Friday, September 27, 2002
Deep beauty
In Artigo Oitavo, Etel Frota writes,
speaks, and sings of love and pain.
Thiago de Mello, Etel Frota,
and Rodolfo Stroeter
Etel Frota is a Curitiban physician (no longer in practice) and award-winning cultural producer and poet who’s deeply involved in the contemporary music scene of her city (read her verse “Origami,” recorded in Iso Fischer’s album Camera Pop). This year she combined her abiding interests in the written, spoken, and sung word and, taking advantage of a municipal law for cultural incentive (widely utilized by independent artists in Curitiba), produced Artigo Oitavo, a handsome poetry book with a bundled CD in which selected poems were recorded—some read, some sung, but all with musical accompaniment—by a team of top musicians, singers, and actors.
The title Artigo Oitavo derives from famed Amazonian poet Thiago de Mello’s work Os Estatutos do Homem (Statutes of Man), the eighth article of which states:
Artigo VIII
Fica decretado que a maior dor
sempre foi e será sempre
não poder dar amor a quem se ama
e saber que é a água
que dá à planta o milagre da flor.
Thiago de Mello
Os Estatutos do Homem
Etel Frota’s poems revolve around love and pain, spirit and body, subjects that she treats with frankness, delicacy, and unvarnished beauty. The sensitive recordings, produced by Rodolfo Stroeter, make for ideal listening on an evening free of distractions, when the lights may be dimmed, the eyes closed, and the mind given over to the poet’s—and the woman’s—world.
In the prologue she tells us:
[...] As rimas me nascem
dos intestinos
nunca das gramáticas [...]
before plunging directly into the heart of the matter:
das Dores
Coisa mais feliz da vida é filho
quando nasce
mesmo quando nos falha a anestesia
Coisa mais bonita da vida é filho
quando ri
mesmo enquanto troca os dentes
Coisa mais triste da vida é filho
quando morre
por mais e sinceramente que se acredite na eternidade [...]
“das Dores” is spoken, while the next poem, “dolor,” is sung to a tune possessing an insistent refrain that recalls Kurt Weill’s work in Mahagonny. Thiago de Mello joins Etel in “Artigo Oitavo,” a track in which he declaims fragments from Os Estatutos do Homem, interspersed with her reading the homage she wrote for him, “Lira de teus setent’anos”:
Tenho-te à guisa de um deus...
E de repente me vejo
transportada num desejo
sentada junto dos teus. [...]
Track 5, called “5 of the Seed,” includes some of the loveliest moments in the disc—four enchanting lullabies sung by Mônica Salmaso. Here is one of them:
Uma canção para Clara
Clara
pedra tão rara
olhos azuis
Clara
pedra tão rara
gema de um ovo
prenhe de luz
Etel Frota & Mônica Salmaso
In “Circadiana” the physician/poet describes the seven humors that circulate within her, jazzily accompanied by Teco Cardoso’s soprano sax and Stroeter’s bass:
Circulam em mim sete humores
sabores, cheiros e cores [...]
[...] Circulam em mim sete humores
mandam em mim, fazem lei.
Uns conheço. Uns se escondem.
Sobre estes uns nada sei.
“Incesto,” sung by Cristina Lemos of O Tao do Trio, bespeaks the sensual dreams most of us keep hidden:
[...] Ai, menino
não vês que te vejo
franzino menino
escondido a espiar?
Água ligeira
levou meu suor
e poeira
(Lambe-me a pele) [...]
It’s fitting that thoughts of incest should be followed by a contemplation of the spiritual; what, after all, is the difference between the two? “Espírito Santo” reveals in actor Cacá Carvalho’s voice:
[...] A cada palavra
que me sonegas
um anjo vem
e me sopra a nuca
bem ali
onde nasce o arrepio. [...]
After forbidden pleasures there’s bound to be some cleaning up, as in “Penélope”:
[...] Ocupemo-nos agora
com a limpeza
e esterilização
Água sanitária, sabão
muita água, panos limpos [...]
[...] Pronto
Está tudo muito limpo
um cheiro de nada no ar [...]
