Tuesday, August 13, 2002
See you in September
An unexpected trip is putting the magazine on hold until mid-September.
When we return, there’ll be an interview with Sérgio Santos about his new disc Áfrico; a glimpse into the fascinating world of early choro; a portrait of Brazil’s world-class Brecht-Weill interpreter Suzana Salles; more Boeuf chronicles (the complete series will comprise a minimum of 30 articles); sublime new poetry (some of it sung) by Etel Frota; Juscelino Kubitschek nostalgia from Wagner Tiso & Zé Renato; and much more.
Until then, take care.
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07:37
 
Saturday, August 10, 2002
The Boeuf chronicles, Pt. 21
And now for something slightly classical.
Alexandre Levy
During his close to two years in Brazil, Darius Milhaud observed many aspects of the country’s music. In his unpublished article Bresilien Music [sic], written at Mills College in 1942 or ’43, Milhaud described various popular musical genres and their origins, as well as the work of erudite composers such as Carlos Gomes, Alberto Nepomuceno, Henrique Oswald, Francisco Braga, Glauco Velásquez, Luciano Gallet, Villa-Lobos, Francisco Mignone, Oscar Lorenzo Fernandes, Radamés Gnattali, and Camargo Guarnieri.
Of the above mentioned composers, only one (Nepomuceno) is quoted in Le Boeuf sur le Toit, but his is by no means the only “serious” composition borrowed by Milhaud. Although Milhaud never mentioned Alexandre Levy by name, he used his most famous work in the rondo.
Tune No. 21: “Tango Brasileiro” (1890)
Alexandre Levy (1864–1892) was a composer, pianist, conductor, and music critic who lived in São Paulo, where he died at the age of 27. His father was the French clarinetist Louis Levy, who settled in São Paulo four years prior to Alexandre’s birth and founded the musical instrument store Casa Levy, an important gathering place for the city’s musicians and artists. A child prodigy, Alexandre began playing in public at the age of eight and was compared to Mozart by the music critics of his time. He studied in Paris and traveled in Europe, and his output included orchestral, chamber, and instrumental solo music. Levy’s mature compositions showed marked nationalist traits, incorporating themes from folklore and urban as well as rural popular tunes.
A text published by Brazil’s National Library points to the nationalist discourse that dominated the late 19th century—a time when slavery was abolished and the Republic was declared—as the engine that propelled nationalist music. The text focuses attention on Levy and Alberto Nepomuceno, quoting Mário de Andrade:
E realmente são estes dois homens [...] as primeiras conformações eruditas do novo estado de consciência coletivo que se formava na evolução social da nossa música, o nacionalista.
In the website he dedicated to Alexandre Levy, Nando Florestan provides the following information about the composition:
Tango Brasileiro was published in 1890 in a newspaper, the Diario Popular, “as a gift to our graceful readers.” This was of course a reference to the young ladies, who were supposed and indeed used to play the piano. But the sympathy of the Tango has transcended those nineteenth-century interpreters and the piece is now standard Brazilian repertoire. Guiomar Novaes, Antonieta Rudge and Eudóxia de Barros are some of the pianists who have recorded it.
Levy’s Tango alternates constantly between A major and A minor. The ending chord in A minor is unexpected, since the last section is in A major—just the opposite of the Baroque custom of ending pieces written in a minor key with a major chord.
Eudóxia de Barros and Osvaldo Lacerda
In the same site, Florestan offers several audio recordings of Levy’s work, performed by the pianist Eudóxia de Barros.
Fundação Joaquim Nabuco’s database of 78-rpm recordings lists only one of “Tango Brasileiro,” recorded by none other than Aloysio de Alencar Pinto, principal identifier of the Boeuf tunes:
Autor: Alexandre Levy
Título: Tango Brasileiro
Intérprete: Aloisio Pinto (piano)
Gravadora: Victor
Número: 87.5518-A
Matriz: B3VB0323
Data gravação: 03.12.1953
Data lançamento: Mar/1954
We’ll compare section B of “Tango Brasileiro” as it is quoted by Milhaud at 11:20 min. into Louis de Froment’s recording of Le Boeuf sur le Toit  with an excerpt from Eudóxia de Barros’ recording of the original composition.
