PARANA BOMFIM: Voz
dos Tambores (Voice of the Drums)
Percussion between afro-religious
rhythms and vanguard
Merly
Donoso, Dietrich Kollöffel, Armando Chuh, José Luiz Silva
Rhythmus is the pulse of life.
Percussion is the oldest form
of music.
For ages drums were played in
sacred and profane rituals and festivities. All over the world they were
able to express the feelings of people of the most different cultures.
And drums did not go out of fashion, but entered with great variation of
forms and sounds in all musical styles.
Together with his percussion quartet,
Parana Bomfim presents the concert project Voz dos Tambores (Voice
of the Drums), which aims to show the dimension of the drum from their
ritual power over its use in the traditional music up to its possibilities
in vanguard pieces. The repertoire of the instruments includes small percussive
instruments,, acoustic drums as well as electronic drumpads.
Parana Bomfim is alabê
of the Candomblé-house
Ilè Asé Yemojá Orukóre
Ògún
in São Paulo. The drums play an important
part in the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé, since they call the
gods and make the mediums fall in trance.
All pieces of the concert are
compositions of Parana Bomfim. Voz dos Deuses I and II are not an
imitation of a religious ritual, but arrangements for the stage, elaborated
by Parana Bomfim, presenting aspects of the orixás, the gods
of Candomblé.
PROGRAMME
Part A
Voz dos Deuses I / Voice of the Gods I
Pâo
Ogun - orixá
of war and metal
Ossain - Forests, leaves,
medicine and medicinal bathes
Oxossi - Trees and animals
Oxum - Calm rivers and
waterfalls
Iemanjá - Rivers
and the sea
Oyá - Wind and rain
Xangô - Thunder and
lightning
Omolú - Mystery,
illnesses, ground, grave-yard
Salva aos orixás
- Avassa-Rhythm in 15/8
Part B
Muzenza
In the Afro-Brazilian religion
Candomblé Muzenza is a specific rhythm and dance of initiation in
the Angola-rite. It is dedicated to the god Oxalá.
Mustafa
Developed in Dança Expressiva
in a long standing cooperation with the dancer Elise Ralston. With odd
rhythms is constructed a dialogue between body and music.
Sónde
A piece which is played on the
musical bow berimbau. In the Angola-language Cokwe Sónde means "brave
ant".
Jagun
Means "war" in Yoruba. Like on
a musical battlefield, the different levels of rhythm, timbres and accents
interfuse, overlap and compete against each other in temperamental variations.
Máquina
The rhythm of the machine, the
motor, the force, the desperation in view of a running machinery which
can no longer be hold up. This composition has no model in the traditional
repertoire. The leading "principale of motivic repetition" produces a rhythmical
carpet, which suggests a percussive minimalism.
Iyálóde
Its context is religious, but
its power bursts the screened world of the ritual: the ijexá-rhythm.
Three voices join to a rhythmic polyphony, which in its logical structure
and in its continuation of the musical motifs draws from the same spiritual
source as a fugue of Bach.
Civilização
Harmony - War - Destruction -
Resistance
The piece relates the history
of the threat of the nature by war and greed of profit of man, which, in
only a few centuries, managed to destroy ancient harmony of nature
and cosmos. But the earth resistes, as wll as some of its inhabitants.
It is the history of the Amazonas, but also of any other place on this
planet.