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The Musical Universe of HermetoPascoalLuiz Costa-Lima Neto

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The Musical Universe of HermetoPascoalLuiz Costa-Lima Neto

Translators: Tom Moore and Geoffrey Gilbert

This article explores the social and musical impact of the Brazilian multi-instrumentalist,

composer, and bandleader Hermeto Pascoal, as well as the historical, political, andeconomic conditions of his cultural production. The author focuses on the 1981–93 periodwhen the composer led a quintet of musicians which formed a community revolving around

his home in the neighborhood of Jabour, in the outer suburbs of the city of Rio de Janeiro.The professional career and “Universal” musical system of Hermeto Pascoal are related to

various important artistic movements and musical genres and styles, demonstrating theinnovative role played by Hermeto Pascoal in the history of popular music in Brazil.

It’s a real hotch-potch (panelada)1 what I call Universal Music . . . . It’s the worldmixed together, but it’s Brazil that predominates. (Pascoal, “Hermeto BrasileiroUniversal” 13)

Introduction

The present article on the life and work of Hermeto Pascoal will seek to define theirsingular importance in contemporary popular music in Brazil, demonstrating how his

musical system establishes a continuum between tradition and contemporaneity,wiping out the differences between the local, the national, and the international as a

machine for the suppression of time-space (see Levi-Strauss 35). The Brazilian multi-instrumentalist, composer and bandleader was born on 22 June 1936 in the small

town of Lagoa da Canoa, State of Alagoas, in the Northeast region of Brazil, andbrought up in a rural environment. There he had his first musical experiences and

lived in close contact with nature and animals until the age of 14. In 1950, Hermeto2

ran away from home to try his luck as an accordionist in the city of Recife, capital of

the State of Pernambuco and an important cultural center in the Northeast. At the endof the 1950s, while he was teaching himself to play various instruments, the albinomusician migrated to the two largest cities in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, in

the Southeast region of the country. In 1970, he moved to the US, where he beganworking as a composer, returning to Brazil finally in 1980, after many international

comings and goings. The following year he formed a fixed group of musicians which

ISSN 0300-7766 (print)/ISSN 1740-1712 (online) q 2011 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/03007760903214803

Popular Music and SocietyVol. 34, No. 2, May 2011, pp. 133–161

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lasted until 1993 when the band split up. The biographical and professional trajectory

of Hermeto (Northeast-Southeast-US-Brazil) provides an aesthetic interface made upof four superimposed matrices: folk modal music and unconventional sounds of

nature; domestic objects and human speech (Northeast); tonality of popular Brazilianmusic and jazz (Southeast): jazz fusion, free jazz, and experimentalism (USA); and,

finally, the “Universal” mixture of these and other sonorities, music genres, and styles

(back to Brazil).Elizabeth revealed the existence of two lines of force in Brazilian music: “the

alternation between reproducing European models and the discovery of anindependent path, on one hand, and the dichotomy between art music and popular,

on the other” (Modernismo 7). Incorporating the paradoxical into his hybrid “musicalpanelada,” Hermeto defies any limiting labels and boundaries and resists both lines

of force in “fusing regional, national, international and universal elements to createde-territorialized music which refuses to deny its roots” (Reily 8). His first

instruments were handcrafted flutes with a pumpkin stem, the eight-bass diatonic

accordion, popularly called pe-de-bode (literally, goat’s hoof), besides the tambourine,which he used to play at wedding parties and popular balls in the Northeast of Brazil.

Today, however, Hermeto combines these instruments with other instrumentalformations including chamber orchestras, big bands, and symphony orchestras. The

musician structures his work on the basis of improvised folkloric styles such as theembolada and the forro, but his complex compositions require an excellent music-

reading level from musicians. The popular Brazilian styles such as the choro, frevo, and

baiao found in his music border on contemporary art music and free jazz in their useof dissonant harmonies, polyrhythms, atonal improvisations, and unconventional

timbres (see Costa-Lima Neto, “Experimental . . .Conception” 4–6).This article deals particularly with the 1981–93 period, when Hermeto was

accompanied by the musicians Itibere Zwarg, Jovino Santos Neto, Marcio Bahia,Carlos Malta, and Antonio Luis Santana, nick-named Pernambuco.3 The composer

and the quintet of musicians constituted a community joined by neighborhood andkinship ties which revolved around the Alagoan musician’s house, situated in the

neighborhood of Jabour, an outlying suburb of the city of Rio de Janeiro. For twelve

consecutive years they rehearsed daily from 2 to 8 pm, recorded six discs, and gaveshows in Brazil and abroad.4

I will borrow from Muniz Sodre the concept of “biombo cultural” (or “culturaldividers”) (Sodre 9–18), which he used originally to demonstrate how the

spatial division—samba/backyard, choro/parlor—in the house of Tia Ciata5

symbolized the different positions of resistance of the black community of Rio de

Janeiro toward the white elite after the abolition of slavery (1888). At the front of thehouse there was the instrumental music of choro and dances, while in the back was

samba, with the “black elite of swing and dance,” and the batucada of the older people

“where the religious element was present” (Sodre 15). I will use “biombos culturais” toexplore the spatial lay-out of Hermeto’s house in Jabour as a parallel between the

social and class divisions in Brazil, as well as to exemplify the polarized clash between

134 L. Costa-Lima Neto

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the strategies for ideological, political, and economic domination on one hand

and the contesting socio-musical discourse of Hermeto on the other (on resistanceand the politics of music, see Attali; Middleton; Street; Ulhoa, “Nova Historia”;

Wisnik). Entrenched in the house in Jabour, the albino rural migrant Hermeto Pascoaland his group disputed a space in urban popular instrumental music, which includedjazz, choro, and frevo, and opposed:

1. the popular-national tradition organized around the samba, bossa nova, and MPB(Musica Popular Brasileira or Brazilian popular music);

2. the modernist idea of “authenticity,” centered on Northeastern folk music;3. the vanguard aesthetic, whose model in Brazilian popular music was tropicalia;4. the copying of imported genres and styles such as discomusic, pop, and rock and roll;5. industrialized and massively marketed urban popular music, musica sertaneja;6. the culture industry, the big record labels, the majors and global capitalism.

The first part of the article will provide a panorama of popular music in Brazil withthe purpose of familiarizing the reader with the genres, musical styles, and artistic

movements which will be dealt in the course of the study. In the second part, anethnographic description will be presented exploring the spatial lay-out of the house

in Jabour to illustrate the creative process of Hermeto & Group, besides dealing withthe different stages in the professional and aesthetic trajectory of the composer. The

main characteristics of his musical system are identified and the marketing processesand resistance to marketing his music are also presented. The conclusiondemonstrates how the musical production of Hermeto Pascoal, allied to the social,

economic, and political processes involved which complement it, problematizesthe categories “people” and “nation,” besides throwing a new light on the hybrid,

miscegenated, and mutant character of Brazilian cultural identity.

Brief Historical and Social Panorama of Popular Music in Brazil

The traditional estimates as to the earliest human settlement of Brazil put the date at

12,000 years ago (see M. Cunha 10). However, music historians in Brazil usuallyignore the millennia of indigenous pre-history and choose as the starting point of

their canonic narratives 22 April 1500, the date of the arrival of the Portuguesecolonizers.6 The historiographies of both popular music and art music point to a

formative stage which coincides approximately with the Colonial period(1500–1822), in which the encounter between Amerindians, Africans, and Europeans

gave rise to an infinite number of hybrid forms, with some named and identified bythe late eighteenth century (see Reily 6).

At the beginning of the colonization of Brazil the Jesuits taught medieval Gregorian

chant to the Amerindians with the aim of instilling a “magic” element in the nativeculture. For the Indians, however, “to sing in unison was preparing them to absorb the

qualities of the enemy in the rituals of anthropophagy” (Ulhoa, “Nova Historia” 83).

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Cannibalism served as an inspiration for the modernist poet Oswald de Andrade,

in his “Manifesto Antropofagico,” to create the important concept of culturalanthropophagy. Instead of “consummating the colonial act of eliminating the Indian

as a component of culture and Brazilian identity” (E. Cunha 53), Oswald de Andraderediscovered Brazil in making the Indian the center of his anthropophagic theory.

Very briefly, his theory affirms that Brazil, symbolized by the indigenous, absorbs the

“Other” and makes it the flesh of its flesh, cannibalizing it, culturally. The initialhistorical landmark of cultural anthropophagy appears to have been, still according

to Oswald, the death of the first Catholic bishop of Brazil, Dom Pero FernandesSardinha, ritually devoured by the Caete Indians on the Alagoas coast—the native

state of Hermeto Pascoal—on 16 July 1556. Cultural anthropophagy acquired specialimportance on being used conceptually by Brazilian artists, such as the tropicalistas

Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, at the end of the 1960s (see Calado; Dunn;

Favaretto; Veloso). For Hermeto Pascoal, however, cultural cannabilism is not atheoretical concept, but a practice deeply rooted in the unconscious.

Probably the oldest popular instrumental groups in Brazil—whose references goback to the beginning of the eighteenth century (see Cajazeira 25)—are the Bandas de

pıfano, very common in the Northeast region of Brazil, where the Portuguesecolonization began. The bands normally have around seven members playing pıfanos

(flutes made of bamboo or, today, of PVC, polyvinyl chloride) and percussioninstruments. The three versions for the origin of this group illustrate the cultural and

ethnic miscegenation that characterizes Brazilian music and society from the very

early times: the totemic rituals of the Brazilian Indians, Portuguese colonization, andtraditional African festivities (Cajazeira 23). When Hermeto was approximately

7 years old, that is to say, around 1943, he used to make handcrafted flutes imitatingthe pıfanos played by the Xucuru-Kariri Indians, who once lived in Palmeira dos

Indios (see Ricardo and Ricardo 541–66), near Lagoa da Canoa, the small hometown of the musician. (For more on Hermeto’s childhood, see Costa-Lima Neto,

“Experimental . . .Conception” 41–43).7

In the early decades of the nineteenth century another instrumental group became

the most widespread popular musical manifestation in Brazil, the Bandas de Musica.

