascoal (flute,
piano and guitar), the Quarteto Novo included Heraldo do Monte42 ([1935], viola
caipira and electric guitar), Theo de Barros (guitar and bass) and Airto Moreira ([1941],
drums and percussion).
After having recorded a disc in 1967, for Odeon, the group dissolved in 1969.
Hermeto told me in an interview that one of the reasons for the short lifespan of the
Quarteto Novo was the nationalist mission of Geraldo Vandré: “When I would play a
very modern chord, people would be critical: "you can't play jazz chords". But they
weren't jazz chords, it was what my head wanted. Music belongs to the world. Wanting
Brazilian music to be only of Brazil is like putting the wind in a bag, and no one can put
43
sound in a bag”.
Inspired by the nationalist modernism of Mário de Andrade (1893-1945),
Geraldo Vandré (1935) proposed the creation of an "authentic", "pure" Brazilian music,
based on rural folklore, and avoiding any form of external influence. During the years of
the military dictatorship anything that might serve as an icon of the culture of the
colonizing power - such as jazz, electric guitars, rock and roll, the iê-iê-iê of the Jovem
Guarda and tropicalismo – could be furiously bombarded by the intellectuals, students
44
and artists of the urban left, for which Vandré was an ardent militant, as his "songs for
the barricades" show. (NAPOLITANO, 2007, p. 125) However, for Hermeto, who grew
up in a rural area, folk culture did not have the same "authentically nationalist"
associations that it did for Vandré. If for the artists of the urban middle class the search
for the "national" signified the discovery and preservation of "distant" rural culture, for
Hermeto, such a project meant confinement and repetition: folk music was not
something that needed to be discovered, reinvented or artificially produced.
But Hermeto did not only reject the nationalist "purism" of Vandré. He also
refused the other alternative path which opened during the period of the Festivals of
Song, Tropicália, lead by Caetano Veloso (1942) and Gilberto Gil (1942). The
tropicalists invoked the anthropophagic cannibalism of Oswald de Andrade (18901954), blending songs disseminated by radio, television and cinema with samba, rumba,
42
In 1964, in LP Os Cinco-pados, from Heraldo do Monte, Hermeto would have recorded his first
composition, the track "Sete contos." Thank researcher Ricardo Sá Reston for the information.
43 In an interview with me in March 1999.
44 See CALADO, Carlos. Tropicália: a história de uma revolução musical. São Paulo: Edit. 34, 1997, p.
106-13 and also NAPOLITANO, Marcos, op. cit, 2007, p.114-29.
19
45
baião, rhythms from macumba, bolero and rock , and also added musical information
from the classical avant-garde and the concrete poets from São Paulo. In 1967, the
Quarteto Novo was invited by Gilberto Gil to accompany him in the song “Domingo no
46
parque”, which was competing in the Festival of Song on TV Record. Inspired by the
recent model of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (EMI, 1967), Gil
wanted to combine the basic rhythm of the song, an afoxé of capoeira, with the
Northeastern sound of the Quarteto, as well as an orchestra and an electric guitar. The
project was vehemently rejected by the Quarteto, demonstrating the group's disdain for
iê-iê-iê and for rock. Hermeto's objections to Tropicália, however, were owing more to
characteristics of the movement such as the carnivalized celebration of modernity and
commercial popular music, than to the use of foreign musical elements.
Neither nationalist modernism, nor anthropophagic cosmopolitanism. Hermeto's
conflict with the urban intelligentsia represented by Geraldo Vandré, on the one hand,
and with the avant-garde of popular music represented by Gilberto Gil on the other,
marked out the personal path which Hermeto would choose to follow.
3.2.3 - THE SPACE OUTSIDE THE HOUSE (1970-1979)
In 1970, Hermeto traveled to the USA, going with the couple Airto and Flora Purim (1942),
in order to arrange the songs on LPs Natural Feelings and Seeds on the ground (Buddah
Records, 1970* and 1971*). On the latter disc, Hermeto records and arranges a song created
by his parents in approximately 1941, in Alagoas, while they were working on the harvest.
The experimental “O Galho da roseira” (parts I and II) was considered to be one of the best
47
songs of the year by the English critics.
In fact, the trip meant that Hermeto, literally, got out of the house, in going beyond
intercontinental frontiers, crossing the musical boundaries of Northeastern folklore (first
floor) and urban popular music (second floor). The journey represented an important
turning point for Hermeto, since in the USA he gained international recognition as an
arranger in writing for orchestras and big bands in his first disc under his own name in
1972* (Hermeto Pascoal: Brazilian adventure) and got to know important jazzmen (Ron
45 See FAVARETTO, Celso. Tropicália, alegoria, alegria. São Paulo: Ateliê Editorial, 1996, p. 106.
46 See CALADO, Carlos. O jazz como espetáculo. São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva, 1990, p. 121-2.
47 See MARCONDES, Marcos Antônio (org.). Enciclopédia da Música Brasileira erudita, folclórica e
popular. São Paulo: PubliFolha, 1998, p. 606-607.
20
Carter, Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, among
others), rapidly making a place for himself in American and European jazz circles through
his virtuoso improvisations on the piano, flute and saxophone, as well as through his
arrangements and original compositions. It was his heterogeneous mixture of jazz and free
jazz with the folk music of Northeastern Brazil, together with his virtuosity as a performer
and the compositions and arrangements which combined viola caipira, percussion, big band
48
and an orchestra of tuned bottles, which reserved Hermeto a special place outside Brazil.
This mixture is present, for example, in the LP Montreux Jazz Festival (1979*), in which
49
Hermeto and his Grupo of the period
were given an ovation by the audience. The title
track “Montreux”, a slow and very beautiful ballad, composed by Hermeto at the hotel
shortly before the show, became a necessary part of the sound track of the life of many of
50
his fans.
In conclusion, Hermeto did not get a free ride with any of the labels created by the
culture industry, but created his own, an anti-label, which, like a revolver, did not respect
limits of genre nor style in his experimental project. Thus, Free Music and above all,
Universal Music are some of the "native" categories which Hermeto uses to define his
musical system.
3.3 – RITORNELLO (1980 - ...)
In 1980, at age 44, after various international journeys (during which he recorded the
LPS mentioned above), Hermeto returned to Brazil and finally formed a fixed group of
musicians which accompanied him for 12 years, from the end of 1981 to 1993, a period
after which this formation broke up. Jovino Santos and Carlos Malta were replaced by,
respectively, André Marques (keyboard) and Vinicius Dorin ([1962], winds), with
whom Hermeto recorded - after the solo CD Eu e eles (1999*) - the CD Mundo Verde
Esperança (2002*), a CD which also included the special participation of the ‘Orquestra
Itiberê Família’, an excellent ensemble lead by the bassist, arranger and composer
48 On the track “Velório”, (1972*), in addition to this song, Hermeto uses 52 tuned bottles in “Crianças,
cuida de lá” (1985).