But let us not despair, for poetry prevails over the travails of life, as we learn in the epilogue:
[...] Era uma vez um poeta
que invertou a profecia
apunhalou a poesia
quando a coitada dormia
e foi ser desto na vida
mas se é do poeta um dia
o outro é da poesia
(de morta elasó fingia)
Levantou
lambeu-se onde ainda doía
espiou por uma fresta
da alma daquele poeta
A tarde era calma. Chovia [...]
How does it all end? Read more here.
Etel Frota: Artigo Oitavo
(Independent; 2002) 67:17 min.
All poems by Etel Frota unless otherwise indicated
01. Prólogo — Cacá Carvalho & Etel Frota
02. das Dores (music by Liane Guariente & Iso Fischer) — Etel Frota & Liane Guariente
03. dolor (music by Iso Fischer) — Nice Luz
04. Artigo Oitavo [fragmentos] (Thiago de Mello)
Lira de teus setent’anos (Etel Frota) — Thiago de Mello & Etel Frota
05. 5 da Semente (music by Angelmar Roman & Etel Frota) — Mônica Salmaso & Etel Frota
06. Circadiana — Etel Frota
07. Incesto (music by Etel Frota & Lydio Roberto) — Etel Frota & Cristina Lemos
08. Espírito Santo — Cacá Carvalho
09. Penélope (music by Indioney Rodrigues) — Etel Frota & Suzie Franco
10. Epílogo — Etel Frota & Cacá Carvalho
Musicians:
André Mehmari, piano & keyboards
Sérgio Justen, piano
Teco Cardoso, flutes & tenor saxophone
Rodolfo Stroeter, acoustic bass
Caíto Marcondes, percussion
Lydio Roberto, guitar in track 7
Webster Santos, 10-string guitar & bandolim in track 7
__________________________
18:06
 
Monday, September 23, 2002
The Boeuf chronicles, Pt. 5a
Who was José Monteiro?
José Monteiro
As we know, the song that gave Le Boeuf sur le Toit its name was the tango “O Boi no Telhado” (The Ox on the Roof) by José Monteiro (aka Zé Boiadêro), released for the 1918 carnaval.
Who was the composer of “O Boi no Telhado”?
If he ever published another tune, the fact hasn’t been bandied about. Fundação Joaquim Nabuco’s database of 78-rpm recordings released between 1902 and 1964 lists only one composition of his authorship—the one we know:
Autor: José Monteiro
Título: O Boi no Telhado
Gênero: Tango
Intérprete: Banda do Batalhão Naval
Gravadora: Odeon
Número: 121432
Yet there are references to a José Monteiro who was active in Rio musical circles of the period. In 1922, Pixinguinha’s famed group Os Oito Batutas was invited by the Paris-based Brazilian maxixe dancer Duque to come to the City of Lights and perform at his Shéhérazade dance hall. As three of the musicians (the Palmieri brothers and Luiz Pinto da Silva) were unable to travel, new members were recruited, and the Batutas performed in Paris as a septet. José Monteiro was this septet’s vocalist and played rhythm as well.
Sérgio Cabral’s book Pixinguinha, Vida e Obra (Rio de Janeiro, Lumiar, 1997) displays on page 84 a photograph published in the Rio newspaper A Noite on 14 August 1922, the day Os Batutas returned from their French trip. The headline announces that the “8 Batutas” returned from Paris, and in fact eight people posed for the photo, but only seven of them are Batutas. The gentleman in white tie and tails on the extreme right is Duque.
Os Batutas in August 1922
Standing, left to right, are: Pixinguinha (flute); José Alves de Lima (banjo); José Monteiro (reco-reco); Sizenando Santos “Feniano” (pandeiro); Duque. Sitting, l to r: China (guitar); Nelson dos Santos Alves (cavaquinho); Donga (guitar).
What is known about José Monteiro the Batuta?
In 1936, the chorão Alexandre Gonçalves Pinto, aka “Animal,” published the book of memoirs O Choro—reminiscências dos chorões antigos, which constituted a virtual who’s who of the choro world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
About José Monteiro, “Animal” wrote:
Who didn’t know Zé Monteiro in Engenho de Dentro?
A singer of modinhas who dazzled, for he possessed a marvelous voice! Zé Monteiro was a prince on the cavaquinho, a person well-liked by Guttemberg Cruz; He carried the day on 13 de Maio street, now Abolição, in Engenho de Dentro, in parties of old. He was an obligatory figure in all the “pagodes,” outshining the famous singers. When—in parlors or outdoors at night—he sang the lyrics of the great Catullo, he garnered from the people the greatest applause! Obliging the other singers to retire backstage!
