Project Description CD Album ‘VOZ DEBAIXO’ - Application Approved by the Portuguese Society of Authors - 2023
(english version - for portuguese version read bellow)
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Synopsis:
In December 2021, while I was planning my next musical projects, after the Recital Popular III, I invited Margarida Mestre to join me in researching a vocal performance accompanied by an acoustic instrument in which it is impossible to distinguish whether the voice ‘sings’ or ‘says’. We then came up with the idea of listing our work in tracks that would make up an album to be published on CD, putting into practice not only all the work-in-progress we've developed so far, but also the continuation of the survey of new syntheses, new methods and new ideas. Insofar as our research is carried out in the midst of performative invention, in real time, this CD fits into the genre of avant-garde or experimental jazz.
Description:
Before I met Margarida Mestre in 2015, my connection to the voice and the word in a performance context, as a musician and composer, was already characterised by a deep interest and had already borne some fruit, which I mention by way of example: the performance and musical direction in ‘Para Acabar’, based on a radio play by Antonin Artaud, performed 10 times over the course of a week in July at the Maus Hábitos space, Porto, in 2013; the video I published on youtube in 2014 entitled ‘Pirili’, where I already presented the technique of ‘dubbing’ vocal frequencies developed by me on my double bass. In short: ever since I started collaborating with contemporary theatre and dance in 2005, my interest in questions of the human voice and the poetic word in the context of the performing arts has always been very lively and passionate. Throughout this period, until today, whenever relevant, I have had the opportunity to test and develop my technique of doubling vocal frequencies, often reaching the level of ‘tuning’ where this happens in real time, i.e. the discovery of the frequency used by the voice in my double bass happens simultaneously with the ‘intonation’ of the voice, as if it were the double bass ‘saying’ those words, affirming the acoustic instrument as a ‘voice’ of its own. (This technique can be confirmed more specifically by listening to track 2 ‘Aconte-me de já instante’; also track 7 ‘Perfection’, as well as track 10 ‘Ouço o banjo de um cego’).
The technique of bending the frequencies of the voice, which has aroused my keenest interest, is based on processes already initiated by others: such as Hermeto Pascoal and his processes of musical crystallisation, which he called ‘Sound of the Aura’, for example with the intonation of the actor Yves Montand, - which would have been for me a ‘trigger’ for my dedication to the study of the voice from an instrumental point of view; Brigitte Fontaine's 1969 album ‘Comme a La Radio’; the pianist Jason Moran and his Bandwagon on the track ‘Ringing my bell’, in 2003. We can also add to these references the work of Fátima Miranda and Laurie Anderson, who will always be sources of inspiration.
I had the opportunity to study this technique and put it into practice with artists such as Paula Só, Ana Ribeiro, Constança C. Homem, João Pedro Mamede, Américo Silva, Inês Pereira, Tiago Botto, Dina Félix da Costa, António Poppe, Eduardo Sérgio, Rodrigo Brandão, as well as vocalists Viv Corringham (UK), Maria Luisa Capurso (ITA), and Elisabetta Lanfredini (ITA).
When preparing the first Popular Recital in 2015, Margarida Mestre and I had the opportunity to start a research project, or ‘invention in research’, based on the interaction between the human voice and an acoustic string instrument, in which the ‘word’, namely the ‘poetic word’, was always the mediator of this interaction. In other words, the ‘word’ has always been the mediator of the transgression, advocated by us and our research, of the boundaries between words and music. And this research, continuous and ongoing, as a duo or individually, has seen new chapters of synthesis over time, especially each time we bring our creative skills together for the Popular Recital. This partnership with Margarida Mestre, who has already had other experiences and encounters besides the Popular Recital, has always been governed by the principles of creativity and originality, in which, on the one hand, a new (musical) artistic object is sought and, on the other hand, the ‘survey’ of new creative processes is carried out. At the end of the processes, these ‘surveys’ end up being identified with the created object itself, elevating it to the status of a ‘meta-poetic’ object, in other words, a (performative) artistic object that reveals in its essential character the very processes (its poetics) through which it was created.
‘No Sound Is Innocent: AMM and the practice of self-invention. Meta-musical narratives. Essays.’, Edwin Prévost, Ed. Copula, United Kingdom, 1995. From an essayistic/theoretical point of view, the readings I did throughout 2021 were decisive, namely Edwin Prévost's ‘No Sound is Innocent’ - with regard to questions of improvisation and ‘real-time composition’, the musical genre Prévost calls ‘meta-music’; the readings of Pierre Boulez's ‘Orientations’ - with regard, especially, to the essays on composition for the human voice, form, text and music, compositional processes.
As this is a meta-language, an artistic language that not only unveils itself to perception, but also unveils its own ‘shaping’ processes, the proposal for the CD ‘Voz Debaixo’ could also contain a pedagogical message. Once, while observing a music education test taken by a fifth grader, I noticed a serious problem: the teacher had asked two questions related to each other: 1. whether a person uses musical notes when they sing - to which the child replied yes; and 2. whether a person uses musical notes when they speak - to which the child also replied yes. The serious problem, at the level of pedagogy, and a monstrous obstacle to the formation of conscience and integrity, was that the teacher gave the answer to the second question as wrong, despite the fact that the pupil, probably instinctively, answered the question in all honesty and perhaps with a greater (cons)cience than the teacher. In ‘Voz Debaixo’, for our part, we didn't think twice about how to answer the question posed by Pierre Boulez, but we did analyse each of its nuances in depth: ‘Is the poem to be sung, “recited” or spoken?’
“Orientatios, Collected Writings”, Pierre Boulez, Ed. Universidade de Harvard, Reino Unido, 1986. Capítulo “Som, Palavra, Síntese”.
On a plane far removed from that teacher, we've reached a basic point where we've tried to demonstrate, with ‘Voz Debaixo’, that perhaps there isn't much difference between singing, ‘reciting’ or saying. And we believe that this realisation, on the part of anyone who listens to this album, could really correspond with John Coltrane's dreamy vision: ‘I think music is an instrument. It can lead to the creation of exemplary forms of thought that change the way people think.’ 4 ...and therefore also the way they express themselves and communicate with each other.
‘Free Jazz Black Power’, Philippe Carles / Jean-Louis Comolli, Ed. A Regra do Jogo, Porto, 1976.
With the release of this CD we have the following objectives: (1.) to create and present new music and also new processes; (2.) to give continuity to the processes and syntheses developed by other artists in the recent past; (3.) the urgency of establishing that we use musical ‘materials’ to speak/say/recite; (4.) the urgency of restoring expressive unity to performance with music and words.
"Parece não haver dúvida de que a música abre horizontes.
ouvi esse encanto de voz e cordas, e, que dizer? milagre."
‘There seems to be no doubt that music opens horizons.
I heard this enchantment of voice and strings, and what can I say? a miracle.’
Abel Neves - escritor, dramaturgo e poeta, autor do texto usado na faixa 10 "Ouço o Banjo"
https://joaomadeira.bandcamp.com/track/ou-o-o-banjo
https://joaomadeira.bandcamp.com/album/voz-debaixo