49 Nenê, Cacau, Itiberê Zwarg, Jovino Santos, Pernambuco, Zabelê and Nivaldo Ornellas,.
50 On the disc, Hermeto tells the audience, live, that he composed “Montreux” in his "usual" way, that is,
using only his inner hearing, without the aid of an instrument. Someone in the audience must have
doubted this, to which Hermeto answered, "It's no joke, I am serious!" Confirm this by hearing for
yourself.
21
51
Itiberê Zwarg.
Hermeto continued to develop and broaden the same sonoro-musical paradigm
from his childhood in Lagoa da Canoa, in combining the instruments which he learned
to play and in blending the musical styles which he got to know over the course of his
career. Thus, in his musical system, a coco, a frevo, a maracatu, a baião could be
vertiginously mixed with choro, samba, jazz, free jazz, or classical music, in the same
way that a noise could be employed as a pitch, or vice-versa.
Symbolically traversing the ‘biombos culturais’ in his house, Hermeto went
beyond the barriers between Northeastern modalism, the tonality of popular music, and
finally, contemporary atonality, noise as music, and experimentalism. In this way, he
created an original musical system, unique in the world, which problematizes the
separations between the popular and the classical, and also between the national and
cosmopolitan, since Hermeto "blends regional, national, international and universal
elements in order to create de-territorialized music which refuses to deny its roots".
(REILY, 2000, p. 08)
4 – SECOND PART: A HOUSE CALLED BRAZIL UNIVERSE
A recurring question which is the object of debate between various researchers in
popular music in Brazil is: how did a marginalized genre like samba come to be one of
the most representative musical symbols of Brazilianity? In other words, how did samba
52
leave the backyard in order to enter the salon of all Brazilians?
It is not my place, in this article, to answer this complex question, nor to discuss
the different hypotheses formulated by specalists. I will only address here that which is
most directly connected to my theme: during the twentieth century, samba and choro,
popular vocal music and popular instrumental music, traded places in the "house".
Samba and the popular vocal genres that came after it during the century - as for
example, bossa nova, baião, jovem guarda, MPB, BRock, sertanejo, sertanejo
romântico, funk, etc. - were, to a greater or lesser degree, massified by the
51 For the sake of completeness, I note that in 1989* Hermeto recorded for Som da Gente the piano solo
LP Por diferentes caminhos and in 2006*, the independent CD Chimarrão com rapadura, with the
singer Aline Morena, Hermeto's present companion.
52 In addition to the work already cited by Muniz Sodré, see, for example: SQUEFF, Enio and WISNIK,
José Miguel. O Nacional e o Popular na Cultura brasileira. 1982. VIANNA, Hermano, O mistério do
samba, 1995. SANDRONI, Carlos, O Feitiço decente, 2001. NUNES, Santuza Cambraia. O violão
azul, 1998. See bibliography.
22
communications media and came to dominate the Brazilian musical scene. At the same
time, choro and other genres of popular instrumental music moved gradually to the
"back of the house”, and, although objects of passionate attention by a growing number,
are frequently invisible to the eyes of the larger public.
The following declaration by Hermeto exemplifies the present panorama of
popular music in Brazil:
[Instrumental] musicians without personality, who
unfortunately are the majority, do whatever the singers
want. If you have personality you have to say to them: I
will accompany you, but I want to take solos (...). We
have piano, bass and drums, and we will only accompany
you, if there are at least two solos in each show.
(FRANÇA, 2004, p. 12)
In this sense, Hermeto's house, like that of Tia Ciata, was a redoubt of
musicians and a symbol of resistance for popular instrumental music in the 1980s
and early 1990s, a period when MPB, BRock, sertanejo, and foreign disco
prevailed, along with other genres. In his own way, Hermeto is linked with the
tradition of choro and popular instrumental music in general (including frevo and
various types of wind bands, including military bands, symphonic bands, the
bandas de pífanos, etc.),
53
a tradition for which Pixinguinha is central and the
house of Tia Ciata a vital symbolic locus. In addition to sharing with Pixinguinha
a taste for jazz and for big bands
55
54
(see Os Oito Batutas), Hermeto has various
choros in his repertory , dedicated compositions to important choro musicians
56
and on the first LP under his name released in Brazil, titled: A música livre de
Hermeto Pascoal (1973*), Hermeto made an arrangement for orchestra based on
the song “Carinhoso” (Pixinguinha/João de Barro), considered by some
musicians to be the true Brazilian National Anthem. Hermeto and Group, like
sambistas and choro musicians (and American jazzmen from New Orleans) from
the beginning of the past century, were pioneers in the way in which they re53 Hear, for example, “Frevo” (1971*), “Frevo em Maceió” (1984), “Briguinha de músicos malucos no
coreto” (1982) and “Parquinho do Passado, Presente e Futuro – dedicado às crianças e aos parques”
(2002*).
54 Hear the recordings of compositions by Hermeto for big band at
http://www.hermetopascoal.com.br/bigband/audio.asp
55 Hear, for example, “Chorinho para ele” (1977*), “Chorinho MEC” (1999*) and “Choro árabe” (?) at
http://www.hermetopascoal.com.br/bigband/audio.asp.
56 Hear, for example, “Salve Copinha” (1985), as well as “Mestre Radamés” (1984).
23
elaborated rural, urban and international musical elements in order to invent new
musical genres. These musicians resisted and used music, each in his own way, in
order to affirm themselves in the Brazilian and international cultural mosaic.
However, if there are similarities between Hermeto and the choro
musicians of the beginning of the twentieth century, there are also differences
which should be noted. In a recent interview, Hermeto stated:
There are lots of people who are 18 years old playing old,
square things. These people who play chorinho, regional
music, MPB, begin playing like old guys, and seem like
old guys. Someone who is born today needs to be wellinformed. The guy is born and listens to Pixinguinha. The
music is pretty, and has that square chordal way that it is
dressed. If someone is born today and they don't tell him
that this is old music, it's the same thing as him seeing an
old building without knowing that it's old. Not that old is
57
bad. But the young are born so old. (YODA, 2006)
The differences I mention demonstrate the contrasts between two different
historical contexts: the modern, in the case of the dwelling of Tia Ciata, and the
contemporary, in the case of Hermeto's house in Jabour. Thus, unlike the house of Tia
Ciata, where the musicians who crossed ‘biombos culturais’ were members of the
same social class, of the same black ethnic group, and participated in musical genres
which, in spite of their particularities, had a common denominator in the syncopated
rhythms of Candomblé, at Hermeto's house, however, he and the musicians in the
Group had geographic and social origins which were quite distinct, and the movement
through the vertical ‘biombos culturais’ of the house in Jabour crossed frontiers
between musical genres which were much more heterogeneous. In fact, the musical
practices used by Hermeto are related to a contemporary context which presents
various melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, timbristic and formal ruptures in relation to
traditional choro. This did not prevent Hermeto, however, from composing choros,
and innovating with respect to harmony, through introducing dissonant chords and
unexpected progressions, as the recent interview cited indicates. Thus, to use a
culinary metaphor, so much to Hermeto's taste: the two houses, separated by an
interval of about 70 years, had a dish in common (feijoada), though the receipt was
57 See
http://www.orkut.com/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=10980&tid=2489510022838154349&kw=entrevista
24
post-modernized at Hermeto's house in Jabour, and although some ingredients were no
longer present, others were, and still others were modified or added to.