The origin of these bands goes back to the military cadres which disembarked in thecity of Rio de Janeiro together with the Portuguese royal family in 1808 (on music in

Imperial Rio de Janeiro, see Magaldi). To the sound of marches and military dobrados,waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, schottische, quadrilhas, galopes, maxixes, tangos, and even

pieces adapted from opera, the dozens of members of the Bandas de Musica wouldperform in the streets, squares, and bandstands of Brazilian towns during civic and

religious festivities (see Cassoli, Falcao, and Aguiar 46; Cazes 29–46; Ulhoa,

“Inventando Moda” 7–20). They featured instruments such as the flute, piccolo,clarinet, trumpet, trombone, tuba, bombardon (bombardon or bombardino is a brass

instrument, related to the tuba, common in Brazilian brass bands), and percussion.To understand the social function performed by the Bandas de Musica in Brazil,

one must realize that the court in Rio de Janeiro brought together “the largest


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concentration of slaves found in the world since the end of the Roman Empire:

110,000 slaves for 226,000 inhabitants” (Alencastro 25). However, with the official

abolition of the slave trade (1850) and with new anti-slavery laws, the social and

economic landscape of the city changed markedly. “An urban middle class emerged

composed of civil servants and small traders,” made up in the main “by the Afro-

Brazilian population” (Cazes 17). This middle class provided the human resources

and the consumer public for the incipient popular instrumental music, boosting the

great popularity of the Bandas de Musica. At the same time the groups operated as

“popular music conservatories,” in which the conductor or band leader acted as a

teacher, the Bandas also represented one of the few opportunities for rising

professionally for the new urban classes (see Cazes 30–31; Tinhorao). This social

function makes itself felt even today in the poorest regions of Brazil, such as the

Northeast, for example (see Cajazeira 18). It is interesting to note that one of

the favorite pastimes of Hermeto in his childhood was to attend the performances

of the Bandas de Musica in the town of Arapiraca, an important commercial center in

the State of Alagoas (Pascoal, O Calendario do som 288, 404).In the 1870s, that is to say, a little before the abolition of slavery (1888) and the

Proclamation of the Republic (1889), the choro first appeared in Rio de Janeiro.

Influenced by the Bandas de Musica, the choro or chorinho (literally, “cry” or “little

cry”) was initially more a way of playing than a precise musical genre; the black

instrumentalists would Brazilianize European dances—particularly the polka, but also

the waltz, mazurka, and schottische—mixing them with Afro-Brazilian syncopated

rhythms. Through the composer and flautist Alfredo da Rocha Viana Filho,

nicknamed Pixinguinha, the choro became more improvised, rhythmically free and

virtuosic, consolidating itself as a genre with its own musical characteristics in the first

decades of the twentieth century (see Cazes 53–64; Franceschi 137–39, 190–91). In its

initial phase it was played on the ebony flute, cavaquinho (small, four-coursed

instrument similar to a ukelele), and guitar, but later other instruments, such as the

clarinet, bandolim (mandolin-type instrument with four double courses), pandeiro

(hand-held percussion instrument), and saxophone, were added (see Reily 6). The

choro crossed the barriers between popular and art music, being incorporated into the

work of composers such as Chiquinha Gonzaga, Alexandre Levy, Ernesto Nazare,

Heitor Villa-Lobos—and Hermeto Pascoal.Since the beginning of the nineteenth century the piano had become a symbol of

distinction for the Frenchified Brazilian elites, a fetish object that served as a

“paradigm of civility for the tropical and slave-owning society of the Empire”

(Alencastro 42) and, at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the

twentieth century, Rio de Janeiro was known as the city of pianos or “pianopolis.” Out

of the fusion of musical genres and styles played by the Bandas de Musica there

emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century another instrumental genre that

also would have an important role in the Musica Universal of Hermeto: the frevo

(a corruption of the first person of the verb “ferver,” to boil, eu “fervo”), a mix of dance


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and music, whose rapid tempo animates the carnival revelers in the city of Recife,

capital of the State of Pernambuco (see Cassoli, Falcao, & Aguiar 56).During the twentieth century an intense population migration from the country to

the city took place in Brazil, accompanied by considerable technological andindustrial development and the progressive consolidation of mass-media communi-

cation. As Ulhoa clarifies, one finds then a complete change in the musical scene andin the very concept of “popular music” (“Nova Historia” 80–81). Oral and

community musical traditions, where producer and consumer were in close

proximity, started to be called “musica folclorica” (folk music), while the term“popular music” started to be used to distinguish the musical practices aired by the

media, where the producer and the consumer were at a distance. This change ismarked musically by the appearance of the urban samba, a genre linked to the black

communities of recently freed slaves, as well as to African religiosity and the rhythmsfound in Candomble (on rhythmic patterns and time-lines of African and Afro-

Brazilian music, see Sandroni 19–37).If the European musical influences found in the Bandas de Musica and in the choro

ensured the relative tolerance of the white elites of the city of Rio de Janeiro, the

samba, for its part, was strongly discriminated against and samba musicians werecontinually hassled by the police. The house of Tia Ciata, mentioned in the

introduction, is considered one of the most important symbols of the populartradition in the historiography of Brazilian music and exemplifies very well the

context of racial oppression in the post-abolition period, as well as the resistancestrategies of black artists. Choro and samba musicians, such as Pixinguinha, Donga,

Sinho, Joao da Bahiana, and Heitor dos Prazeres, frequented the festivities (or

pagodes) and feijoadas8 of Tia Ciata, and at one of these events one of the first sambasrecorded in Brazil was composed (entitled “Pelo telefone” (“Over the Phone”), Donga,

1916). Muniz Sodre (see also Wisnik 151–62) identifies particular “cultural dividers”(biombos culturais) in Tia Ciata’s house separating the rooms, the spaces of the house,

and the musical genres cultivated there: in the parlor next to the street—close to theeyes of the white elite—choro and the more “respectable” dances with partners

(polkas, waltzes, lundus, etc.); and, in the backyard at the rear of the house—hidden

from the authorities and the police—partido-alto samba or samba-raiado and therhythmic patterns of Candomble. The polarized separation of the “cultural dividers”

at the house of the respected Tia Ciata, symbolized “the strategy of musical resistenceto the curtain of marginalization raised against the Negro following Abolition”

(Sodre 15). The house of Tia Ciata is considered by Sodre to be a metaphor and amicrocosm of the Brazilian society of the time, exemplifying racial prejudice and the

marginalization of the Negro and his culture by the white elite.During the 1920s and 1930s popular festivities, press, gramophone recordings of

company Casa Edison (see Franceschi), intellectuals, excellent songwriters such as

Noel Rosa—a lower-middle-class white—and the first Escolas de samba (sambaschools) all played their part in gradually popularizing the samba, but even so the

latter was still a phenomenon largely restricted to the city of Rio de Janeiro. However,


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under the dictatorship of the Estado Novo (1937–45), instituted by President Getulio

Vargas, the samba moved out of Tia Ciata’s backyard and into the parlor of everyBrazilian home. The musical genre was co-opted with populist objectives by Vargas to

integrate the new urban classes of black workers into the new “civilized” and whitesocial order (on populism and music, see also Street 3–23). The samba was then

remodeled by the Press and Propaganda Department (DIP) of the Estado Novo and

stripped of its Dionysian elements—such as its apology for bohemianism andromanticization of the figure of the idle loafer (malandro)—and used to promote

order and the work ethic (see Wisnik 190). While it was aired nationwide through thebroadcasts of the state-owned Radio Nacional, its festive association with carnival

made it a symbol of “racial democracy” and “mestizo cordiality,” thus turning it intoone of the musical symbols of national identity (for more on history of samba, see

Naves; Reily; Sandroni; Vianna; Wisnik). The choro, as well as the Bandas de Musica,

the frevo orchestras and the pianeiros (popular pianists) for their part, changed placeswith the samba and was relegated to the backyard, becoming practically invisible to

the general public at large. This inversion marked the start of mass culture in Braziland it is an important historical antecedent for us to understand the somewhat

isolated position of the multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal on the popular musicscene in contemporary Brazil (see Costa-Lima Neto, “Da Casa de Tia Ciata”).

In 1946 the first baiao was recorded by the Pernambuco accordionist Luiz Gonzaga.The huge success it enjoyed on the radio finally put the Northeast region on the

popular music map in Brazil (see Dreyfus 109–48). At the time the baiao was released,Hermeto Pascoal was just 10 years old and he used to hear the discs of Luiz Gonzaga

through the megaphones in the street markets of his native town (see Campos 140).

Gonzaga was the boy’s idol and the success of the baiao singer in the major cities ofBrazil prompted Hermeto to run away from home with his brother, Jose Neto, to play

the accordion and percussion on the radios of Recife, the cultural capital of theNortheast. The baiao would later become one of the most important popular genres of

Hermeto’s Musica Universal.In the 1950s, nostalgically recalled as the “golden years” of the Juscelino Kubitschek

government (1956–61), the bossa nova appeared, a rhythm descended from thesamba, but influenced by jazz, which used more dissonant harmonies than those of

the traditional samba. The bossa nova became internationalized and the song “Garota

de Ipanema” (“Girl from Ipanema,” 1962, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius deMoraes) replaced the samba-exaltacao “Aquarela do Brasil” (“Aquarelle of Brazil,”

1939, Ari Barroso), as the new international musical symbol of Brazilian-ness.9 Withthe bossa nova the guitar becomes more percussive, in dialogue with sophisticated

orchestral arrangements and a new vocal rendition which was whispered and cool,quite different from the operatic mannerisms of the popular singers of the previous

generations (see Saroldi and Moreira). Bossa nova was the fruit of the desire of the

artists from the middle class artistically and technologically to “modernize” popularmusic in Brazil, passing from the “agricultural phase to the industrial phase” (Tom

Jobim, qtd in Napolitano 69). Although Hermeto had accompanied singers of bossa


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nova on the piano on a daily basis in the nightclubs of Recife, Sao Paulo, and Rio de

Janeiro during the 1950s and 1960s, the genre did not have a great influence on hismusical system.