This singer, who made so many hearts pulsate, is also unhappily sleeping the sleep of eternity.
In 1968, Pixinguinha gave the Museu da Imagem e do Som (MIS) in Rio de Janeiro a testimonial that was published in the book As vozes desassombradas do museu, 1: Pixinguinha, Donga, Joao da Baiana (MIS, 1970). In the course of his testimonial, the composer mentioned José Monteiro as one of the Batutas who had traveled to Europe and was asked:
MIS—José Monteiro is that guitarist and singer of modinhas from Engenho de Dentro?
Pixinguinha—So it would appear. He was a dark and thin singer who was a regular at the Chave de Ouro. He sang well. According to João da Baiana, he lived in rua Vista Alegre, in Encantado, and worked as a bricklayer in the Workshops of Engenho de Dentro.
It’s not much to go on, and there’s no direct evidence to link the Batuta José Monteiro with the composition of “O Boi no Telhado.” I asked Sérgio Cabral for his opinion, and he replied:
The references to José Monteiro that I encountered are the same ones you have. I think, however, that there’s no escaping this evidence: all the references to José Monteiro that appear in exactly the same period deal with the same person, since nothing indicates the existence of more than one José Monteiro.
And what’s good enough for Sérgio Cabral is good enough for me.
__________________________
21:07
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
To Africa via Minas Gerais
Sérgio Santos steps up the rhythm with Áfrico.
The mineiro singer/composer Sérgio Santos has a rich history of collaboration with the poet/lyricist Paulo Cesar Pinheiro. Together they created over 180 songs, including all the tracks for Santos’ first two CDs, Aboio (1995) and Mulato (1998).
In November 2000, Paulo Cesar Pinheiro published the poetry book Atabaques, Violas e Bambus. The three instruments of the title represent the three fonts of Brazilian culture: the atabaques stand for its African roots, the violas for its European sources, and the bamboos for its indigenous origins. The tri-racial crucible is one of Pinheiro’s best-known themes, having served as the topic of the celebrated samba “Canto das Três Raças,” a major hit for Clara Nunes. Yet in Atabaques, Violas e Bambus, the concept was taken to its logical extreme, as the poet utilized a vocabulary so specialized that a glossary was required to understand much of the content.
Not long after the publication of the book, Pinheiro began to collaborate with two of his composer partners, Mario Gil and Sérgio Santos, on new songs for discs to be recorded by them. The work with Gil revolved around the indigenous component of the tri-racial formula, while the songs created with Santos were African in flavor. The latter were recently released on the disc Áfrico—Quando o Brasil Resolveu Cantar, which has already won a Best CD award at the Prêmio Rival BR in Rio de Janeiro. It would be natural to assume that the song lyrics were taken from Atabaques, Violas e Bambus, but as I questioned Santos about it, it turned out not to have been the case.
DT—Did the idea for Áfrico emerge from PCP’s book or independently?
Sérgio Santos—The idea originally had nothing to do with PCP’s book Atabaques, Violas e Bambus. It wasn’t my intention then to create a work with these characteristics. I didn’t think, “Now I'm going to make a disc about our African influences.” What I did in the beginning was an attempt to elaborate the rhythmic element in my compositions. I’ve always been very preoccupied with the harmony and the melody. I had never been inclined toward the rhythm. This time I began by creating arpeggios on the guitar, and they led me to the creation of the compositions, still without lyrics. Suddenly I perceived that I had various tunes that sounded to me like having an African flavor. It seemed logical: if you’re Brazilian and are going to research rhythms in depth, you’ll inevitably reach the origin—Africa. However, Africa was my point of arrival, not that of departure. It reached me without my having looked for it, almost by chance. From that point, I decided to propose to Paulo Cesar that we should compose a totally thematic work, and he assimilated the idea in a magnificent way. He used an enormous variety of words from African dialects like Nago and Yoruba. And this is how the disc took shape. We ended up telling a story, which has always been what I like to do and is the way I always seek to record an album.
DT—Did you work with PCP’s poems, or did he write new lyrics for the disc?