As I observed in an earlier article (Costa-Lima Neto, 2000, p. 119-42), the
uniqueness of Hermeto's musical system lies in the uncommon capacity of Hermeto to
combine the "conventional" with the "natural", that is, to establish a dialogue between,
on the one hand, the vocabulary and instruments of "conventional" ethnic (indigenous
and Afro-Brazilian), Brazilian (urban popular music: choro, frevo, bands, etc.) and
international (jazz, classical music) styles and on the other, atonal and non-harmonic
"universal" sonorities found in "nature" (animal sounds, human speech) and in
unconventional every-day sound objects (pieces of iron, pans, wooden shoes, flasks
58
for oral hygine, etc. ). "Nature is the day-to-day", states Hermeto . This is, in my
opinion, the key to understanding Hermeto's singular musical system. In combining
the "conventional" with the "natural", the composer creates a third substance, which is
no longer either nature nor day-to-day, but the fusion of the two.
From choro to jazz, from classical music to Northeastern coco. The singular recipe
for Hermeto's contemporary "musical feijoada" does not seem to have gone together well
with the modernist ideologies of Mário de Andrade (1893-1945) and Oswald de Andrade
(1890-1954), as those ideologies were reinterpreted by particular popular musicians during
the second half of the twentieth century. As I already mentioned, the modernist ideas of
Mário e Oswald influenced, respectively, the nationalist project of Geraldo Vandré at the
time of the Quarteto Novo - during the Festivals of Song in the 1960s and 1970s - and the
anthropophagic tropicalist esthetic of Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, which served as
inspiration, in turn for artists of the São Paulo avant-garde, such as Arrigo Barnabé, in the
59
1980s.
In my opinion the music of Hermeto Pascoal should alert researchers that
60
Tropicália does not hold a monopoly on innovation in Brazilian popular music. In fact,
Hermeto is modern without being modernist, is Brazilian without being nacionalist and
practices, in his own way, “anthropophagy”, without ever having been tropicalist, nor even
having read the Manifesto Antropofágico (1928) of Oswald de Andrade.
58 In the interview already cited.
59 NAPOLITANO, Marcos, op. cit., relativizes the influence of Oswald de Andrade on the
tropicalistas and notes that, in spite of differences, there are points in common between the
nationalists and the avant-gardists.
60 According to the important observation by Prof. Dr. TREECE, David. Journal of Latin América
Studies no. 35 (reviews). London: King’s College, 2003, p. 207-13.
25
Hermeto Pascoal's uniqueness must be correctly understood in order that
associations not obfuscate characteristics instrinsic to Hermeto, but rather reveal,
through comparison, what is unique about these characteristics. The differences between
Hermeto and the artists and movements cited above were not solely musical. Because
while in Modernism "artists coming from the elites and the bourgeoisie were trying to
establish a new way of relating to the cultures of the people" (TRAVASSOS, 2000, p.
08), Hermeto, in contrast, followed the opposite path, that is, he left the first floor,
"below", left the less-economically-advantaged classes of the Northeast, in order to then
go beyond geographic and class barriers in order to migrate to the large cities. Thus,
unlike the rationally oriented, civilized, scientific, theoretical and literate vision of the
cosmos of urban intellectuals and artists, for Hermeto the emphasis seems to fall on the
opposite pole, on the sensitive, nature, intuition, religion or spirituality, practice and
improvisation. Like Pixinguinha, who learned the codes of cultivated music, the selftaught Hermeto uses and dominates musical notation, even if it is never the point of
departure in his creative process. In addition to this, Hermeto's search for the unusual is
joyful, and does not spend much time rationalizing the process of experimentation,
unlike some musical currents of the avant-garde.
In the following quote, Hermeto explains:
Music for the musician, without experiences nor vanguards, only
felt music, note for note, forming arrangements in which the
instruments, in one only time, coexist and are individually
explored. Listen. (HERMETO, 1979)
In this way, blending tradition, modernity and contemporaneity without belong
to any school or movement, the esthetic territory traced by Hermeto Pascoal acquires
intentionally shifting fronties. In avoiding any identification with commercial labels
and artistic movements he frees himself professionally and esthetically. Considering,
however, that Hermeto is present in the context of the contemporary culture industry,
it is necessary to verify, what the strategies of resistance and survival are which he
adopted over the course of his career, while he was trying to maintain the authenticity
of his singular musical system in the commercial arena.
This rather utopian path was not easily traveled.
Migrating from Lagoa da Canoa to the great cities of Brazil and the world,
Hermeto experienced the era of radio in the 1940s and 1950s, the expansion of TV in
26
the 1960s, and its boom in the 1970s, the monopoly of the great multi-national
recording companies
61
accentuated by the majors, the appearance of the CD, the
62
movement to indy labels and independent musicians in the 1990s, until the arrival of
the age of the Internet.
In the 1940s and 1950s radio was the most important mass communication
medium in Brazil, and the majority of the music broadcast was played live by regional
ensembles, bands, singers and orchestras. The consolidation of samba as the musical
symbol of national identity was possible thanks to dynamics and broad cultural
exchanges between agents and shapers of opinion in various sectors of society. The
nationalization of this musical genre is strongly linked to the history of radio and the
way in which the Estado Novo (1937-1945) of Getúlio Vargas (1982-1954) utilized
this medium of communication in order to co-opt the sambistas and promote "national
integration" and "racial democracy" through sambas exalting civic values. In the
1950s, recalled in history as the "golden years" of the government of Juscelino
Kubitschek (1902-1976), the bossa nova, a genre which maintained the traditional
melodic emphasis of Brazilian music, used more dissonant harmonies than those of
the traditional samba. The guitar becomes more percussive, in dialogue with
sophisticated orchestral arrangements and a type of vocal production which was
whispered and cool, quite different from the operatic mannerisms of the popular
singers of the previous generations. Bossa nova was the fruit of the desire of the artists
from the middle class to artistically and technologically "modernize" popular music in
63
Brazil, passing from the "agricultural phase to the industrial phase". In the 1950s, the
radio stations became an excellent vocational school for Hermeto, and at the same
time an important source of support for the adolescent musician, recently-arrived from
the countryside. Even fifty years later, Hermeto still finds important professional
opportunities in radio, recording for the label of the state radio station, MEC, in 1999*
and in 2002*.