In the 1960s when the military dictatorship (1964–85) ruled the country, musicalprograms on television, the theater, song festivals, and the record industry targeted the

public from the universities, with an eye on the new demands of the market. ThusMPB appeared, which made it possible for middle-class artists such as Chico Buarque

de Holanda, Milton Nascimento, Edu Lobo, and Elis Regina to connect aesthetics,

ideology, and the market, albeit temporarily (see Napolitano; Stroud). However, thecommercial explosion of the jovem guarda (ie-ie-ie), enjoying great success among

lower middle-class youth, outsold MPB in 1965 (with the homonymous disc byRoberto Carlos), presaging the musica sertaneja and musica romantica of the following

two decades. In this sense, the jovem guarda was the vanguard for mass music incontemporary Brazil.10

In 1967, tropicalia made its debut, led by the singers Caetano Veloso and GilbertoGil. The tropicalists invoked the anthropophagic cannibalism of Oswald de Andrade,

blending songs disseminated by radio, television, and cinema with sambas, rumbas,

cantos de macumba, baiao, bolero, and rock and roll (see Favaretto 106), and alsoadded musical input from the avant-garde music and the concrete poets from

Sao Paulo.From the mid-1970s, reaching its climax in the 1990s—coinciding with the return

of civilian rule in 1985—the big multinational recording companies, the majors, werebusily consolidating their position. Influencing the whole Brazilian culture industry,

they created fads such as discoteca and lambada, launched products and artistsdirected at the children’s market, targeted the middle-class teenage public with rock

and roll and pop in the 1980s, and, finally, directed mass-consumption genres at

the low-income population, such as musica sertaneja, musica romantica, axe,and pagode.

It is in this unfavorable context for instrumental music that the resistance comingfrom the composer, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Hermeto Pascoal, should

be viewed. In the 1980s after Hermeto returned from the USA, where he had recordedhis first authorial disc (1972), the urban population had climbed to 70% of the

Brazilian population, an inverse proportion to that of the 1950s, “when the setting upof industrial parks (a process that had already begun in the 1930s in the Estado Novo)

began to stimulate the intense migration of the rural population” (Ulhoa, “Nova

Historia” 86). This migratory flow from the country to the city produced the masspublic necessary to consolidate the culture industry, which had started to establish

itself in Brazil in the 1960s, when a market structure had not yet to come into being.The migrants settled in the shanty towns ( favelas) and suburbs of Rio de Janeiro,

together with other families of low-income workers, made up of blacks and mulattosin the main. The western zone of Rio de Janeiro, the district of Jabour and Hermeto

Pascoal’s home, has experienced the greatest population growth in the city in recent

decades.


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Hermeto descends from the Northeastern folk traditions of the Bandas de pıfano

and forro; however, his music also incorporates the urban popular groups and genresof the Bandas de Musica, choro, samba, frevo, and baiao, as well as big bands, North

American jazz and art music, and world music. His aesthetic openness contrasts withthe defensive and xenophobic attitude practiced by the nationalist intelligentsia madeup of urban musicians, artists, and intellectuals. With the Modern Art Week of 1922 as

its initial historical landmark, the modernist movement sought eminently nationalcharacteristics for Brazilian art in contrast with the Europeanizing academicism.

Drawing from the ideas of folklorist Mario de Andrade in his celebrated Ensaio sobre aMusica Brasileira (Essay on Brazilian Music, 1928), Brazilian modernists defended the

thesis that rural folklore traditions, particularly from the Northeast, were closer to thegenuine roots, the pure roots, of Brazilian music, while at the same time casting

aspersions on urban popular-commercial music (see Reily 1–10; Travassos,Modernismo 51–56; Vargas 35–53, 62–98, 185–231; Wisnik 129–91). HermetoPascoal shares with Mario de Andrade and his followers an appreciation of

Northeastern folklore (on the politics and sociology of folk music, see Middleton127–46); however, he goes beyond the strict frontiers defined by the nationalist credo

in following the continuum that encompasses folk, popular, art music, and ethnic, thatis to say, the local and the global. In the epigraph at the beginning of this article

Hermeto Pascoal compares his Musica Universal to a panelada (a hotch-potch), atypical dish from Northeastern cuisine and part of the heritage of Portuguese

colonization. Musica Universal is, according to Hermeto Pascoal, an expansion of theterritory of Brazilian music, already expanded due to the ethnic and cultural mixtures

of Amerindians, Africans, and Europeans which occurred in Colonial, Imperial, andRepublican Brazil. To the miscegenated mixture of Brazilian music Hermeto Pascoaladds other peoples, countries, and sonorities, as new ingredients in his hybrid

“Universal panelada.”

An Open House in Jabour 1981–93

Originally a one-story house, Hermeto’s home in Jabour, a neighborhood in the West

Zone of the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, was enlarged after an international tour withthe Group, when Hermeto began the construction of the second floor. Hermeto

would compose silently on the first floor, without instruments, seated on the sofaof a room hidden from the eyes of visitors, while the other musicians in the

Group (Itibere Zwarg—contrabass, electric piano, baritone horn and tuba; JovinoSantos Neto—electric piano, keyboards, clavinet and flute; Antonio Luis

Santana/Pernambuco—percussion; Marcio Bahia—drums and percussion; andCarlos Malta—wind instruments) would rehearse on the second floor. All themusicians came to live close by so as not to waste time traveling daily from their

homes to the distant neighborhood of Jabour.11

A visitor unfamiliar with the streets of the West Zone and constantly having to ask

the neighbors how to get to Hermeto’s house could only be certain that he had finally


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come to the right address when he heard the sound of the music.12 After identifying

himself over the intercom to the lady of the house, the visitor enters through theservice entrance leading to the kitchen. Before entering the kitchen he sees on the

right, in an area next to the outside gate, a collection of birds in their cages, Florianothe parrot, and possibly the dogs running back and forth, as well as a glimpse of a

small swimming pool. Continuing into the main house, guided by the strains of the

ever-loudening music, the visitor passes through the kitchen of Dona Ilza da Silva anda small ante-room (the L-shaped floor plan which hid the “den” where Hermeto

composes) and then upstairs to the second floor.13

Reaching the second floor, the visitor finds two rooms: a little rest area with a

refrigerator, chairs, and a nearby bathroom, and a large room with the instruments ofthe Group: piano, keyboards, percussion, wind instruments, electric bass, other

objects used for percussion, and piles and piles of musical scores. In order to providesound proofing, straw mats bought cheaply at Umbanda stores were glued to the walls

of the rehearsal room, giving the appearance of a rustic hut.14 Finally, through the

windows, the visitor views the neighbors’ houses, and above them, more often thannot, a clear blue sky with the sun beating down relentlessly.

The architecture of the little house is 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, moreaccessible, occupied by the musicians during their daily rehearsals. The second

“biombo” allows a glimpse of the third space, external to the house, filled in turn by thehouses of the neighborhood with the sky above. The windows serve as the medium of

exchange: the music played by the Group leaked out into the neighborhood, while the

sounds of the landscape—birds, dogs, parrot, cicadas, etc.—invaded the house andcame to inhabit some of the music recorded during this period.

The household included the owners Hermeto Pascoal and Dona Ilza, the couple’ssons and daughters, “the boys in the Group” (as Hermeto paternally called the young

musicians who accompanied him), the producer and general factotum MauroBrandao Wermelinger, and, finally, the birds in their cages, Floriano the parrot, and

the dogs Spock, Bolao, and Princesa.The different areas of the house and the characters mentioned above appear in

particular songs included in the six LPs recorded by Hermeto & Group in the period1981 to 1993, whether in the titles, the sound references, or the home-made

recordings which ended up on the records. Consider compositions like “Briguinha de

musicos malucos no coreto” (“Crazy Musicians Quarreling on the Bandstand”), whichfeatures a modulating etude for bombardino (bombardon), a typical instrument in the

Bandas de Musica genre, and “Ilza na feijoada” (“Ilza at the Feijoada”), which featuresa baiao in phrygian church mode and the voices of the members of the Group and the

sound of laughter from Dona Ilza. “Aula de natacao” (“Swimming Lesson”), an atonalpiece of music, draws its melody from the dialogue between Hermeto’s daughter

Fabıola and a swimming teacher with the sounds of children in the pool.

Other examples, in chronological order, are “Cores” (“Colors”), which includes the


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high-pitched song of a cicada in the tree in front of Hermeto’s house and tuned to the

instruments of the Group; “Spock na escada” (“Spock on the Stairs”), a forro, which

includes the syncopated barks of Hermeto’s dog; and “Papagaio alegre” (“Merry

Parrot”), in which Floriano the parrot is the soloist.15 Other examples of the musical

use of animal sounds (not recorded at the house in Jabour) include “Arapua,” in which

the instrumental timbres, textures, and dissonant harmonies simulate the low buzzing

sound of the Arapua bee, and “Quando as aves se encontram nasce o som” (“When the

Birds Meet, Music Is Born”), a track with various bird songs used as rhythmic-melodic

phrases and harmonized and arranged by Hermeto for the instruments of the Group.

