ENGLISH | cadavrexquisensemble

Les idées pétrifiées devant

la merveilleuse indifférence
d’un monde passioné
d’un monde retrouvé
d’un monde indiscutable et inexpliqué
d’un monde sans savoir-vivre mais plein de joie de vivre
d’un monde sobre et ivre
d’un monde triste et gai
tendre et cruel
réel et surréel
terrifiant et marrant
nocturne et diurne
solite et insolite
beau comme tout.

(Prévert, 1992)

O r i g i n

MethodStructureIntentionDisciplineNotationIndeterminacy
InterpenetrationImitationDevotionCircumstancesVariableStructure
NonunderstandingContingencyInconsistencyPerformance

"The same surreal beginning that engenders 'cadavre exquis' becomes cell-mother of our modus faciendi. Then the irresistible synonymy. I had thought, when founding Cadavrexquis Ensemble, in the Dead Body that is the foundation of japanese Butoh.

Do you know this 'concept' of 'Corpse'?

Please, before continuing, you must visit the links below:

http://www.t3.rim.or.jp/~sakurah/butoh2.html

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Conf/MemePap/Greiner.html

http://home.earthlink.net/~bdenatale/Butoh&SurrealismPart2.html"

(Otacílio Melgaço)

O u r S u r r e a l i s t R o o t s

Among Surrealist techniques was a kind of collective collage of words or images called the "cadavre exquis" ("exquisite corpse" in English). Based on an old parlor game, it was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold the paper to conceal part of it, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution.

The technique got its name from results obtained in initial playing,

"Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau".

http://www.cadavre-exquis.net/eng/Accueil/accueil.php?domaineng

Among Surrealist techniques exploiting the mystique of accident was a kind of collective collage of words or images called the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse). Based on an old parlor game, it was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold the paper to conceal part of it, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution. The technique got its name from results obtained in initial playing, "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau" (The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine). Other examples are: "The dormitory of friable little girls puts the odious box right" and "The Senegal oyster will eat the tricolor bread." These poetic fragments were felt to reveal what Nicolas Calas characterized as the "unconscious reality in the personality of the group" resulting from a process of what Ernst called "mental contagion." At the same time, they represented the transposition of Lautréamont's classic verbal collage to a collective level, in effect fulfilling his injunction-- frequently cited in Surrealist texts--that "poetry must be made by all and not by one." It was natural that such oracular truths should be similarly sought through images, and the game was immediately adapted to drawing, producing a series of hybrids the first reproductions of which are to be found in No. 9-10 of La Révolution surrealiste (October, 1927) without identification of their creators. The game was adapted to the possibilities of drawing, and even collage, by assigning a section of a body to each player, though the Surrealist principle of metaphoric displacement led to images that only vaguely resembled the human form. One, by three hands, begins with a spider, which gives way to a man's torso the feet of which are formed by two jugs. Other, more interesting cadavres exquis were reproduced in a special issue of Variétés titled "Le Suréalisme en 1929" (fig. 288). One of these begins with a woman's head by Tanguy, which dissolves in to a jungle scene by Max Morise, returning to a female anatomy schematically indicated by Miró, and terminating in "legs" in the form of a fishtail and an engineer's triangle by Man Ray"

"Dada & Surrealist Art," by William S. Rubin, Chief Curator of the Painting and Sculpture Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York 1968

http://www.cyberstars.com/ron-mike/ce1.html

http://www.cyberstars.com/ron-mike/ce2.html

For a new Wine, a new Pitcher. Be Welcome!

T h e M e m b e r s

Otacílio Melgaço (Piano)

& Guests

T h e R e s o n a n t

R e g i s t r a t i o n s

O círculo IMperfeito

S h o w s

(under construction)

T h e ( s e m i - o p t i c s )

I c o n o g r a p h y

T h e S t y l i s t i c

...ils aimaient la vie. Pour les uns, c’était la poésie, pour les autres, c’était l’humour, pour d’autres n’importe quoi, mais pour tous c’était l’amour. En souriant ils envisageaient la mort, mais c’était pour mieux dévisager la vie. Pour la rendre plus libre, plus belle, plus heureuse même. Beaucoup d’entre eux ont disparu. Mais grâce à eux, cette vie réelle, comme leurs rêves, continue. (Prévert, 1966)

I - A n t h o l o g y

In spite of the cadavrexquisian music Babel character,

in spite of being adverse to labels (that,

if there was, would be limits and limits here become unviable):

there are some other historical phonoroots, almost-north:

1) starting from the Jazz

1.1) Free Jazz 1.2) Third Stream

2) starting from the "Erudite" universe

"Random" Music

II - O n t h o l o g y

The most relevant:

Autochthonous (Brazilian) and, simultaneously, Cosmopolitan (Universal) "F.I."

II.i - Conceptual Introduction

(Retórica e o Discurso da Improvisação Livre Cesar Marino Villavicencio Grossmann Dr Jonathan Impett)

"The concept of improvised music (...) it comes from a new line of musical thought,

product of the encounter among Free-Jazz

and a new similar tendency, the “avant-gardism” erudite.