61 Hermeto recorded for the following multinational companies: EMI (1967*); Polygram (1973* e
1992); WEA (de 1977* a 1980*). The last disastrous attempt was on the CD Festa dos Deuses
(PolyGram, 1992), when Hermeto broke the contract soon after the commercial launch of the CD.
62 As for example, the label Som da Gente, already mentioned, with which Hermeto and Group recorded
six of the seven discs made during the period 1981-1993 (one of the discs was not issued).
63 Tom Jobim citado por NAPOLITANO, op. cit., p. 69.
27
In the 1960s, when the military dictatorship (1964-1985) took power – and
while Hermeto was progressing through work in clubs, on the radio and in the
instrumental ensembles already mentioned - musical programs on television,
theater, the Festivals of Song and the record industry, with an eye on the new
demands of the market, went after the public from the universities. Thus MPB
appeared, which made it possible for middle class artists to connect, even if
provisorily, esthetics, ideology, and market. However, the commercial explosion of
the jovem guarda (iê-iê-iê), with its success among lower middle class youth,
outsold MPB in 1965 (with the homonymous disc by Roberto Carlos)
64
and upset
the balance, presaging the brega, música sertaneja and música romântica of the
following two decades. In this sense, the jovem guarda was the vanguard for music
for the masses in Brazil.
65
Since he did not belong to the old guard of samba, or
bossa nova, or politicized MPB, or to the tropicalist avant-garde, nor to iê-iê-iê,
Hermeto had to seek other commercial spaces for his instrumental music, traveling
outside Brazil in 1970, with his friends Airto and Flora Purim, as the interview
quoted below exemplifies:
I went to the USA with my way of working and the
desire to change the habit that obliged Brazilians to go
there to learn with American musicians. (...) I wanted
to show something that isn't jazz, nor samba, nor bossa
nova, because I am tired of all that! (...) Yes, I make
music and I am Brazilian. You can take that any way
you like. (HERMETO, Jazz Magazine, 1984)
As I already mentioned earlier, in the USA, in 1972, Hermeto recorded his
first solo disc. However, just as had happened during the period of the Festivals of
Song, Hermeto was going the opposite way from the record industry. In fact,
Hermeto's path is opposity to the process of formation and expansion of the
majors, that is, the conglomerates of large multi-national recording companies,
consolidated during the 1970s and 1990s.
66
Proof of this is Hermeto's refusal to be
64 See NAPOLITANO, Marcos op. cit., p. 87-98.
65 See ULHÔA, Martha Tupinambá. ‘Nova história, velhos sons: Notas para ouvir e pensar a música
brasileira popular’. In: Debates: Cadernos do programa de pós-graduação em música. Rio de Janeiro:
UNIRIO, 1997, p. 87.
66 The majors, which control more than two thirds of the world record market are: EMI + Odeon = EMI
(1969); Phonogram + Polydor = PolyGram (1978); Sony Corp. + CBS = Sony Music (1987);
Bertelsman + Ariola + RCA = BMG-Ariola (1987); and, finally; Time-Warner + WEA + Toshiba +
Continental = Warner Music (1991-93). The fusion of PolyGram with MCA, in 1998, produced the
28
part, as keyboardist, of the fusion band of Miles Davis for the gigantic
multinational Sony, choosing, instead of a (subaltern) stardom, to begin his solo
career as composer, arranger and instrumentalist for a relatively unknown record
label (Buddah Records).
In counterpoint to Hermeto's professional career, the power of the majors
influenced the whole culture industry beginning in the 1970s, reaching a climax in the
1990s. It produced styles such as disco and lambada, launched products directed at the
children's market, such as the TV host, model and singer (?) Xuxa, as well as styles
directed to the young middle class public - such as BRock and pop in the 1980s - and
finally, mass consumption genres directed to the mass popular market in Brazil, such as
67
axé, pagode, música sertaneja and música romântica.
The products which were
promoted jointly by the majors, newspapers, radio stations, films (Saturday Night
Fever, Lambada), clips on MTV (“Thriller” by Michael Jackson), TV programs (Xou da
Xuxa) and mini-series (Dancin’ Days, Pantanal, O Rei do gado, etc.), had in common
the fact that they were directed to large slices of the market. The change in format from
LP to CD, and the diversity of these products did not hide, however, their musical
redundancy. In fact, in search of the largest possible consuming public, in the
soundtrack of the end of the twentieth century “the multiplex sounds, styles, genres,
agents, places and authors [seemed] to intone, in reality, a single song” (Dias, 2000, p.
170)
However, the movement of the independent musicians and recording companies
in the years 1980-1990 - a period in which Hermeto and Grop recorded six discs for the
independent label Som da Gente - began a gradual change on a scene dominated by the
insatiable appetite of the transnational cultural industry. Severely criticized due to the
high price charged for CDs - the sale of which only brought the artist approximately 13%
of the unit value of the product (Dias, 2000) - the large record companies were obliged to
lower their prices due to the indie movement, but that did not prevent the former from
experiencing a vertiginous decline after the turn of the millennium, while the Internet
continued to grow, connecting more than thirty million Brazilians and approximately a
Universal Music Group, since 2006 the largest record company in the world. See DIAS, Márcia Tosta.
Os Donos da voz. São Paulo: BoiTempo Editorial, 2000: 41-3 and ULHÔA, op. cit., 1997, p. 85.
67 See ULHÔA, Martha Tupinambá de, ibidem, p. 80-100 and ULHÔA, ‘Música Romântica em Montes
Claros’. In: REILY, Suzel Ana. British Journal of Ethnomusicology 9/i, 2000. p. 11-40.
29
68
billion people around the world. Looking at the number of sites,
69
blogs
and virtual
70
communities of Hermeto's fans in Orkut (with more than sixteen thousand participants)
Hermeto would seem to be more comfortable than ever. In facilitating access by
Brazilians and others to diverse audiovisual and bibliographic material, the Internet is
being utilized by its users as a contemporary strategy of resistance, making it possible,
71
partially, to get around the isolation which the majors and the media in general imposed
on musical genres which belong to areas of lower production, sales and consumption,
among these being classical music, choro and instrumental music in general, and the
music of Hermeto Pascoal in particular.
Hermeto stated in a recent interview that the record companies never interfered in
the choice of repertoire to be recorded on his discs, and that the problem, in reality, was in
inadequate distribution and non-payment of royalties:
[The record companies] just use you as catalog, that's all.
Then there's a jazz festival, and they put on display the
disc by Hermeto Pascoal. And it sells and sells, more than
anyone else. Once the festival is over, they collect
everything. (...) And they don't pay what they are
supposed to pay. (...) Now and then, they send R$100,00,
and that's it. I am going to say something light: what the
record companies do is nothing more or less than robbery.
It's robbery.(...) Everyone can pirate my songs. I will never
be against that, because that way it's much easier for
people to hear them. What we make is independent music.