I draw the reader’s attention to the hybrid heterogeneity of the above-mentioned

compositions: a modal baiao and forro; a dissonant polytonal song; an etude with

harmonic modulations; another experimental etude, and, finally, the atonal sonorities

of the human voice and animal sounds (see Costa-Lima Neto, “Experimen-

tal . . .Conception” 126–30, 139–54, 163–90; “Experimental . . .Musical” 119–42).A dense description16 of the special layout of the house in Jabour will reveal the

process of composition, arrangement, and rehearsal for Hermeto and the Group.

From the room where he composed, Hermeto could easily hear the other 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, and return to

his den. As Hermeto’s compositions were doubly difficult: dissonant chords were not

easy to analyze in terms of traditional harmony and the writing of the score itself left

doubts over the exact placement of the fingers on the staff—which resulted from

Hermeto’s visual deficiency caused by albinism17—generally the musicians of the

Group would re-write the manuscript parts left by the composer. After the musicians

finished making clean copies of the manuscript parts, they would play them on their

instruments, while Hermeto, blessed with a perfect sense of pitch, would listen and

correct their transcriptions from down below: “Jovino, it’s not G with a major

seventh, it’s minor!” (Wermelinger personal interview). Immediately afterwards, the

composer would once more go upstairs to resolve technical details and work out

the arrangement. The creative process functioned according to these stages, and

sometimes a song was completed in just a few hours.The daily rehearsals of the Group, from Monday to Friday, from 2 to 8 pm,

preceded by daily practice sessions in the mornings, when the musicians rehearsed the

more difficult passages of their individual parts, made it possible to achieve something

unheard of in Brazilian instrumental music: a repertoire of hundreds of songs to

which more compositions were constantly added. When it came to the show itself,

they played only a small portion of this repertoire, since the live versions grew in

length with improvisations and were usually much longer than in rehearsals. Thus,

each show lasted for at least two hours, but, depending on the venue, could last for

three or four hours or even longer. Their record was in Pendotiba (in Niteroi, RJ),

during the opening of a jazz nightclub, when Hermeto and the Group played for five

and a half hours. Before the end of the performance all the paying customers had


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already left, with only the sleepy waiters remaining behind to listen. Precisely because

of this vast repertoire every show was different from the next.Mauro Wermelinger reported that Hermeto worked his musicians to the bone:

“Mauro, today they are going to die, today I am going to get there and they will bestretched out on the floor. . . .They are not going to be able to play this because I don’t

think that even I can play what I wrote!” Hermeto would say. Corroborating what

Mauro reported, the drummer in the Group, Marcio Bahia, told me that sometimesduring the individual morning rehearsals at the house he would suffer from migraines

and would have to lie down to rest after agonizing over the extremely difficult partswritten by Hermeto. In fact, these songs—incidentally, Frank Zappa also had a

repertoire which he called humanly impossible—are sometimes identified as such bytheir own titles: “Correu tanto que sumiu” (“He Ran So Much That He Disappeared,”

1980), “Intocavel” (“Unplayable”), “Difıcil, mas nao impossıvel” (“Difficult, But Not

Impossible,” unreleased), among others. In reality, independent of their title, varioussongs by Hermeto can be viewed as etudes: “Chorinho para ele” (“Chorinho for Him,”

1977), “De bandeja e tudo” (“Tray and All”; see Costa-Lima Neto, “Experimen-tal . . .Conception” 155–62), “Serie de Arco” (“Hoop Series”; see Costa-Lima Neto,

“Experimental . . .Conception” 116–25), “Mestre Radames” (“Master Radames”),“Irmaos Latinos” (“Latin Brothers”), and “Aluxan” (2002). Although Hermeto refused

out of hand the titles “professor” or “master,” he made each composition an

opportunity for leading the members of the Group to a progressively higher musicallevel, in a similar way to the old masters of the Bandas de Musica during the Imperial

times of Brazil. Hermeto’s style of leadership did not confine his collaborators to therole of mere replicators of prepared musical texts; rather he encouraged them to create

new roles for themselves. In this way Hermeto & Group operated collectively as

performers, arrangers, and composers, creatively subverting established hierarchicalsystems, while producing music of considerable complexity (see Costa-Lima Neto,

“Experimental . . .Conception” 69–83).As well as the dynamic of exchange between Hermeto and the Group, the “cultural

dividers” of Hermeto’s house also illustrate how his biography and career are relatedto his musical system, a system which, by tracking the stages of his professional career

and his personal cosmology, blends regional, Brazilian, international, and universalelements. Thus, Hermeto’s personality, his music, and the context in which it is

inserted, in addition to the habits of the visitors and occupants of the house, are

complementary spaces, which interpenetrate each other like conceptual “dividers,”allowing the observer to glimpse unsuspected details of a “symbolic architecture.

The First Floor (1936–50): Rural Brazil

On the first floor of the house, we find Hermeto the man, a composer, with rural folk

roots from the Northeast of Brazil, where he was born in 1936 and lived until 1950 inOlho D’Agua, a small village near the town of Lagoa da Canoa, in the municipality

of Arapiraca, Alagoas. In the heart of the fertile tobacco-growing interior


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of Northeastern Brazil, Lagoa da Canoa gave Hermeto the basis for his experimental

musical idiom, since his experimentation uses the rural traditions of his childhood asa point of departure. Unable to play in the sun with the other children and following

in the Northeastern tradition of musicians with impaired vision (Cego Aderaldo,Cego Oliveira, Sivuca, Luiz Gonzaga, among others), the albino Hermeto made music

his favorite pastime, whether composing little tunes created by striking pieces of iron

stolen from his grandfather’s smithy, or making improvised flute duets with birds andfrogs, or playing tambourine and the eight-bass accordion together with his brother

and father at local dances and wedding parties. The compositions “Forro em SantoAndre,” “Forro Brasil” (1979), “Arrasta pe alagoano” (1980), and “O tocador quer

beber” (“The Musician Wants a Drink”), among others, exemplify the modalrepertoire that Hermeto would play at dancing parties in his childhood in the rural

Northeast.The presence of birds, of Floriano the parrot and the dogs by the pool, at the house

in Jabour, is a sign that Hermeto has retained part of the sonorous landscape and

geography of his childhood. Since Lagoa da Canoa Hermeto has followed a paradigm,i.e. a fundamental musical model, which he would broaden over the course of his

career (see Costa-Lima Neto, “Experimental . . .Conception” 88–109). Following thisprecociously experimental paradigm, Hermeto, from the time he was a boy, blended

and improvised sounds from nature and the animal world, from unconventionalsound sources (such as the pieces of iron mentioned above) and the melodies of

speech (“music of aura”), with “conventional” musical styles and pitched sounds from

instruments such as the pe-de-bode accordion and the pıfano. The “music of aura,” aswell as the sounds of animals and sonorous objects, constitutes a fundamental

reference in Hermeto’s musical system. In it, the musician transposes the notes andrhythms of the spoken voice to a conventional instrument, generally an electronic

keyboard, producing a totally atonal melody with an asymmetric rhythm whichafterwards is harmonized dissonantly (for more on “music of aura,” see Costa-Lima

Neto, “Experimental . . .Conception” 185–90, 204–08).18

Continuing through the first floor of the house in Jabour—the space which would

correspond to the terreiro for Candomble at the house of Tia Ciata—we can notice

another important aspect of Hermeto: his cosmology or personal vision of thecosmos, 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 again. The room where Hermeto

composed was reached only after the visitor had passed through Dona Ilza’s kitchenand, after that, something of a labyrinth. I believe that this trajectory is symbolic as

well. Dona Ilza da Silva, from Pernambuco, whose Saturday feijoadas would bringtogether all those living in the house—as well as invited guests and neighbors—was,

like Tia Ciata, an adept of Afro-Brazilian religions who, from the kitchen, guarded the

entrance to the house and the rooms where Hermeto composed and the Grouprehearsed. As mentioned above, she was the first person that the visitor encountered,

over the intercom, even before entering the house. Apparently Hermeto and Ilza


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shared a number of common religious beliefs and, according to information gleaned

from interviews with members of the Group, the title of the song “Magimani Sagei”(see Costa-Lima Neto, “Experimental . . .Conception” 131–38) refers to the name of a

Caboclo, that is to say, an indigenous entity whom the adepts of Umbanda hold in highspiritual esteem. In this music, rhythm predominates. Hermeto uses the drum set as

a melodic instrument, constructing seven rhythmic-melodic phrases which,

accompanied by the electric bass, serve as a base for the theme played by the flute,piccolo, and cavaquinho, and for free improvisation on bamboo flutes ( pıfanos), bass

flute, and ocarinas. As the music was being recorded, the studio technician Ze Luizinvented, at Hermeto’s request, words which sounded like an indigenous language

(“oire, ogorecotara, tanajura”), while during the instrumental breaks the musiciansspoke disconnected words, blew whistles and shouted. The barking of the dogs Spock,

Bolao and Princesa thickened the texture, while the tempo accelerated to the freely

improvised finale. “Magimani Sagei” suggests a tribal dance, and has deep roots in theimagination of Hermeto and his childhood in Lagoa da Canoa, near the town of

Palmeira dos Indios, an old indigenous redoubt, where today around 2,800 remainingmembers of the Xucuru-Kariri tribe try to survive (Ricardo and Ricardo 16). It is

important to note that the 1988 Constitution established a five-year deadline for thedemarcation of all Indigenous Lands, but in many cases this limit has not been

respected and “land [has become] an explosive issue throughout the country” (Seeger147), ranchers on one side, Indians on the other.19

Other discographic, musical and bibliographic references will help to broaden thepicture with additional aspects concerning the spirituality and religion of Hermeto. On

the LP Zabumbe-bum-a (1979), the songs “Sao Jorge” (“Saint George”) and “Santo

Antonio” (“Saint Anthony”) are named after Christian saints and include theparticipation of Hermeto’s parents: Vergelina Eulalia de Oliveira and Pascoal Jose da

