1.2 – a guitar that meshes with the song
The history of the Brazilian song is closely linked with the guitar. If other melodic-harmonic instruments – such as the piano, accordion or cavaquinho (small guitar) – appear as tools of established musical elaboration in certain music strands, the guitar stands out as the main instrument used in the manipulation of music elements by those who make songs in Brazil.
Thus, the format voice and guitar appears as a determinant parameter for the music that shows vocation to receive a song treatment, even if it is composed with the active participation of an instrument rather than the guitar.
That parameter establishes itself through the vast production along several generations of singers—guitar-players who have gradually founded the basis for the typical musical handling of the Brazilian song.
JOÃO BOSCO
00:00 voice and guitar equilibrium: Caymmi and João Gilberto
A person who has changed my life was Dorival Caymmi. […]
He had his steel guitar
and sang powerfully with that voice of his.
Guitar and voice with very similar emissions, both very strong.
Unlike João Gilberto
who produces a silken voice and a very soft guitar too.
Both have a tremendous talent to place voice and guitar at the same sonorous level.
00:48 Caymmi: guitar integrated with the composition
At the same time as the voice inspires the guitar,
the instrument calls for the voice.
In the end both merge
becoming inseparable parts in the composition. 1
02:10 inseparable parts in the composition
03:06 a very characteristic guitar sound of that author and that voice
SARAIVA
Actually Caymmi’s voice and guitar
in spite of being classic
has musical stimuli that ar still not deciphered
JOÃO BOSCO
And perhaps it might be for us not to decipher
once it presents a mysterious relation between voice and instrument;
rather, it may be a signal for us to know that is in fact
the very guitar of that voice and that author.
they are indivisible
inseparable
and both need one another
to work out.
Guinga highlights other artists, from the subsequent generation of Dorival Caymmi, who specially contributed to the multiplication of expressions and styles in the elaboration of a “guitar that meshes with the song”.
GUINGA
00:00 very personal solutions
Milton Nascimento, Chico Buarque, Gilberto Gil, Dori Caymmi.
They are as important to the guitar as João Gilberto,
because they also present very personal solutions.
00:33 Dori
When Dori does this:
[Guinga plays and vocalizes Estrela da tarde (Afternoon star) (Dori Caymmi / Paulo César Pinheiro)]
That is a masterpiece, buddy!
It has such importance to guitar literature – the same as any of those wonderful pieces.
The terms “piece”, “guitar literature” and “masterpiece” refer us straight back to the universe of the erudite guitar 2, and somehow claim hybrid legitimacy between the oral and written traditions for the refined goldsmithing done by the composer—guitar-player who composes songs in Brazil.
GUINGA
02:44 a guitar that meshes the song
Those guys taught me more in terms of guitar than the guitar-players themselves.
SARAIVA
Do you mean the accompaniment guitar?
GUINGA
For me this is not accompaniment guitar.
It is a guitar that has independent life.
If you accompany this song in another way
you won’t get the same exuberance.
The buddy created a song
and created a guitar that meshes the song
Thus, Guinga’s view dialogues with that of João Bosco when he points out that the guitar and voice “mesh becoming inseparable parts of the composition”. In both cases the adhesion between the song and the accompaniment conceived in authorial form leads us to the impression of specific musical gestures that reveal the creation concept of each composer. 3
- LINK com a mesma ideia apresentada em – 3 – Canção: graus de ação do instrumento no processo criativo – na segunda categoria da esquematização.
LINK com a ideia “sinto-o como canção, dentro dessa estética simples, que se traduz com uma voz e um violão sem perder sua beleza e integridade” apresentada em – 3.6 – O composer, the songwriter and the grays in between. ↩︎ - Universo com o qual Guinga entrou em contato, ainda que não de maneira aprofundada, como aluno do professor e concertista Jodacil Damasceno. ↩︎
- LINK com o conceito de “gesto musical” apresentado na introdução da dissertação acadêmica, cujo link para PDF se encontra na segunda nota da Introdução. ↩︎