(FRANÇA, 2004, p. 14)
In fact, on various occasions Hermeto recommended that is fans record his shows with
home recorders. The lack of distribution on the part of the record companies can easily
be noted by those who seek in vain for the records of Hermeto Pascoal on the shelves of
stores and at the websites of Brazilian megastores. As research, during the editing of
this article I sought 16 discs recorded by Hermeto beginning in 1971*.
68
69
70
71
72
With the
See: http://www.hermetopascoal.com.br
See: http://www.miscelaneavanguardiosa.blogspot.com
See: http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=62155
Educational TV and Rádio MEC represent an exception. As I already mentioned, Hermeto issued in
1999, on the MEC label, the solo CD Eu e eles, on which he plays all the instruments, as well as the
CD Mundo Verde Esperança (2002), with the new lineup of the band.
72 In a search done at the beginning of 2008, at the sites of the virtual megastore Submarino and at the
specialized megastore Modern Sound. The latter had, in stock, three CDs by Hermeto recorded for
Warner Bros. and reissued in Brazil in 2001, because the owner of the store had foresight and bought
a relatively large quantity of these three items before the company took them off the market in 2004.
30
exception of two CDs issued by the label of Rádio MEC (1999* e 2002*) and of the
independent CD from 2006*, Hermeto's other discs (11 items) are out of print in Brazil
and abroad, and the two other titles (1977* and 1987) are only available as imports to
Brazil. The growing market for rare vinyl makes a profit on this, but it is in the virtual
space of the Internet that Hermeto's work is experiencing a true revival. In addition to
the 11 out-of-print discs of the record companies, net users have available various other
unpublished recordings and videos of Hermeto and the groups which accompanied
73
him . Considering the decreases in the costs of the technologies of recording,
reproduction and the cost of home computers, as well as the global reach of the Internet,
and the fact that Pascoal is a composer possessing a vast oeuvre (around 4.200
compositions)74 - of which only a small part was recorded commercially - I believe that
the potential for disseminating his music on the Internet is promising.
5 - CONCLUSION - THE COMMONPLACE AND THE "NO-PLACE"
These days I understand that the media does not deal with
serious work. This is something that is true the world over.
This is why great musicians despair. (...) As if people
weren't enjoying what they do. I think exactly the
opposite. (...) I am with the people who want me. The
people who want me are not the ones who are trying to
know what they will want. It's the people who want to
want. (HERMETO, 1998)
Since the first phonograph recordings in Brazil, among them the samba “Pelo telefone”
(1916), produced at the sessions of sambistas at the house of Tia Ciata, until the sound
files of Hermeto Pascoal and Group, shared over the Internet, popular musicians have
been negotiating their place in the Brazilian society of the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries. Crossing the ‘biombos culturais’ which link the rooms of a house, in the same
way that they link the house to the street, the city to the farm, the colony to the
metropolis, and the local to the international, popular artists make exchanges between
heterogeneous musical genres, thus creating new hybrid species.
In this urban house with open windows, the musics of the Americas blended
with the musics of Africa and Europe, guaranteeing varied mixtures. Folk music, choro,
"Hermeto's discs always sell well!" the owner of the store, Pedro Passos Filho, told me.
73 See the list of URLs in the appendix, after the bibliography.
74
See Hermeto in GARCIA, Revista [email protected], p. 27. See http://www.brasilnet.co.uk
31
samba, bossa nova, jovem guarda, MPB, tropicália, música romântica, brega, BRock,
the experimental popular music of Hermeto Pascoal, etc. constitute different musical
expressions of subjects with distinct regional, class and ethnic identities. These
differences, however, do not prevent the various dwellers in the house from exploring
their common portion of musical Brazilianity.
In spite of the musical diversity of Brazil, only three genres - samba, bossa nova
and MPB - are included in the same developmental line, accepted canonically by artists,
producers, audience and critics as being the principal tradition of popular music in
Brazil. Tropicália is given the role of the rupturer of this tradition through introducing
musical elements from pop, rock, jovem guarda and avant-garde classical music,
weaving a critical parody of "traditional" Brazilian music. However, at the margin of
the official historiography constructed around only three or four musical genres from
the southeastern region of Brazil, there exist various other popular musical traditions in
the country, and in addition to these, the Brazilian musicians who play non-Brazilian
musical genres, such as rock, metal, punk, funk and hip-hop. In reality, the industrial era
problematizes the categories "people" and "nation", to the extent that industry promotes
a sort of generalized musical de-territorialization, through which national popular music
traditions are "media-ized", that is, they are "transplanted and freed from the frontiers of
time and space" through "interaction with the system of mass communications" (discs,
radio, TV, Internet). Modern transnationalization, since the days of radio and records,
tends toward contemporary globalization, with TV and Internet. For this reason, in
theory, independent of national musical traditions, any style or genre can be massified
75
by the communications media and become "popular music".
Just like his music, Hermeto Pascoal's personality is complex. For Hermeto, the
archaic, and the roots of the rural tradition of the Northeast are blended with the
76
languages and customs of modernity and contemporanity.
The quote cited at the
beginning of this conclusion, where Hermeto states that he is not seeking to please
people with his music, demonstrates the combative personality of the Northeastern
composer. His discourse of resistance with respect to the consumer society should be
75 See MALM, Krister. “Music on the Move: Traditions and Mass Mídia”, Ethnomusicology v. 37, no.
03 (1993), cited by Ulhôa, op. cit., 1997, p. 85 and see, also, DIAS, op. cit.
76 Hear the song “Linguagens e costumes” (1999*), on which Hermeto utilizes traditional instruments,
such as the zabumba, bamboo flute, whistles, and voice, as well as non-conventional sounds, such as
toy dolls, in order to create music that is quite experimental and improvised. Hear, also, the song
“Mercosom” (1999*), the title of which is a pun on the word ‘Mercosul’.
32
understood as a broad gesture of rebellion and insubordination, which goes beyound the
oral, and addresses various aspects of his personality, which are inextricably linked to
Hermeto's musical system. Thus, Hermeto's personality, his music, and the context of
which it is a part, are three complementary spaces, which interpenetrate each other like
conceptual "dividers", allowing the observer to glimpse unsuspected details, which had
been barely visible or invisible until then. In this way, the symbolic architecture of
Hermeto Pascoal's residence, its geographic location, the social origins of its residents,
frequenters, and visitors, its dietary customs, religious practices, the clothes worn, as
well as the music produced, are vital aspects of the ethnomusicological analysis of this
article.
The location of the house in the humble neighborhood of Jabour, in the suburbs
of the city of Rio de Janeiro, far from the South Zone, the beaches and the picture-post
card views, revealed to Brazilians and non-Brazilians visiting the house another side of
Brazil, quite different from the offical side. Going to Jabour to be present at the
rehearsals of Hermeto and Group meant re-entering Brazil through the back door, and in
this way, to have access to all that which seemed to be repressed by the ethnic and
cultural inferiority complex of Brazilian society: popular cooking, the indigenous
caboclos indígenas, black slaves, Umbanda, the popular Catholicism of the Northeasts
and spiritism, that is, the most important co-ordinates of the syncretic cosmological
system of Hermeto, which cohabit and blend in his singular musical system.