Costa, to whom the two compositions are dedicated.20 The two tracks refer toNortheastern folk music and to popular festivities that are part of the Catholic liturgical

calendar. “Santo Antonio,” for example, begins and ends with Hermeto’s mother’s voicedescribing the procession for this saint’s day (13 June), accompanied by modal religious

chants from the Northeast, and by Zabele and Pernambuco imitating the voices of

children asking for alms for the church-sponsored festival in honor of Saint Anthony (seeCosta-Lima Neto, “O cantor Hermeto Pascoal”). I remind the reader that during the

colonization of Brazil the Jesuit missionaries used Gregorian chant to catechize theIndians. The modal scales brought by the missionaries still survive in Northeastern

folk music.Another musical example which alludes to the religious world of popular

syncretism is the “Missa dos Escravos,” recorded on the disc of the same name (SlavesMass, 1977).21 This music is quite varied in rhythm, with a strong Afro-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 dividedinto groups of 3 þ 3 þ 2 þ 2 þ 2 þ 2 pulses. The sung phrase “Chama Zabele pra

poder te conhecer” (“Call Zabele so I can know you”) is hypnotically intoned in


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a crescendo, on a single continuous low note, as in a recitative (recto tono) from

a medieval Catholic mass, or a ritual indigenous chant, accompanied by a dissonantflute section, with the dancing rhythms of the tom drums providing the underlying

beat. At the end, a duo of grunting pigs dialogs with the vocal solo of laughter, cryingand shouting by Flora Purim, superimposed over a slow melody played on the

transverse flute in unison with the singing voice. “Missa dos Escravos” is connected

with the Quilombo dos Palmares (1580–1710), led by Ganga Zumba and his nephewZumbi. The Quilombo dos Palmares was located in the Serra da Barriga, a region now

belonging to the State of Alagoas—the native state of Hermeto Pascoal—whereapproximately 20,000 quilombolas (fugitive ex-slaves) resisted, over the span of more

than a century, the various attempts made by the Portuguese Crown to capture andreturn them to the sugar plantations.

“Maraca-maracatu-maracaja-Mara!” In the lyrics for “Mestre Mara” (“MasterMara,” 1979)—a song rich in non-conventional vocal resources, such as whispering,

hissing, glissandos, glottal attacks, coughing, shouting, etc.—Hermeto uses words

with similar sonorities (alliterations), a technique very commonly found in theNortheastern embolada,22 in order to associate the Afro-Brazilian rhythm of

maracatu, with the indigenous instrument known as maraca, as well as the forest-catmaracaja, and, finally, the name of the master “Mara.” In this song, the melody sung

by Hermeto is heard in slow tempo, while the chorus exploring unconventional vocaltechniques is at another, quicker tempo. The unusual superimposition of two tempi in

“Mestre Mara” indicates the presence of two simultaneous dimensions. In fact, inaddition to Umbanda, spiritualism, and musical traditions related to the popular

Catholicism of the Northeast, Hermeto reveals in this music another facet of his

spirituality in singing, “O Master, I received your message, it was with great joy thatI set your image to music.” The “master” in question seems to be related to another

figure which Hermeto labeled “The gift,” 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 Calendario do som(Calendar of sound). It contains 366 scores, one for each day of the year, including

leap years (see Costa-Lima Neto, “O Calendario do som”).Taken together, aspects of Hermeto’s religiosity and spirituality reveal his particular

cosmological vision, the roots of which are strongly based on popular syncretism.

Music is a transcendental vehicle which unites him to nature and animals, to otherhuman beings and spiritual hierarchies. In this sense, for Hermeto the wizard, music

is a ritual. Through musical ritual, spiritual experience and aesthetic experience areinterconnected in an inseparable way. Levi-Strauss (33–38) compares music to a

“time-supression machine,” capable of overcoming the opposition between tangibleand intelligible and leading those who listen to it to a temporary condition of

immortality. In a similar way, going up and down the stairs that unite the two floors of

the house, Hermeto constructs and simultaneously participates in the harmoniousorder of the sacred, which he offers with devotion to all human beings, in the form

of music.


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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 Pascoalfamily and the families of the musicians, as well as other guests, would come together

to fraternize and restore the energy expended during the week. The instruments(Fender Rhodes piano, drums, winds, etc.) were moved from the second floor to

the first, to an outdoor area where the feijoada took place, and there Hermeto and the

musicians of the Group would alternate eating, drinking, and playing, surrounded bya large number of family members and guests. The feijoada—a traditional dish made

with black beans and pork—is related symbolically to the duo of solo pigs and to the“pagan liturgy” of the “Missa dos Escravos” (“Slaves Mass”), in which the female

vocalist Flora Purim forms part of a somewhat unconventional trio with two soloist

pigs, one low-pitched and the other high. The “Missa dos Escravos” of the HermetoPascoal family divided the same menu as the festivities and feijoadas of the black

samba and choro musicians at the house of Tia Ciata, at the beginning of the twentiethcentury and, before that, the drum sessions held by the slaves in their quarters during

colonial times. On the other hand, the bamboo flutes ( pıfanos), the percussion, theanimal sounds, the alliterations and experimental vocal resources of the tunes

“Magimani Sagei” and “Mestre Mara” allude, in turn, to the Indians.The compositions analyzed in this section demonstrate the presence of an archaic

Brazil in the mind’s eye of Hermeto and reveal how the composer incorporates

various figures marginalized in the history of Brazil, bringing them back from thecollective unconscious and making them come alive in the mythical space-time

of music.

The Second Floor (1950–70): Urban Brazil

Continuing our tour, and moving up to the second floor of the house in Jabour, wefind 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 theradio and in the clubs in Recife, Caruaru, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo, cities where

he lived between 1950 and 1970. Leaving Lagoa da Canoa, the Pascoal family followedHermeto to Recife (PE) in 1950. With his brother, Jose Neto, Hermeto played on a

local radio station, Radio Tamandare, and later, on Radio Jornal do Comercio. Over

the course of fifteen years, Hermeto, a self-taught musician, learned to read and writemusic, play the 32 and 80 bass accordion, as well as the piano, flute, saxophone, bass,

guitar, percussion, or any other instrument that might earn him a fee on radio or innight-clubs.

He began his professional career as a musician, playing choro,23 frevo, baiao, andseresta in Regional groups on the radio (on the interrelations between Regionais and

Choro groups, see Campos 67–70; Cazes 85–89). He also played in dance bands or in

night-clubs in Recife, Rio de Janeiro (1958), and Sao Paulo (1961), and jazz trios andquartets (SambrasaTrio24 and SomQuatro). His broadened perception, the intense

instrumental work in a varied repertoire and his observation of singers,


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instrumentalists, arrangers, and conductors working in radio—such as Clovis Pereira

dos Santos, Cesar Guerra Peixe, and Radames Gnatalli—enabled Hermeto gradually

to learn the art of instrumentation and arrangement. The song festivals in which he

participated as an instrumentalist and arranger between 1967 and 1970 consolidated

his music reading and writing skills, while at the same time allowing him to develop as

an arranger. His contact with conductors, arrangers, and composers of art music is

clearly demonstrated by the orchestral arrangements of, for example, “Carinhoso”

(1973), besides the compositions: “Sinfonia em quadrinhos”; “Suite Pixitotinha”

(not released commercially); “Suite Norte, Sul, Leste, Oeste” (“North, South, East

and West Suite”); “Suite Paulistana” (1979); “Suite Mundo Grande” (“Big Wide

World Suite”).25

In 1966, Hermeto joined the Trio Novo, which changed its name to the Quarteto

Novo. This group represented the mid-point of Hermeto’s career, marking his

transition from instrumentalist hired by local radio stations and nightspots to

internationally renowned arranger and composer. In addition to Hermeto Pascoal

(flute, piano, and guitar), the Quarteto Novo included Heraldo do Monte (electric

guitar and viola caipira—a type of viola common in Southeastern Brazil, especially the

interior of the State of Sao Paulo), Theo de Barros (guitar and bass), and Airto

Moreira (drums and percussion). At a time in which popular instrumental music in

the Rio-Sao Paulo corridor was dominated by bands that combined jazz with the

harmonies of the bossa nova and the rhythms of the samba—and the improvised solos

were strongly influenced by American bebop—it was up to the pioneering Quarteto

Novo to change the “accent” and use Northeastern scales, harmonies, timbres, and

rhythms in their music.After having recorded a disc for Odeon in 1967, the group split up in 1969.

Hermeto told me in an interview that one of the reasons for the short duration of the

Quarteto Novo was the nationalist mission of Geraldo Vandre:

When I used to play a very modern chord, people would be critical: “You can’t playjazz chords.” But they weren’t jazz chords; it was what my head wanted. Musicbelongs to the world. Wanting Brazilian music to be only from Brazil is like tryingto put the wind in a bag, and no one can put sound in a bag. (Pascoal, PersonalInterview 6 Mar. 1999)

Inspired by the nationalist modernism of Mario de Andrade, Geraldo Vandre

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 (1964–85) anything that might serve as an icon of the culture of the

colonizing power—such as jazz, electric guitars, rock and roll, the ie-ie-ie of the jovem

guarda, and tropicalismo—would be furiously bombarded by the intellectuals,

students, and artists of the urban left, of which Vandre was an ardent militant (see

Calado 106–13), as his “songs for the barricades” show (Napolitano 125). Hermeto,

however, came from the first floor, “below,” and had come from the less economically

advantaged classes of the Northeast. For him, folk culture did not have the same


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“authentically nationalist” associations that it had for Vandre. If, for the artists

of the urban middle class, the search for “national” identity 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 bediscovered, reinvented, or artificially produced.