SS—All the lyrics were written for this work. I think that PCP’s lyrics provide the great thematic substance of Áfrico. They orient and direct all the content of the disc toward a Brazil that is there in the depths of us all. It’s our history of miscegenation, people of mixed race seeking to build a cultural identity. And the lyrics tell of this long trajectory, from the beginning until today. I researched nothing to make the songs, they’re the result of my own life of a boy from the country’s interior, who heard the congados, the catopês, the folias de reis; and, as the son of a nordestino and a carioca, also the maracatus, the côcos, the cirandas, and the samba. It was as if I closed my eyes and allowed this life to do the talking. But exactly for this reason, the lyrics of Paulinho were so precious: If my tunes came to me in an almost unconscious way, his lyrics are my counterpoint. Because he did dig deep, researched, went to the roots on purpose. And the sum of these differences is for me the soul of the work.
DT—How did you translate these concepts to the production of the disc?
SS—One thing I’d like to stress is the important role played by the musicians, the producer Rodolfo Stroeter, and the record company Biscoito Fino, who made all our ideas possible. For me, the great difficulty beyond the decision to record Áfrico was to know what type of sonority the disc should have. In Brazil this theme had been thoroughly explored, and it would have been a risk to repeat the idioms already utilized. I had to avoid everything that had been done along these lines, so as not to be repetitive. My commitment was to seek another avenue of sound. For this purpose, the musicians had to be hand-picked. I thought of constructing the percussions and the drums (Tutty Moreno, Marcos Suzano, and Robertinho Silva) as the support for the accumulated sonority. They would be my feet, firmly planted in the traditions of Brazil and Africa. Above that layer, I thought of musicians who were closely related to modern music and who had contacts with other musical languages (the pianist André Mehmari, the bassist Rodolfo Stroeter, the saxophonist Teco Cardoso, and the violinist Sílvio D’Amico). I added to them the totally unusual and futuristic character of the mineiro group Uakti, which constructs its own instruments and possesses a uniquely characteristic sound. It was with these selections that I planned to guarantee the sonorous originality of the work. The participations of Lenine, Joyce, and Olívia Hime were also delicious.
Once the team had been defined, we had to define how it was going to play. The songs don’t have a defined rhythm; it wouldn’t have been simple to record them. I couldn’t enter the studio and say, “let’s play, this is a samba” or “this is a baião” In some cases, the rhythmic progressions were mixtures of several rhythms. In others, one song could be played in several different rhythms. And several other songs had rhythms that didn't even exist, we had to invent them. So we did a pre-production. We went to São Paulo and shut ourselves in a studio for a week and played as if we were rehearsing for a show, until we found a definitive way to play. Then we went to the recording studio in Rio and, with the exception of my voice, the percussions, and the wind section, the group played together, like a live recording in a studio. There are many improvisations on piano with the saxophone that were possible only because we were all playing together. In short, the musicians’ contribution was immense. They were awesome, all of them.
Listen to an audio sample.
Sérgio Santos: Áfrico—Quando o Brasil Resolveu Cantar
(Biscoito Fino BF508; 2002) 53:37 min.
All songs by Sérgio Santos & Paulo Cesar Pinheiro unless otherwise indicated.
01. Vem Ver [abertura] (Sérgio Santos)
02. Galanga Chico-Rei
03. Oluô
04. Ganga Zumbi
05. Kêkêrêkê
06. Sincretismo
07. Vem Ver [vinheta 1] (Sérgio Santos)
08. Olorum
09. Nagô
10. Saruê
11. Gongá
12. Vem Ver [vinheta 2] (Sérgio Santos)
13. Quilombola
14. Áfrico
15. Quitanda das Iaôs
16. Jongo de Joâo-Congo
17. Nossa Cor
18. Vem Ver (Sérgio Santos)
__________________________
17:17
Saturday, September 14, 2002
The Boeuf chronicles, Pt. 22
Farewell to the sertão.
Marcelo Tupinambá
The rural interior of Brazil, particularly of the northeast, is known as the sertão. The historian Janaína Amado claims that the name derives from desert (deserto, desertão, sertão), for these regions are often arid and plagued by droughts. Poverty and misery induced mass migration of sertanejos to the large cities, where their unique lore entered the collective Brazilian culture, establishing itself deeply in literature and entertainment (read Maria Amélia Garcia de Alencar’s paper Cultura e identidade nos sertões do Brasil: representações na música popular).