“I am not going to advertise a sampler manufacturer!”, bellowed Hermeto
77
during a show at the Circo Voador in Rio de Janeiro during the 1980s, while he was
whacking his Ensonic keyboard with his shoe, irritated by its delay in loading cartridges
with sounds and animal sounds. It was useless for producer and factotum Mauro
Wermelinger to get underneath the three-thousand dollar keyboard, supporting it so it
would not fall over because of the blows Hermeto was handing out, because shortly
there after Hermeto delivered the coup de grace by pouring a glass of beer over the
keyboard, which could resist no longer, and was "fried"... The popular tradition of the
Northeast, based on family units, the autonomous activity of artisans, seems to partially
explain Hermeto's suspicious attitude in facing the technology of samplers, synthesizers
and such, as well as his constant rebellion against owners of radio stations, nightspots
77 I note that the Circo Voador was an important space for alternative and independent artists to present
their work during the 1980s in Rio de Janeiro. Hermeto and Group performed countless times in this
space.
33
and recording companies. With his experimentation based on popular rural traditions of
the Northeast, and retaining the autonomy of the accordeonist and farmer who does not
see himself as a musical employee, Hermeto refuses to be an easy source of labor for
the cultural industry. For this reason he did not choose to become keyboardist for Miles
78
Davis for the transnational Sony label. In the same way, he continues the tradition of
making music in the family, setting himself against the anonymous labor force used by
industry in forming a community built on ties of place and family with the musicians of
79
the Group in the house in Jabour, from 1981 to 1993.
Thus was born the Hermeto
Pascoal Family, a community symbolically broadened by the musician in 1996 – when
Hermeto turned 60 anos - coming to include all the human beings on the planet through
the Calendário do som, according to Hermeto (2000), a musical antidote to violence and
wars.
His pop look is another characteristic of Hermeto's rebellious and dissonant
personality which should not be underestimated. His multi-colored shirts, hats, and long
white hair of the albino musician seem to point back to the counterculture and hippies of
the 1970s, when Hermeto was in the USA, at the peak of psychodelia, free jazz and
experimental classical music. I note that, shortly before his trip to the USA, at the time
of the Quarteto Novo and the ideological correctness of the nationalist Geraldo Vandré,
Hermeto used to wear a suite and tie and kept his hair quite short. His "new" "1970s"
look, added to other unusual factors - such as, for example, the musical use of animal
sounds and unconventional sound sources - contributed toward the formation of an
"exotic" public image which, on the one hand, gave him fame, and on the other made
him a permanent target of criticism from orthodox musicians. Nevertheless, in order to
blur categories even further, and shock classical and popular purists, the same irreverent
musician who does improvised duets with pigs, dogs, chickens, birds and cicadas,
moves freely between the backyard and the concert hall, blending embolada with
classical music in compositions for symphony orchestras, big bands, instrumental
80
groups and chamber ensembles in Brazil and abroad.
In this sense, much more than
78 Hear the song “Capelinha & Lembranças – dedicada ao irmão de som Miles Davis”, (1999*), in
which Hermeto alternates playing the flugelhorn section and acoustic piano, as well as using his voice
singing in a pan of water.
79 I thank Prof. Dra. Elizabeth Travassos for her important personal communication relating rural
traditions and experimentalism in Hermeto Pascoal.
80 See Hermeto's official site, with passages from songs composed for varied instrumental combinations,
as well as the videos posted at YouTube and files made available at
34
mere “exoticism” or “eccentricity”, the clothing of Hermeto is a symbol of the collapse
of the composer with musical nationalism, as confirming the statement below: “I do not
play Brazilian music. I am Brazilian and very proud for it, but the only label I will ever
accept for my music is Universal.”81
It is important to observe that the term Música Universal, with which Hermeto
defines his musical system, is ironically the name of the largest recording company on
the planet, the Universal Music Corporation. I believe that the concept of "universality"
never possessed such opposite meanings. The position of Hermeto Pascoal in the
context of the contemporary cultural industry illustrates dramatically the opposition
between "art" and "quality" on one side - categories related to the musical field of
restricted production, where, among other genres, Hermeto's Música Universal is
included - and, on the other hand, "money" and "quantity" - categories related to the
musical field of large production, where Universal Music is in the lead.
The last disc by Hermeto with the Group which accompanied him from 1981 to
1993 - formed by Itiberê Zwarg, Jovino Santos Neto, Antônio Santana, Márcio Bahia
and Carlos Malta - the CD Festa dos deuses (1992), recorded for PolyGram (presently
Universal Music), exemplifies the struggle between Hermeto and the majors. Twenty
years after having turned down the invitation to be keyboardist in Miles Davis's band for
Sony, twelve years after having closed out his contract with Warner Bros. by recording the
LP Cérebro Magnético (1980), and after six discs recorded for the independent label Som
da Gente, Hermeto saw in the opportunity to record for PolyGram a chance for him and
the "boys in the Group" to get some financial return, after a long drought. His dream was
to buy, with the proceeds from the new CD, a bus-stage which could take him and the
Group throughout Brazil presenting shows. However, his dream for a traveling ensemble
did not materialize, nor the expectations of the Group. The recording company delayed the
delivery of the CD, and as a consquence when the European tour intended to launch the
disc took place (between September and November of 1992) the product was not available
for sale. As yet another proof of the lack of interest for their new hire, PolyGram also did
82
not publicize the official show launching the CD at the Sala Cecília Meireles/RJ,
nor
http://www.miscelaneavanguardiosa.blogspot.com. See the list of URLs in the appendix.
81
Hermeto in SANTOS NETO, op. cit, 2001, p. 8.
82 I note that the Sala Cecília Meireles is a traditional space for classical music in Rio de Janeiro, which
on some occasions hosts popular artists playing choro and instrumental music. Hermeto and Group
did not perform frequently in this space.
35
83
made the CDs available to be sold at the Sala during the event. This was the straw that
broke the camel's back. Feeling that he had been boycotted, Hermeto did not restrain his
irritation during the show, and soon thereafter broke his contract with the powerful
transnational recording company PolyGram. Thus, several months after these events, and
with no prospect of financial survival, this lineup of the Group broke up. After twelve
years of working together, and much music, the Feast of the Gods of the Hermeto Pascoal
Family had come to an end.