Hermeto not only rejected the nationalist “purism” of Vandre but also the other

alternative path which opened up during the time of the song festivals, tropicalia, ledby Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. The tropicalists invoked the anthropophagic

cannibalism of Oswald de Andrade, blending songs disseminated by radio, television

and cinema with samba, rumba, baiao, rhythms from Umbanda, bolero, and rock and

roll, and also added musical input from the avant-garde music and the concrete poets

from Sao Paulo (Favaretto 106). In 1967, the Quarteto Novo was invited by GilbertoGil to accompany him in the song “Domingo no parque,” which was competing in the

song festival on TV Record (see Calado 121–22). Inspired by the recent model of

the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), Gil wanted to combine the

basic rhythm of the song, a capoeira afoxe, with the Northeastern sound of

the Quarteto, together with an orchestra and an electric guitar. The project wasvehemently rejected by the Quarteto, demonstrating the group’s disdain for ie-ie-ie

and rock and roll. Hermeto’s objections to tropicalia, however, were more to do with

the characteristics of the movement, such as the carnivalized celebration of modernity

and commercial popular music, than the use of foreign musical elements.Howard S. Becker, in his landmark study (9–25), says that the avant-garde, in spite

of “facing serious difficulties in seeing its work performed,” and sometimes never

finding a space at all, is generally absorbed by tradition and its conventional channels.

This is not the case for Hermeto, a self-taught musician, who came from a rural

environment, and was always battling with every kind of institution, including thetransnational record companies and the conventional communications media. For

this reason, I preferred to state elsewhere that Hermeto was an experimental popular

musician, even though the composer himself does not include himself in any existing

current artistic movement or label (Costa-Lima Neto, “Experimental . . .Conception”

1–3). As Treece (207–13) so aptly observed, the experimental popular musicalproduction of Hermeto Pascoal should serve as an alert to researchers in

demonstrating that the tropicalist vanguard did not have a monopoly on innovation

in Brazilian music.Neither nationalist modernism, nor tropicalia, Hermeto’s conflict with the urban

intelligentsia represented by Geraldo Vandre, on the one hand, and with the avant-

garde of popular music represented by Gilberto Gil on the other, staked out the

personal path which Hermeto would choose to follow.

I went to the USA with my own way of working and the desire to change the habitthat obliged Brazilians to go there to learn from American musicians . . . . I wantedto show something that isn’t jazz, nor samba, nor bossa nova, because I am tired ofall that! . . .Yes, I make music and I am Brazilian. You can take that any way you like.(Pascoal, Interview with Lena Zwarg 5)


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The Space Outside the House (1970–80): International

In 1970, Hermeto went to the US, along with the couple Airto and Flora Purim, in

order to arrange the songs on the LPs Natural Feelings and Seeds on the Ground

(Buddah Records, 1970, 1971). On the latter disc, Hermeto records and arranges a

song composed by his parents around 1941 in Alagoas, while they were working on

the harvest. The experimental “O Galho da roseira” (“The Rose Stem,” Parts I and II)

was considered to be one of the best songs of the year by English critics (Marcondes

606–07).

Shortly before his trip to the US, at the time of the Quarteto Novo and the

ideological correctness of the nationalist Geraldo Vandre, Hermeto used to wear a suit

and tie and keep his hair quite short. However, after his trip, Hermeto’s appearance

became very much “pop.” The multi-colored shirts, hats, and long, unkempt, white

hair of the albino musician seem to point back to the counterculture and hippies of the

1960s at the peak of psychodelia, free jazz, and experimental music (Berendt 36– 45).

His new look, added to other unusual features—such as the musical use of animal

sounds and unconventional sound sources—helped to form a somewhat “exotic”

public image which, on the one hand, brought him fame and, on the other, made him

a permanent target of criticism from orthodox musicians. Nevertheless, in order to

blur categories further and shock art music 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 art

music in compositions for symphony orchestras, big bands, instrumental groups, and

chamber ensembles in Brazil and abroad. In this sense, much more than mere

“exoticism” or “eccentricity,” Hermeto’s dress is a symbol of the composer’s break

with musical nationalism, as confirmed by the important statement: “I do not play

Brazilian music. I am Brazilian and very proud of it, but the only label I will ever

accept for my music is Universal” (Pascoal, qtd in Santos Neto, Tudo e som 8).

The journey represented an important turning point for Hermeto, since he gained

international recognition in the US as an arranger 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 (Miles Davis, Ron Carter, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock,

Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Gil Evans, among others), rapidly gaining 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.26 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

and an orchestra of tuned bottles, which earned Hermeto a special place outside

Brazil.27 This mixture is present, for example, in the LP Montreux Jazz Festival (1979),

recorded a year before Hermeto finally became established in Brazil.28 The title track

“Montreux,” a beautiful ballad in G minor, became a type of instrumental anthem of

Brazilian musicians.


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Ritornello (1981–93): Feast of the Gods

Around them, the day-to-day labors of men, a strange round dance . . . that of musicand power. (Attali 21)

In 1980, at the age of 44, after various international trips, Hermeto returned to Brazil

and finally formed a fixed group of musicians who accompanied him for twelve years

from the end of 1981 to 1993. Hermeto now had considerable national and

international experience, but it was the first time in his career that he had the same

group of musicians at his disposal, on a daily basis, year after year. With them,

Hermeto was able to reinvent the socio-economic rural traditions of his childhood

(see Costa-Lima Neto, “Experimental . . .Conception” 41–83).

“I am not going to advertise a sampler manufacturer!” bellowed Hermeto at a show

in Rio de Janeiro during the 1980s—which I attended—while he was whacking his

Ensonic keyboard with his shoe, irritated by the delay in loading cartridges with

animal sounds and others. Try as he may, producer and factotum Mauro Wermelinger

could do little to protect the $3,000 keyboard from Hermeto’s relentless assault, which

ended with a glass of beer being unceremoniously poured over the unfortunate

instrument. The popular tradition of the Northeast, based on family units, the

autonomous activity of artisans, seems to partially explain Hermeto’s suspicious

attitude toward the technology of samplers, synthesizers, and the like, as well as his

constant rebellion against owners of radio stations, nightspots, and recording

companies. With his experimentation based on the popular rural traditions of the

Northeast, and retaining the autonomy of the accordionist and farmer who does not

see himself as a musical hack, Hermeto refuses to be exploited by the culture industry.

In the same way, he continues the tradition of making music in the family, setting

himself apart from the anonymous labor force used by the music industry and

forming a community built on family and neighborhood ties with the musicians of

the Group at his house in Jabour (Travassos Letter).The CD Festa dos deuses (Feast of the Gods, 1992) exemplifies the struggle between

Hermeto and the majors. Almost twenty years after having recorded his first disc in

Brazil of his own compositions, the LP A musica livre de Hermeto Pascoal (The Free

Music of Hermeto Pascoal, 1973), twelve years after having terminated his contract

with Warner Bros. by recording the LP Cerebro Magnetico (Magnetic Mind, 1980), and

after recording five discs for the independent label Som da Gente, Hermeto saw an

opportunity for him and the “boys in the Group” to get some financial return after a

long drought by recording once again for Polygram. His dream was to use the

proceeds from the new CD to buy a bus which could take him and the Group all over

Brazil presenting shows. However, his dream for a traveling ensemble did not

materialize, nor did the Group’s expectations. The recording company delayed the

delivery of the CD, and as a consequence when the European tour to launch the disc

took place (between September and November of 1992) the product was not available

for sale. As yet another proof of their lack of interest in promoting their new artist,


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PolyGram also failed to publicize the official show launching the CD at the Sala Cecılia

Meireles, RJ, or make the CD available for sale during the event. This was the last straw

for Hermeto. Feeling that he had been boycotted, he couldn’t restrain his irritation

during the show, and shortly afterwards broke his contract with this powerful

transnational recording company (Santos Neto, E-mail 25 Feb. 2008). Thus, several

months after these events, and with little prospect of financial reward, the Group

broke up. After twelve years of working together and producing a considerable output

of music, the feast of the Gods had finally come to an end.29

After the break-up of the Group, the musicians created variations for the daily

ritual which they had become accustomed to during the 1981–93 period. The bassist

Itibere Zwarg told me in an interview that while coming back home from a rehearsal

the musicians of the Group tried to improvise rhythms and melodies in odd meters of

five and seven pulses, somewhat rare in popular music in Brazil. I believe that this

musical game demonstrates how the “Jabour School” had taught them not only

interpretation, arrangement, and composition, but also something which is the

hallmark of Hermeto Pascoal: the balance between tradition and contemporaneity.Hermeto Pascoal, in turn, continued to develop and broaden the same sound-

music paradigm from his childhood in Lagoa da Canoa, by combining the

instruments which he learned to play and blending the musical styles which he got to

know over the course of his career. 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.30

Conclusion: Brasil Universo

From the first phonograph recordings in Brazil, among them the samba “Pelo

telefone” (“Over the Phone,” 1916), produced at the sambistas sessions at the house of

Tia Ciata, to the sound files of Hermeto Pascoal & Group, shared over the internet,

popular musicians have been negotiating their place in twentieth- and twenty-first-

century Brazilian society. Crossing the “cultural dividers” 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

interchange heterogeneous musical genres, thus creating new hybrid species. In this

urban house with open windows, the music of the Americas blended with the music of

Africa, Europe, and Asia (see Hosokawa), producing a wide variety of mixtures.

Bandas de Musica, choro, frevo, samba, bossa nova, jovem guarda, MPB, tropicalia,

musica sertaneja, and the Musica Universal of Hermeto Pascoal constitute different

musical expressions of distinct regional, class, and ethnic identities. These differences,

however, do not prevent the various dwellers in the house from exploring their

common endowment of musical Brazilian-ness or, in the case of Hermeto, the

universal dimension contained in this endowment of Brazilian-ness.