This movement is called of Free-Improvised Music, or Free Improvisation (FI),

Possesses one

free musical style exempt of rules. Has as objective to offer a field

flexible and open for the interpreter's natural expression. Consequently, the interpreter

carries not only the responsibility of uttering ideas through sounds but

also to create and to formalize them. In this sense, the improvisation acquires one

similar formal thought to the composition with the difference that the invention and the

communication is accomplished by the same subject of an almost simultaneous form. (...)

The Free Improvisation is a practice that possesses an own public today, it is linked to the

market production and is recognized and accepts for experts globally. (...)"

II.ii - inventio/dispositio/decoratio/gradatio

Cadavre Exquis is a Combo (variable numeric formation; could assume feature - paradoxically - solo, or duet, trio, quartet etc) done build by Otacílio Melgaço, maybe tend the Unconscious (the genesis and the destiny of Free/Iimprovised Music?) as limelight, that longs for resonant miscegenation between:

a) - the Phonontology that accompanies their members (all originating from the Terra Brasilis, womb of alchemic Villa-Lobos, Hermeto Pascoal, Egberto Gismonti, Naná Vasconcelos... - and an endless series of respected popular and erudite musicians. All considerable artists valuing our Indigenous, Africans and European roots* however establishing an identity that can already be called 'Brazilian'. Singular Profile already exists there is a long time to those that observe us carefully, ripening and seriousness);

&

b) - the Plurality of musical expressions from countless untimely Etnocultures (maybe the soundglobal village).

* Cultivated our 'Folk Lore' but we are contrary to the stereotypy spread 'inside as out' of our borders. The own Brazilians are plenty responsible for the propagation of the own adorned image with 'tutti frutti hats'. But we cannot be condescending with a mediocre and imbecile action as this. Everything that can be called Stereotype, means, everything that is labeled in foreign countries as 'Brazilian music', in the smashing majority deserves our deeper contempt. Us Brazilian have to be more affirmative in that sense. Us, artists, have to contribute to clean the foreigner vision - usually disfigured and simplistic - in terms of our Real culture. And not: in terms of an 'export culture'. For example: we appreciated the 'essential' Jazz (Coleman, Monk, Miles, Coltrane, Bird....) but the Brazilian instrumental music, if authentic, will never be labeled: 'Brazilian Jazz' (sic). This would be an insult to our identity. Another example: it is vexatious the opinion that all and any Brazilian classical music can be nicknamed of 'exotic' and similar pejorative denominations. All prejudice deserves contusing gibe. The Brazilian artists are fundamental to impose the true carat of their creations acting with professionalism and daring. They must be trustworthy to their origins and not becoming marionettes of the other ones, sometimes imperialists, cultures. It's obvious that is contrary to the xenophobia! To have influences of the 'Another' is salutary. To lose his own identity for that reason: it is Vile. The world Public is fundamental for, abandoning his autocentrism, to recognize the value of own culture in consonance to the other planetary citizen's cultural value. Therefore, Cadavre Exquis Combo treats the folklore of his country - Brazil - with self-criticism, radical dignity and parabolic elevation.

"Adianta querer saber muita coisa? O senhor sabia, lá para cima me disseram. Mas, de repente chegou neste sertão, viu tudo diverso diferente, o que nunca tinha visto. Sabença aprendida não adiantou para nada... Serviu algum? Porque ainda não se sabe. Porque aprender-a-viver é que é o viver, mesmo. O sertão me produz, depois me engoliu, depois me cuspiu do quente da boca... O senhor crê minha narração?"

(ROSA, J. Guimarães. Grande Sertão: Veredas)

C O D A

Ash on and old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house—
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir. This is thedeath of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning
Near the ending of interminable night
   At the recurrent end of the unending
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
   Had passed below the horizon of his homing
   While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Over the asphalt where no other sound was
   Between three districts whence the smoke arose.

I met one walking, loitering and hurried
As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
   Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
   And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
   The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
   I caught the sudden look of some dead master.

Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
   Both one and many; in the brown baked features
   The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
   So I assumed a double part, and cried
   And heard another's voice cry:

'What! are you here?'
Although we were not. I was still the same,
Knowing myself yet being someone other—

And he a face still forming;

yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
   And so, compliant to the common wind,
   Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
   Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
   We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.

I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy,
   Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
   I may not comprehend, may not remember.'
And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse
   My thoughts and theory

which you have forgotten.
These things have served their purpose:

Let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven.

By others, as I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
For last year's words belong

to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
To the spirit unappeased and peregrine.

Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech,

and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,

Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
   To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
   First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
   But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
   As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage

At human folly, and the laceration
   Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
   Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
   Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
   Which once you took for exercise of virtue.

Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
   Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
   Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.'
The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
   He left me, with a kind of valediction,
   And faded on the blowing of the horn.

(T.S.E.)

"Peut-être,

le pouvoir et ironie

qui ont le

Brésil

sont l'inclination aux

Invasions Barbares..." (Otacílio Melgaço)

Cadavrexquis Copyright OM

Conceived site and built by O.M.

Dedicated to Erik Satie - Glenn Gould

- Keith Jarrett - Paul Bley - Cecil Taylor