In a final appearance, the opening of “Tango Brasileiro” serves as the closing of Le Boeuf sur le Toit, where it appears twice, following the 14th and the 15th reiterations of the rondo theme.
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16:58
Tuesday, August 06, 2002
The political side of Ary Barroso
Chamberlain, Hitler, Carmen,
and the mixed salad.
Collage: Daniella Thompson, 2002
The political side of Ary Barroso is seldom discussed. At times it’s been suggested that he created “Aquarela do Brasil” to please the dictator Getúlio Vargas, a suggestion that his daughter Mariuza strongly denies. As it happens, the presence of a truly political song Ary wrote just a few months before “Aquarela” discredits the Vargas-connection theory.
On 29 September 1938, Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Edouard Daladier, and Benito Mussolini signed the Munich Pact, which allowed Nazi Germany to march into Czechoslovakia and annex the Sudetenland without a single shot being fired. This so-called act of appeasement on the part of Great Britain and France was meant to give Hitler “a chance of being a good boy,” as Nevile Henderson, British Amabassador to Germany, had so quaintly put it. In retrospect, the Sudetenland merely served as the first course in Hitler’s banquet.
If England and France were blind, one Brazilian songwriter was not. A little over a month after the Munich Pact, Ary Barroso’s marcha “Salada Mista” (or “Salada Mixta,” as it was spelled then) was released on record. Carmen Miranda sang it in her irrepressible style, accompanied by the Odeon orchestra under the direction of the legendary Simon Bountman.
In 1980, Abril Cultural reissued an excerpt from “Salada Mista” on the LP Documentos Sonoros—Nosso Século, a compilation of songs related to important historical events and recorded between 1900 and 1979. The first verse and the refrain were reproduced in the liner notes. The entire song was reissued by EMI in the 1996 five-CD box set Carmen Miranda that soon disappeared from the market. Fortunately, the recording is available on the delightful compilation CD Carmen Miranda 1930–1945, released in 1997 by the British label Harlequin.*
Among its 23 tracks, the Harlequin CD also offers the lighthearted marcha “Cuidado com a Gaita do Ary” (Oswaldo Santiago/Paulo Barbosa), another 1938 recording. The latter song is the Pequena Notável’s tribute to her great friend, who in addition to being a songwriter, wore numerous other hats, including that of Brazil’s best-known football commentator. For several decades, Ary’s miniature mouth organ was heard on the radio whenever his beloved Flamengo scored a goal. “Cuidado com a Gaita do Ary” reproduces the trill of that famous gaita.
“Salada Mista” was published in Songbook Ary Barroso, Vol. 2 (Lumiar Editora). The lyrics below, extracted from Carmen Miranda’s recording, are notable for their bite:
Salada Mista
(Ary Barroso)
Uma pitada de massa de tomate
All right, all right
E três gotinhas de molho inglês
Só três, só três1
Algumas2 gramas de petit-pois
François, François
E ficou pronto o pirão do chanceler
Que papou de colher
Que papou de colher
Disse o francês
“Oui, oui, oui”
Disse o inglês
“Yes, yes, yes”
Quem não gostou
Foi o tchecoslovaco
Que deu o cavaco
Que deu o cavaco
E o italiano entrou
Então na salada
E não sobrou nada
E não sobrou nada
1. In Songbook Ary Barroso, Vol. 2, the words “Só três, só três” are replaced by “OK, OK.”
2. The gender error must have been used to improve the meter.
Listen to an excerpt from the recording.
As the record label below shows, “Salada Mista” was approved by the censors and bears a registration number from the Department of Press and Propaganda—the notoroius DIP. This is most surprising, considering Vargas’ sympathetic stance toward Hitler and Mussolini. Another surprising aspect of this disc is the song relegated to side B: it was none other than “Na Baixa do Sapateiro.”