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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. Tropicalia is attributed the role of the rupturer of this tradition by introducingmusical elements from pop, rock and roll, jovem guarda, and avant-garde 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 fromthe Southeastern region of Brazil, the richest in the country, there exist various other

popular musical traditions, and in addition to these there are the Brazilian musicianswho play non-Brazilian musical genres, such as rock and roll, metal, punk, funk,

dance, and hip hop. In reality, the industrial era problematizes the categories of“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 to say, they are “transplanted and freed from the frontiers of timeand 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 massifiedby the communications media and become “popular music” (see Malm, qtd by Ulhoa,

“Nova Historia” 85). This occurred, for example, when the samba was media-ized byRadio Nacional during the dictatorship of the Estado Novo instituted by Getulio

Vargas, the broadcasts smothering the sounds of the choro groups, the Bandas de

Musica, the frevo orchestras, and the urban pianeiros.The example of the samba demonstrates how the phenomenon of musical

nationalization and/or popularization in modern and contemporary Brazil is relatedto three factors, which may or may not be combined: a) political co-option of the

artist by the State; b) ideological legitimatization; and c) massification promoted bythe culture industry. The Musica Universal of Hermeto does not fit into any of the

vectors, as the musician was not co-opted by the State, did not become associated withany nationalist or vanguardist ideologies of the urban intelligentsia, nor allow himself

to be transformed into merchandise for the consumer society. The processes of

musical media-ization in Brazil had as an effect, paradoxically, the inclusion of fewartists and the exclusion of many. For this reason Hermeto’s “universalizing” aesthetic

project is loaded with tension, resistance, and clashes, both in the political-ideologicalsphere and in the economic sphere.

His contestational discourse goes against the national myths of “racial democracy”and “mestizo cordiality” used politically since the government of Getulio Vargas with

the aim of integrating the contingents of black workers and rural migrants into thenew urban and white “civilized order.” The gesture of insubordination from the

Northeastern migrant Hermeto Pascoal exposes the other side of the carnivalized

image associated with the country. In fact, Brazil was the last country in the world toabolish slavery, only in 1888 (see Alencastro 93), and, furthermore, besides the black

racial problem, there is the indigenous question. The huge influence of the Indian


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population on the spoken language, food, religion, domestic habits, adaptation to the

environment, besides the fact that there are 225 Indigenous peoples, totalling 734,000Indians that speak around 180 languages (see Ricardo 7), does not prevent,

unfortunately, the indigenous contribution from being looked down on or evenannulled by the modern Brazilian nation-state (see Bastos). Although practically

forgotten by musical historiography Amerindian musical-ritual elements underlie

countless folk manifestations found in vast regions of the country as, for example, inthe Northeastern Bandas de pıfano, probably the oldest instrumental group in Brazil.

“I was just like an Indian, but a different Indian,” says Hermeto (Pascoal “Enfim”), onrecalling his childhood in the Northeast and the flutes that he used to make by hand.

The multi-colored clothing of the albino musician reveals his anthropophagic culturalidentity as a “second skin,” Indian, black and white, in which archaic and modern

Brazil clash.Going to Jabour to attend the rehearsals of Hermeto & 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, black slaves, Umbanda, Candomble, the

popular Catholicism of the Northeast and spiritism, that is to say, the most importantco-ordinates of the syncretic cosmological system of Hermeto, which cohabit and

blend in his singular musical system. The uniqueness of Hermeto’s music lies in theuncommon capacity of the composer to establish a dialogue between, on the one

hand, the vocabulary and instruments of “conventional” ethnic (indigenous and Afro-Brazilian), regional (rural folk music: Banda de pıfano, forro, embolada, etc), Brazilian

urban popular music (Bandas de Musica, choro, frevo, samba) and international styles

(jazz, free, art music, world music), and, on the other, atonal and inharmonicsonorities found in nature (animal sounds, human speech) and in unconventional

everyday sound objects (pieces of iron, pans, wooden shoes, flasks for oral hygiene,etc.). In combining the “conventional” with the “natural,” the composer creates a

third hybrid substance, which is no longer either one or the other, but a fusion of thetwo: “For me nature is everything you see in front of you. It is daily life” (Pascoal,

“Vivendo musica” 48).To conclude, Hermeto’s professional trajectory in the second half of the twentieth

and early twenty-first centuries can be defined as “utopian.” The word “utopia” itself

can be defined as a “non-place” or a “place that does not exist” and is normally used inthe sense of a search for an “idealized” and “fantasy” world, different from the “real

world.” In his utopia, Hermeto rejects the “real world,” the “profane world,” andstruggles to keep intact the singular authenticity of his “sacred” Musica Universal, even

in the commercial world of the contemporary culture industry, where music loses itsartistic “aura” and becomes merchandise. Competing for a space on the popular

instrumental music scene, which also includes choro, frevo, and jazz, and removed

from the national traditions built around folk music, samba, bossa nova, and MPB, aswell as the tropicalist avant-garde and comercial music for the masses, Hermeto

Pascoal is something quite unique in the popular music of Brazil. However,


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considering the recent site, podcasts and virtual communities on the internet, he

appears to be more at home than ever before.31 Dribbling the Big 5 Labels (BMG,Warner, Universal/Vivendi, Sony, and EMI) through a surprising strategy of cultural

resistance, the “wizard of sound” has ploted his “time-suppression machine,” passedthrough the ritual of renovation and re-encountered his public in “another world,” inthe virtual space of the internet. Accordingly, projected in the transnational and

transpopular media-ized dimension, the musician has gone beyond the frontiersbetween the “cultural dividers” of town and country, “universalizing” himself in an

act of cultural cannabilism.As a reaction to global capitalism, neocolonialism and the economic oppression

practiced by the big transnational record companies (see Bishop), the albino musicianHermeto Pascoal, a “different kind of Indian,” makes use of modern internet

technology to try to achieve his pre-capitalist religious utopia. A similar procedure tothis is used in the Musica Universal. In a long saga that took him to countless Brazilianand foreign cities, the rural Northeastern emigre superimposed modernity on the past

and begins to exercise experimentation and innovation through tradition andeveryday life, at times in a highly radical way. Violence and harmony: his “Brazilian-

Universal” cultural identity reveals the hybrid nature that characterizes countriesformed from the shock, conflict, and mixture of cultures, besides the complexity of

political, economic, racial, and class relations of Brazilian society. Through his MusicaUniversal, the Brazilian composer, band leader and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto

Pascoal overcomes, on the one hand, the colonized reproduction of European andNorth American models and, on the other, defensive and xenophobic nationalistic

posturing, and thereby consolidates his position as a pioneer in the history of popularmusic in Brazil.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of Popular Music and Society for their helpfulcomments and criticisms. Tom Moore and Geoffrey Gilbert for the translation. Teacher, musician,and producer Mauro Brandao Wermelinger for the interviews he kindly gave me. Pianist andcomposer Jovino Santos Neto for the important information sent through the mail and finally, SeanStroud, friend and colleague, for his generosity.

Notes

[1] “Panelada” is a typical dish from the Northeast region of Brazil, resulting from Portuguesecolonial influence. It is made with the offal of mutton, goat, or beef, mixed with vegetablesand rice.

[2] It is common practice in Brazilian academic writing for well-known public figures, such asHermeto Pascoal, to be referred to by their Christian names. This practice will be followed inthis article.

[3] In 1988, Hermeto’s son, Fabio Pascoal, joined the Group.[4] Five of these six discs were recorded at a small independent record label Som da Gente (Sound

of Our People) in 1982, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1989. The sixth and last disc was recorded atPolyGram in 1992.


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[5] Tios and Tias were the names given to the leaders of Candomble, a religion brought to Brazilby the Africans, in which the Orixas (divinities) are worshipped. Hilaria Batista de Almeida,Tia Ciata, was born in Salvador, Bahia, on 23 April 1854, arriving in Rio de Janeiro in 1876.See Napolitano (18).

[6] The oldest datings of prehistoric archeology in Brazil go back 50,000 years. See Guidon;Pessis. For prehistoric rock paintings in Brazil, see Fundacao Museu do Homem Americano.It is interesting to note that the first known descriptions of Amerindian music in Brazil aretwo ritual chants of the Tupinamba of Rio de Janeiro, transcribed in 1558 by Jean de Lery, aFrench Calvinist pastor: “Pira-uassu a ueh” (“Tasty Fish”) and “Canide-iune” (“Yellow Bird”).See Lery.

[7] For Hermeto playing the pıfano accompanied by his Group, in 1985, State of Sao Paulo, seeHermeto Pascoal Sinfonia do Alto Ribeira.

[8] Feijoada, one of the symbols of Brazilian cuisine, is a dish linked directly to the presence ofblacks in Brazil, and is the result of the mixture of European culinary customs with thecreativity of the African slave. It is made with black beans, pork, sausage, and jerky.

[9] The samba-exaltacao “Aquarela do Brasil”—the musical symbol of the Estado Novo of GetulioVargas—acquired international projection when it formed part of the soundtrack of WaltDisney’s film “Alo amigos” (Hello, Friends, 1943). See Desenho Aquarela do Brasil.

[10] “The ‘young guard’ emerged in opposition to the ‘old guard’ (velha guarda), a term used torefer to traditional samba composers. The movement is also known as ‘ie, ie, ie’, whichproblably refers to its most likely source of inspiration, the Beatles song ‘She loves you yeah,yeah, yeah, yeah’” (Ulhoa, “Musica Romantica in Montes Claros” 13). Musica sertaneja in the1980s became the most widely consumed mass musical genre in Brazil.

[11] The drummer Marcio Bahia married one of Hermeto’s daughters and the bassist ItibereZwarg chose Hermeto and his wife, Ilza, to be the godparents of his children.