I stated early that Hermeto's professional trajectory in the second half of the
twentieth century was somewhat "utopian". The word ‘utopia’ can be defined as “nonplace” or “place that does not exist" and is normally used in the sense of a search for an
"idealized" and "fantastic" world, different from the "real world". In his utopia, Hermeto
refuses the "real world", the "profane world", and struggles to keep intact the singular
authenticity of his "sacred" Música Universal, even in the commercial arena of the
contemporary cultural industry, where music loses its artistic "aura" in becoming
merchandise. Contesting a space in the popular instrumental music scene, which also
includes choro, frevo and jazz, and removed from the national-popular tradition built
around samba, bossa nova and MPB, as well as from the Tropicalist avant-garde, the
composer, arranger, and experimental multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal, does not
represent a commonplace in the popular music of Brazil. Nevertheless, avoiding the
transnational recordings companies and majors through a surprising strategy of cultural
resistance, the wizard became a part of post-modernity, passed through the ritual of
renovation, and found his public once more in "another world", in the virtual space of the
Internet. Perhaps, in this way, he who is considered by many to be the greatest living
Brazilian instrumental musician, may finally feel himself to be at home.
83 According to the report by Hermeto Pascoal on 04/10/1998 and by Mauro Brandão Wermelinger and
Jovino Santos Neto in February 2008. See bibliography/interviews.
36
THE SYMBOLIC ARCHITECTURE OF THE HOUSE OF THE HERMETO PASCOAL FAMILY
First floor
Second floor
Lesser visibility/Silence
Greater visibility/Sound
Hermeto Pascoal
The Group
The neighbors
“Salon”/ “house”
Concert hall/ “street”
Composer
Performer/Arranger
The public, society
The regional / the universal
The national
The international
Urban (middle class)/ South Zone
Urban (elites)
“Natural”
“Conventional”
“Nature is the day-to-day"
Modal and Atonal
Tonal
Fusion
Olho D’água da Canoa (Alagoas,
1936-1950)
Recife, Caruaru, São Paulo and Rio de
Janeiro (1950-1970)
USA, Switzerland, France, Germany,
etc. (1970 - ... )
Autonomous accordeonist
Hired performer and arranger
Contracted and later independent composer
Dances and weddings
Radio/ Bars/ Night clubs/ Shows/ LPs /
TV/ multinationals
Majors, independents/ CDs/ DVDs/ Internet/
‘piracy’
Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian
music, folklore: coco, embolada,
forró, benditos, incelenças,
maracatu, etc
Popular – samba, choro, baião, frevo,
radio orchestras, regionals, bossa nova,
jazz, Quarteto Novo, MPB, Tropicália
International - American jazz and free jazz,
avant-garde classical music and experimental
music, Airto and Flora Purim.
Straw hat
Suíte and tie, hair quite short
Multi-colored shirts, long hair, felt hats
Pé-de-bode eight bass accordeon,
flauta de mamona, carrillon of pieces
of iron, percussion
Piano, contrabass, flute, sax, guitar,
accordeon, baritone horn, electronic
keyboards (DX-7, Fender Rhodes
piano), etc.
Orchestra and big band on the first disc under
his name, from 1972, Hermeto Pascoal:
Brazilian Adventure
Floriano the parrot, pássaros, the
dogs Princesa, Spock, Bolão, the
music of speech (“aura music”), nonconventional sound sources
Conventional instruments played in
unconventional ways, non-conventional
percussive sound sources (pots, wooden
shoes)
Orchestra of tuned bottles on his firs disc,
animal sounds, sound objects, "aura music"
The kitchen guarded by Dona Ilza
The Hermeto Pascoal Family . The
and the family made up of the couple “boys” of the Group and the producer and
and the six children
factotum Mauro Brandão Wermelinger
The foreign musicians with whom Hermeto
played (Miles Davis), and the Brazilian and
international visitors
“Back of the house”/ “yard”
Rural (lower class)/ West Zone
The space outside the house
Visible through the windows on the 2nd. floor
“Devotion” (“aura”)
Commercial arena
“Ambition” (merchandise)
The hidden - Holy space, popular
Catholicism, Afro-Brazilian
religions and spiritism. The
messages of the "Gift", Universal
music
The visible, offical Catholicism,
Brazilian society, the capitalist system,
the multi-national recording companies
Profane space, the transnational culture
industy, the Universal Music Corporation
“Missa dos Escravos”*, “Forró
alagoano”*, “Papagaio alegre”, “Ilza
na feijoada”, “Aula de natação”,
Calendário do som*
“Chorinho para ele”*, “Briguinha de
músicos malucos”, “Frevo em Maceió”,
“Carinhoso”*, “Mestre Radamés”
“Zurich”, “Montreux”*, “Arapuá”, “Suite
Mundo Grande”, “Sinfonia em quadrinhos”,
“Sinfonia do Alto da Ribeira”
Dona Ilza's feijoada, on Saturdays, would bring together the whole Família.
37
Acknowledgments
I thank to the teacher, musician and producer Mauro Brandão Wermelinger, for the
interviews he kindly gave me on 24/01/2008 and 17/02/2008. Pianist and composer
Jovino Santos Neto, for the important information sent through the mail. Musician and
researcher Ricardo Sá Reston for the data about some pioneering recordings of Hermeto
Pascoal, and finally to researcher of Brazilian music, Prof. Dr. Sean Stroud, for his
valuable comments of an initial version of this article.
6 – SOURCES
6.1 – BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Itatiaia, 1928, [2006], 5ª edição.
ANDRADE, Oswald de. O manifesto antropófago. In: TELES, Gilberto Mendonça.
Vanguarda européia e modernismo brasileiro: apresentação e crítica dos principais
manifestos vanguardistas. 3ª ed. Petrópolis: Vozes; Brasília: INL, 1976.
ARAÚJO, Paulo César de. Eu não sou cachorro não. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2005.
____ . Roberto Carlos, em detalhes. São Paulo: Editora Planeta, 2006.
BECKER, Howard. “Mundos artísticos e tipos sociais”. In: VELHO, Gilberto (org.).
Arte e sociedade – ensaios de sociologia da arte. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 1977, p.
9-25.
CALADO, Carlos. O Jazz como espetáculo. São Paulo, Perspectiva. 1990, p. 121-2.
____ . Tropicália: a história de uma revolução musical. São Paulo, Editora 34, 1997, p.
106-13.
CAMPOS, Augusto de. Balanço da bossa e outras bossas. São Paulo: Editora
Perspectiva, 1993.
CAZES, Henrique. Choro, do quintal ao Municipal. São Paulo: Edit. 34, 1998.
COSTA-LIMA NETO, Luiz. A música experimental de Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo
(1981-1993): concepção e linguagem. Dissertação de mestrado, UNIRIO, 1999.
____ . ‘The experimental music of Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo (1981-1993): a musical
system in the making’. In: REILY, Suzel Ana. British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 9/i,
“Brazilian Musics, Brazilian identities”. Inglaterra: British Forum for Ethnomusicology
2000, p. 119-142. http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/music/mclayton/bje9-1finalpdf.PDF
CYNTRÃO, Sylvia Helena (org.). A forma da festa, Tropicalismo: a explosão e seus
estilhaços. Brasília, Editora UNB, 2000.
DAPIEVE, Arthur. BRock: o rock brasileiro dos anos 80. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2000
(5ª edição), [1995], p. 55.