Image courtesy of Dijalma M. Candido
= = =
* At the end of 2003, Revivendo commemorated Ary Barroso’s centennial with the 6-CD compilation Ary Barroso–Nossa Homenagem–100 Anos. “Salada Mista” is included in Volume 3.
My thanks to Virgílio de Oliveira Moreira for alerting me to the political content of the song.
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11:27
Friday, August 02, 2002
Meu pai, o chorão
A cantora Giselle Martine fala de Gerson Ferreira Pinto.
Giselle Martine
Meu pai, Gerson Ferreira Pinto, era saxofonista e flautista do grupo Fórmula 7, tocando ao lado de Luizão Maia, Hélio Delmiro, Marcio Montarroyos, entre outras feras. É dele a flauta linda da gravação de “Canção do Amanhecer” de Edu Lobo pelo Fórmula 7. Ele também é que tocava o sax na abertura do programa Hoje é dia de rock de Jair de Taumaturgo nos anos 60.
Depois que se formou em Engenharia Química, largou a música profissional e passou a se envolver com o choro. Tocando no grupo Amigos do Choro, ganhou dois concursos ao lado do bandolinista Rossini Ferreira: um, no teatro João Caetano; outro, o concurso da TV Bandeirantes, onde competiram com Sivuca, Copinha, gente importante do meio do choro.
Após estes eventos que foram fundamentais no período de “renascimento” do choro, o grupo foi convidado prá gravar um disco, hoje considerado marco do choro, Amigos do Choro, também lançado no Japão e considerado o melhor disco instrumental de 1978 pela crítica especializada.
Quando o Rossini saiu do conjunto e voltou prá Pernambuco, o grupo se desfez pela morte de alguns dos membros, principalmente do primeiro violão, Jair Justino de Oliveira, o “Boi”, sustentáculo do grupo e responsável pelos arranjos dos 3 violões em tercinas.
Tempos depois, reuniram-se de novo, e tinha roda de choro todo sábado na minha casa, com presenças ilustres como Déo Rian e outros. E desta vez o grupo contava com outro cavaquinista, o Paulo Heleno, que tocava no Conversa de Cordas, e um outro violonista, o Sérgio, que foi aluno e amigo pessoal do Meira, uma verdadeira enciclopédia de músicas antigas e inéditas de gente como Ismael Silva, Claudionor Cruz e outros sambistas da Velha Guarda. Naquela altura, estava me organizando prá levantar junto a ele algumas músicas, registrar algumas destas esquecidas, já que ele sabia tocar as canções e tinha de cor suas letras também. Infelizmente, com cerca de 60 anos, ele morreu bestamente de uma pneumonia galopante.
Depois disso meu pai nunca mais tocou. Perdeu o gosto pelo instrumento, o que é uma pena. Uma vez Altamiro disse ao meu pai que ninguém tocaria o “Ansiedade” do Rossini melhor que ele. De vez em quando aconteciam uns churrascos na casa de parentes dele, Altamiro, e o Mauricio Carrilho convidou meu pai, prá estimulá-lo. Mas ele diz que já não sente vontade alguma de tocar, só ouvir. O fato é que há pouco tempo o flautista Léo [Miranda] gravou um disco de Callado, e suas fontes de pesquisa incluíram o acervo de meu pai.
Houve um tempo que papai andava por aí, pesquisando tudo, sobre os compositores de choro que ninguém tem muitos registros, coisa e tal. Sempre fez isso por amor, jamais quis ganhar dinheiro da música desde que deixou de ser profissional dela.
Agora está às voltas com outro tipo de pesquisa. Lançou um livro científico na área dele e está preparando o segundo. Agora o que mais interessa a meu pai é o livro a que também ele está se dedicando sobre as plantas brasileiras e suas potencialidades dentro da química. É um trabalho sério, em que ele está listando milhares de plantas nativas nacionais e para o qual convidou botânicos para participar. Não há nada do tipo ainda no Brasil.
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09:53
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