Introduction

This is a live project, herein presented in the form of video-site, containing material from my research on the Guitar-Song relation and the constitutive permeability of the Brazilian popular music. In the project, I specially analyze the transit of musical information that takes place in the intersection between the solo guitar universe, particularly that connected to erudite or concert music, and the universe of popular song in Brazil.

A Project that is the fruit of a life search, in which – rather than separating – I try to articulate the different paths taken in my compositions and artistic trajectory; as well as the path trod along as a researcher-learner in the group A Barca ^[i], and as a guitarist who researches the threshold of written tradition inside the academia.

Herein are video recordings of interviews conducted for the dissertation entitled Guitar-Song: dialogues between the solo guitar and the Brazilian popular song. ^[i] Thus, transiting along the site, in the midst of text and descriptive transcriptions, the viewer will be able to follow special sections of the interviews conducted with seven masters of renowned acting in the universes studied: Sérgio Assad, Marco Pereira and Paulo Bellinati connected with solo guitar practice; João Bosco, Paulo César Pinheiro and Luiz Tatit, connected with popular song; and Guinga, who acts in the interface of the areas studied.

The option for the montage format allows that diverse and multifaceted discourses and themes stay smoothly together throughout the seven chapters that compose the dissertation. The attention to the compositional processes and organicity, as well as the regard to the musical gesture, facing the hybridism of the Brazilian culture, provides the research with the use of different languages – text, score, video, audio – as well as theoretical references from the fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, and anthropology. In this way, the present study makes use of both resources that are typical of the written tradition and resources that follow the dynamics of the oral tradition, which complement each other in order to contemplate the nature of the musical matter originated in the interaction between those universes.

The complete text can be found in book form launched by SESC publishing, which also includes the interview conducted with composer and singer Elomar, just after the presentation of the dissertation. Elomar, like Guinga, performs on the threshold of the fields herein approached: the solo guitar, connected to the written tradition, and the popular song in Brazil.

It is a live project, and thus, it continues. Whether in my own artistic performance; whether in the doctorate studies that I am undertaking once again under the guidance of conductor Gil Jardim; whether in the infinite ways the guitar and song feed one another in the music that is made in Brazil.

00:00 Watch the trailer of Guitar Song: A Brazilian soul, one of various unfoldings of this project.

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Chico Saraiva

 

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1. A group that appears in 1998, of which I am a founding member, and that mobilizes, researches and promotes the music of traditional cultures in Brazil. Know in more details at: http://www.chicosaraiva.com/a-barca. 

2. The Project counted on the orientation of Conductor Gil Jardim, and on the presence of Ivan Vilela and José Miguel Wisnik in the qualification and thesis defense board. The academic introduction, where I elaborate some of the concepts that provide basis for the dissertation, can be accessed here.