38
DIAS, Márcia Tosta. Os donos da voz: Indústria fonográfica brasileira e mundialização
da cultura. São Paulo: Boitempo Editorial, 2000, p. 41-3.
FAVARETTO, Celso. Tropicália, alegoria, alegria. São Paulo: Ateliê Editorial, 1996,
p. 106.
FRANÇA, Inácio. “Hermeto Brasileiro Universal”. Revista Continente, agosto de 2004,
p. 8-17.
GARCIA, Renata. A música livre de Hermeto Pascoal. Revista [email protected]. Londres, p.
27.
GEERTZ, Cliford. A interpretação das culturas. Rio de Janeiro: LTC, 1989, p. 13-41.
GONÇALVES, Mário e EDUARDO, Carlos. “Vivendo música”. Rio de Janeiro:
Revista Backstage. 1998, 39: 46-57.
GRAHAM, Laura R.. Performing Dreams: Discourses of Immortality Among the
Xavante of Central Brazil. EUA: University of Texas Press, 1995.
MARCONDES, Marcos Antônio et alli. Enciclopédia da música Brasileira, erudita,
folclórica e popular. São Paulo: PubliFolha, 1998, p. 606-607.
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____ . O Calendário do som. São Paulo: Itaú Cultural / Editora Senac, 2000, p. 16-9.
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for Ethnomusicology, 2000, p. 1-10.
____ . Voices of the Magi: Enchanted Journeys in Southeast Brazil. Chicago:
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SANDRONI, Carlos. O Feitiço decente: transformações do samba no Rio de Janeiro.
Rio de Janeiro: Editora Jorge Zahar, 2001.
SANTOS NETO, Jovino. Tudo é som: the music of Hermeto Pascoal. USA: Universal
Edition, 2001, p. 5-12.
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Edição, [1979], p. 9-18.
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____ . Modernismo e música brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor, 2000, p. 08.
____. “O avião brasileiro: a análise de uma embolada”. In: TRAVASSOS, Elizabeth,
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em música. UNIRIO. Rio de Janeiro: 1997, p. 80-100.
____ . ."Música romântica in Montes Claros: inter-gender relations in Brazilian popular
song." In: REILY, Suzel Ana, (org.). British Journal of Ethnomusicology 9/i. Inglaterra:
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de Janeiro: MultiMais Editorial, 1998.
VIANNA, Hermano. O Mundo funk carioca. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Jorge Zahar, 1988.
____ . O mistério do samba. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Jorge Zahar, 1995.
WISNIK, José Miguel. O som e o sentido: uma outra história das músicas. São Paulo:
Companhia das Letras, 1999, p. 209-211.
40
6.2 - INTERVIEWS
Carlos Malta, 26/03/1998
Hermeto Pascoal, 10/11/1997 e 04/10/1998
Itiberê Zwarg, 04/10/1998
Jovino Santos Neto, 10/06/1997, 18/08/1998, 17/02/2008 e 25/02/2008a
Márcio Bahia, 12/02/1998 e 02/10/1998
Mauro Brandão Wermelinger, 24/01/2008 e 17/02/2008a
6.3 - DISCOGRAPHY CITED IN THE ARTICLE
Os Cinco-pados. 1964. Heraldo do Monte. Chantecler, CMG 2300.
Sambrasa Trio. 1966.
Beatles. Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. EMI (1967).
Quarteto Novo. CD EMI, EMIBR 827 497-2, [1967].
Natural Feelings. Com Airto e Flora Purim, Buddah Records, 1970.
Seeds on the ground. Com Airto e Flora Purim, One way Records, 1971.
Hermeto Pascoal: Brazilian Adventure. CD. Muse Records [Cobblestone/Buddah
Records], MCD 6006, 1972.
A música livre de Hermeto Pascoal. LP PolyGram, PLG BR 8246211, 1973.
Slaves Mass. Warner Bros. CD 73752-2, 1977 [2004].
Zabumbê-bum-á. CD WEA Brasil, 1978.
Hermeto Pascoal ao vivo em Montreux CD. WEA Brasil, 092741435-2, [1979].
Cérebro magnético. WEA 092741434-2, [1980].
Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo. CD. Som da Gente.SDG 010/92, 1982.
Lagoa da Canoa – Município de Arapiraca. CD. Som da Gente, SDG 011/92, 1984.
Brasil Universo. CD. Som da Gente, SDG 012/93, 1985.
Só não toca quem não quer. CD. Som da Gente. SDG 001/87, 1987.
Por diferentes caminhos. Som da Gente, 1989.
Mundo Verde Esperança. Não lançado, 1989.
41
Festa dos Deuses. CD. PolyGram, PLGBR 510 407-2, 1992.
Eu e eles. CD. Selo Rádio MEC, 1999.
Mundo Verde Esperança. CD. Selo Rádio MEC, 2002.
Chimarrão com rapadura. CD independente, 2006.
Itiberê Orquestra Família. Calendário do Som. CD duplo. Gravadora Maritaca, 2005.
6.4 - DVD
KAURISMAKI, Mika. Brasileirinho: grandes encontros do choro contemporâneo.
DVD, Rob digital/Studio Uno.
6.5 – URLS
http://www.hermetopascoal.com.br
http://www.miscelaneavanguardiosa.blogspot.com
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=pnHs057-aqQ
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=2GWO1hW8CIc&feature=related
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ_BiscK9ZE&feature=related
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=SrgveUpwCnM&feature=related
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=lqKMEdCPons&feature=related
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=Y10Ewgcqky8&feature=related
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=W821bgUU_mY&feature=related
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=EPEea11HtTg&feature=related
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=isIUdaxrbdM&feature=related
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=lWixiKYWv1A
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=Le-4C2TqP6k&feature=related
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=8p8C0AfFSQ0&feature=related
http://www.camara.gov.br/internet/TVcamara/default.asp?selecao=MAT&velocidade=1
00k&Materia=48715
http://www.camara.gov.br/internet/TVcamara/default.asp?selecao=MAT&velocidade=1
00k&Materia=48949
http://www.camara.gov.br/internet/TVcamara/default.asp?selecao=MAT&velocidade=1
00k&Materia=48950
http://www.orkut.com/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=10980&tid=2489510022838154349&k
42
w=entrevista
http://alltribes.blogspot.com/search/label/HERMETO%20PASCOAL
http://www.allmusic.com
http://www.memoriamusical.com.br
http://www.abracadabra-br.blogspot.com
http://www.dicionariompb.com.br
http://www.museuvillalobos.org.br/villalob/biografi/villaeua/index.htm
http://www.modernsound.com.br/default2.asp
http://www.Submarino.com.br
http://www.frevo.pe.gov.br/arranjadores.htm
http://www.brasil.net.co.uk
http://abracadabra-br.blogspot.com/2007/02/os-cinco-pados-os-cinco-pados-1965here.html