The sertanejo’s sorrow of dislocation is a recurrent theme in popular song, and it is expressed in the 22nd tune quoted by Milhaud in Le Boeuf sur le Toit.
Tune No. 22: “Que Sôdade!” (1918)
“Que Sôdade!” is the sixth of seven tunes by Marcelo Tupinambá to be quoted in Le Boeuf:
1. São Paulo Futuro (Marcelo Tupinambá/Danton Vampré; 1914)
2. Viola Cantadeira (Marcelo Tupinambá/Arlindo Leal; 1917)
3. O Matuto (Marcelo Tupinambá/Cândido Costa; 1918)
4. Tristeza de Caboclo (Marcelo Tupinambá/Arlindo Leal; 1919)
5. Maricota, Sai da Chuva (Marcelo Tupinambá/Arlindo Leal; 1917)
6. Que Sodade! (Marcelo Tupinambá/Arlindo Leal; 1918)
All six songs deal with sertanejo themes—some humorously, some lyrically. In “Que Sodade!” the mood of the lyrics is melancholy, revolving as it does around the parting of a pair of lovers (the man takes leave, presumably to seek work in a metropolis of the south). Yet the music is upbeat, as may have been required in the music halls of the period.
Milhaud’s quotation of “Que Sodade!” occurs at 11:59 min. into Louis de Froment’s recording of Le Boeuf sur le Toit. 
The original tune was recorded several times in different styles. Fundação Joaquim Nabuco’s database of 78-rpm recordings lists the following two instrumental renditions:
Autor: Marcelo Tupinambá
Título: Que Sodade
Gênero: Samba
Intérprete: Bloco dos Parafusos
Gravadora: Odeon
Número: 121448
Autor: Marcelo Tupinambá
Título: Que Sodade
Gênero: Tango
Intérprete: Orquestra Odeon de São Paulo
Gravadora: Odeon
Número: 121498
More recent recordings were made by singer/folklorist Ely Camargo (in the ’60s Chantecler album Canções da Minha Terra No. 4), paulista guitarist Poly on Hawaiian steel guitar (possibly in the ’70s), and Oswaldo Sbarro with Conjunto Serenata (1974). We’ll hear an excerpt from Ely Camargo’s recording.
Ely Camargo
The piano score, registered P5341, bears the headline Cine-Orchestra like the score of “Tristeza de Caboclo,” released the following year. The lyrics are couched in expressions of extreme sorrow and spelled according to the colloquial sertanejo pronunciation. Note the marked contrast between the heart-rending verse and the levity of the melody.
Que Sôdade!..
Scena Sertaneja
Arreglo de Arlindo Leal
Musica de Marcello Tupynambá
ELLE:
Cada vez que aconsidero,
Que eu tenho de le deixá,
Me foge o sangue das veia
E o coração do lugá!
E fico chóra-chorando,
Oiando, triste, p'ro á.
No coração amargando
O meu pená!... [bis]
Ai!
ELLA:
Não óia tanto p'ro á,
Qui vae morrê de tristura,
Se aconsola, que, na vida,
Só se véve de amargura!...
Não fica chóra-chorando,
Oiando, triste, p'ro á.
Procura î disfarçando
O teu pená!... [bis]
Ai!
ELLE:
Adeus, adeus, vô m'imbora,
Vorto a sumana qui vem...
Quem não me cunhece chora,
Qui fará quem mi quér bem!...
P'ro isso chóro-chorando,
E óio, triste, p'ro á.
Prô que me tá tormentando
Este pená!... [bis]
Ai!
ELLA:
Adeus, adeus, vórta logo,
Sucéga, carma essa dô,
Qui tu vae, mas fica aqui
Te esperando meu amô!...
Não fica chóra-chorando,
Oiando, triste, p'ro á.
Meu coração vae levando
P'ra tu com elle sonhá!... [bis]
Ai!
ELLE:
Vou alegre, vou cantando,
Sem tristura e sem pená?
Teu coração alevando
P'ra podê com tu sonhá!...
ELLA:
Vae alegre, vae cantando,
Sem tristura, sem pená?
Meu coração alevando
P'ra tu com elle sonhá!...
JUNTOS:
ELLE: Vou alegre, vou cantando, etc.
ELLA: Vae alegre, vae cantando, etc.
__________________________
10:44
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