[12] The Friday rehearsals were open to the public. I went to four rehearsals in Jabour between1987 and 1992. In 1998–99, during my Master’s course, I went twice to the house to interviewHermeto.

[13] Hermeto married Dona Ilza in Pernambuco in 1954. They lived together for forty-eight yearsand had six children before her death several years ago. See Santos Neto (Tudo e som 8).

[14] Umbanda is a religion marked by the fusion and syncretism of various elements, includingother religions such as Catholicism, Kardec spiritualism, and Candomble.

[15] Listen also to “Caminho do sol, Tributo ao papagaio Floriano” (“Path of the Sun, a Tribute toFloriano the Parrot,” 1999), the instrumentation of which includes a whistling section andpercussion, simulating a Northeastern Banda de pıfanos. In this solo disc released in 1999(“Eu e eles”), Hermeto plays forty sound sources, among keyboard, strings, wind, andpercussion instruments, in addition to non-conventional sound objects. See Hermeto Pascoal:Eu e Eles Parte 3—Final.

[16] “Dense description” is a type of ethnographic description which seeks not only to narrate thefacts as they present themselves superficially to the eyes of an observer, but to interpret whatthese facts signify in a particular context, in accordance with codes socially established by thenatives of a specific cultural group. See Geertz (13–41).

[17] It is interesting to note that, because of his visual deficiency, Hermeto was not accepted byteachers of musical theory. For this reason he taught himself to read and write music.

[18] Listen to “Tiruliruli,” “Vai mais Garotinho,” “Tres coisas,” and “Pensamento Positivo.” Listenalso to Hermeto performing the “music of aura” of the French actor Yves Montand onHermeto Pascoal’s Aura of Sound of Yves Montand.

[19] On the location of Indigenous Lands near to Palmeira dos Indios and Lagoa da Canoa, seeCaracterizacao Terra Indigena Xukuru –Kariri.

[20] At the time of this excellent disc, the Group which accompanied Hermeto was made up ofNene, Zabele, Cacau, Jovino, Pernambuco, and Itibere. I note that in popular Afro-Braziliansyncretism Saint George corresponds to the warrior Orixa Ogum and Saint Anthony to thehunter Orixa Oxossi.

[21] The Group formed by Hermeto at this time included Ron Carter, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim,Raul de Souza, Chester Thompson, David Amaro, Hugo Fatoruso, and Alphonso Johnson.


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[22] Embolada is a poetic-musical genre in which the “difficulties of diction transform the singinginto a game of vocal dexterity which distracts the listener’s attention from the semanticcontent to the ‘sonorous value’ of the words” (Travassos, “O aviao brasileiro” 91).

[23] Hermeto has various choros in his repertoire, including “Chorinho para ele” (“Chorinhofor Him,” 1977), “Salve Copinha,” and “Chorinho MEC” (1999). See “Choro arabe” (“ArabChoro”) at Hermeto Pascoal e Big Band.

[24] With whom he had one of his first recorded compositions, the soundtrack “Coalhada,”(“Curdled Milk”) on the 1965 LP. Available at Miscelanea Vanguardiosa.

[25] “Carinhoso” was originally composed by the choro composer and instrumentalist Pixinguinha,in 1916–17, with lyrics by Joao de Barro. Listen to a excerpt of “Suite Pixototinha”, fororchestra, at Hermeto Pascoal and Orchestra.

[26] Listen to “Little Church” and “Nem um talvez”, on Miles Davis, Live Evil. Hermeto dedicatedto Miles Davis the composition “Capelinha e lembrancas” (“Little Chapel and Memories”)(1999), in which Hermeto alternates between playing the flugelhorn section and the acousticpiano, as well as singing in a pan of water. See “Little Chapel and Memories” at HermetoPascoal: Eu e Eles Parte 2.

[27] On the track “Velorio” (“Mourning”) (1972), in addition to this song, Hermeto uses fifty-twotuned bottles in “Criancas, cuida de la” (“Kids, Watch Yourself”).

[28] The Group in Montreux was made up of the musicians Nene, Cacau, Itibere Zwarg, JovinoSantos, Pernambuco, Zabele and Nivaldo Ornellas. See Hermeto and Group live in Montreuxon Hermeto Pascoal: Live at Montreux Jazz Festival.

[29] Jovino Santos and Carlos Malta left the Group for solo careers and were replaced by AndreMarques (keyboard) and Vinicius Dorin (wind), respectively. Itibere Zwarg, Marcio Bahia,and Fabio Pascoal continue to play with Hermeto, while pursuing solo activities. For more onthe Group, see Jovino Santos’s website.

[30] See “Luz e som” (“Light and Sound”), a kind of “Universal-Brazilian Suite” with four parts(Banda de Musica—samba—jazz—samba), corresponding to the four stages of Hermeto’scareer (rural Brazil—urban Brazil—international—urban Brazil/Ritornello) at HermetoPascoal e Grupo: Live in Spain 1985.

[31] See Hermeto Pascoal’s official website, Miscelanea Vanguardiosa, and, finally, Orkut.

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Editora Jorge Zahar, 2001. Print.Santos Neto, Jovino. E-mails to the author, 17 Feb. 2008, 25 Feb. 2008.———. Personal interviews, 10 June 1997, 18 Aug. 1998.———. Ed. Tudo e som: The Music of Hermeto Pascoal. New York: Universal Edition, 2001. Print.Saroldi, Luiz Carlos and Sonia Virgınia Moreira. Radio Nacional: O Brasil em sintonia. Rio de

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Paulo: Hedra, 2000. Print.Travassos, Elizabeth. Letter to the author. 29 Apr. 1999.———. Modernismo e musica brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor, 2000. Print.———. “O aviao brasileiro. Analise de uma embolada.” In Ao encontro da palavra cantada. Ed.

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popular na cultura brasileira. Sao Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1982. 129–91. Print.Zwarg, Itibere. Personal interview. 4 Oct. 1998.

Discography

Beatles, The. Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. Parlophone, 1967; EMI, 1987.Davis, Miles. Live Evil. SONY, 1972, 2000.Pascoal, Hermeto. Brasil Universo. Som da Gente, 1985.———. Cerebro magnetico. Warner Brasil, 1980, 2001.———. Eu e eles. CD Selo Radio MEC, 1999.


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———. Festa dos Deuses. PolyGram, 1992.———. Hermeto Pascoal ao vivo em Montreux. Warner Brasil, 1979, 2001.———. Hermeto Pascoal: Brazilian Adventure. Buddah, 1972; Muse, 1988.———. Hermeto Pascoal Grupo. Som da Gente, 1982, 1992.———. Lagoa da Canoa—Municıpio de Arapiraca. Som da Gente, 1984, 1992.———. Mundo Verde Esperanca. Som da Gente, 1989.———. Mundo Verde Esperanca. Selo Radio MEC, 2002.———. A Musica Livre de Hermeto Pascoal. PolyGram, 1973.———. Quarteto Novo. EMI, 1967.———. Slaves Mass. Warner, 1977, 2004.———. So nao toca quem nao quer. Som da Gente, 1987.———. Zabumbe-bum-a. Warner Brasil, 1979, 2001.Moreira, Airto. Natural Feelings. Buddha, 1970, One Way Records.———. Seeds on the Ground. Buddha, 1971, One Way Records.Sambrasa, Trio. Sambrasa Trio em Som Maior. Som Livre, 1965.

Websites, Videos, Podcasts, and Communities

Caracterizacao Terra Indigena Xukuru –Kariri. 29 Apr. 2009 ,http://pib.socioambiental.org/caracterizacao.php?uf¼UF&id_arp¼4001..

Desenho Aquarela do Brasil. 7 Apr. 2009 ,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼_mQHr8bAojU..Fundacao Museu do Homem Americano. 30 Apr. 2009 ,http://www.fumdham.org.br/pinturas.asp..Hermeto Pascoal. Home page. 29 Apr. 2009 ,http://www.hermetopascoal.com.br/english/index.

asp..Hermeto Pascoal and Orchestra. 29 Apr. 2009 ,http://www.hermetopascoal.com.br/english/

orquestra/audio.asp..Hermeto Pascoal’s Aura Sound of Yves Montand. 7 Apr. 2009 ,http://www.youtube.com/

watch?v¼SrgveUpwCnM..Hemerto Pascoal e Big Band. 29 Apr. 2009 ,http://www.hermetopascoal.com.br/bigband/audio.

asp..Hermeto Pascoal: Eu e Eles Parte 2. 21 Apr. 2009 ,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼

NQ_BiscK9ZE&feature¼related..Hermeto Pascoal: Eu e Eles Parte 3—Final. 21 Apr. 2009 ,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼

pnHs057-aqQ&feature¼related..Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo: Live in Spain 1985 (Part 5). 4 May 2009 ,http://www.youtube.com/

watch?v¼IGFmFywxIa0&feature¼PlayList&p¼2BD67EC9AF590C2B&index¼4..Hermeto Pascoal: Live at Montreux Jazz Festival. 1979. 7 Apr. 2009 ,http://www.youtube.com/

watch?v¼W821bgUU_mY..Hermeto Pascoal Sinfonia do Alto Ribeira. 22 June 2009 ,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼

XTgGc0YMTX4..Jovino Santos Neto. 16 Apr. 2009. ,http://www.jovisan.net/..Miscelanea Vanguardiosa. 29 Apr. 2009 ,http://www.miscelaneavanguardiosa.com/english/..Orkut. 29 Apr. 2009 ,http://www.orkut.com.br/Main#Community.aspx?cmm¼10980..


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03007760903214803

Documents

missa dos escravos

jorge zahar editor

palmeira dos indios

quilombo dos palmares

lagoa da canoa

mundo verde esperanca

rio de janeiro

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