<<otacílio Melgaço is scion of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Mountainous Land that has relatively recently suffered from criminal cataclysm that I would call ´apocalyptic´ - if
I mention the Boschian brushstrokes inundating our
eyesfrom the graphic art of the discographical
album that, here and now, inspires me to sow
a quintessentialized exegesis -.

Two dramatic scenarios of worldwide repercussion gave rise
to such Oeuvre,an impressive contemporary Symphony:

1- The Mariana dam disaster, also known as the Bento Rodrigues or Samarco dam disaster, occurred on 5 November 2015, when the Fundão tailings dam at the Germano iron ore mine of the Samarco Mariana Mining Complex near Mariana, Minas Gerais, Brazil, suffered a catastrophic failure, resulting in flooding that evastated the downstream villages of Bento Rodrigues and Paracatu de Baixo [40 km (25 mi) from Bento Rodrigues], killing
19 people. The extent of the damage caused by the tailings
dam collapse is the largest ever recorded with pollutants
spread along 668 kilometres [415 mi] of watercourses.

The failure of the dam released 43.7 million cubic metres of mine tailings into the Doce River, causing a toxic brown mudflow to pollute the river and beaches near the mouth when it reached the Atlantic Ocean 17 days later. The disaster created a humanitarian crisis as hundreds were displaced and cities along the Doce River suffered water shortages when their water supplies were polluted.

The total impact of the disaster, including the reason for failure and the environmental consequences, are officially under investigation and remain unclear. The owner of the Bento Rodrigues dam, Samarco, was subject to extensive litigation and government sanctions. In 2016, charges of manslaughter and environmental damage were filed against 21 executives, including Samarco's former CEO and representatives from Samarco's owners, Vale and BHP Billiton, on its board of directors. Controversy over
the investigation grew after a 2013 report, indicating
structural issues in the dam, was leaked;

2- The Brumadinho dam disaster occurred on 25 January 2019 when Dam I, a tailings dam at the Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine, 9 kilometres [5.6 mi] east of Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, suffered
a catastrophic failure. The dam is owned by Vale, the same
company that was involved in the 2015 Mariana dam disaster. The dam released a mudflow that advanced through the mine's offices, including a cafeteria during lunchtime, along with houses, farms, inns and roads downstream. 270 people died as a result of
the collapse, of whom 259 were officially confirmed
dead, in January 2019, and 11 others reported as
missing, whose bodies had not been found.

The Brumadinho dam failure occurred therefore three years and two months after the Mariana dam disaster. The Mariana disaster is considered the worst environmental disaster in Brazil's history. According to experts Brazil's weak regulatory structures and regulatory gaps allowed the Mariana dam's failure. Three years after the Mariana dam collapse, the companies involved in that environmental disaster have paid only 3.4% of R$785 million in fines. In November 2015, the department in charge of inspecting mining operations in the state of Minas Gerais, the National Department of Mineral Production (DNPM), was worried
about the retirement of another 40% of public employees over
the course of the next two years. (...) Lamentably, we know: these calamitous cases will still take a long time to reach a
fair result (if any justice will be righteous enough in such
irreparable, irrecoverable, remediless emplacements). In Brazil, alas!, it seems that ... ´ubi lex voluit dixit, ubi noluit tacuit´.

BRUmadinho.
MARIANA.

B R U M A R I A N A,
The Melgacian SYMPHONY.

´Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it´, prescribed Emil Cioran. Perhaps the Artist, with a capital ´A´, is the one who makes us realize that even disasters can be social diseases. And that a (dialectically symphonic) cure, instead of stupidity subduing Life,
is a way for the Miracle to overcome stupidity."

(Caio Campbell;
Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

n o t e: The preamble above was inspired, in paraphrase, by another one
written especially for the fratrical melgaço sound Work which addressed the same theme,
Antífona Brumariana - Peça para Coral e Órgão - (Brumarian Antiphon - Piece for Choir and Organ -]

>>for the sake of optimal visualization and immersion, this website must be
experienced on desktops or laptops ... larger screens [browser zoom at 100%.
If the readability does not appear to be correct, change it to 90% or 80% etc.]<<

L        i        n        k        s
on ma r i a n a / on br u m a d i n h o / ga l l e r i e s I & II / on Me l g a ç o



















Brumarian Symphony


Composition, arrangement, execution: Otacilio Melgaço

first movement - earth|earth
second movement - earth|water
third movement - earth|fire
fourth movement - earth|air

duration: 44:00

Sound recording made by Melgaço.


>>To appreciate the Melgacian Brumarian
Symphony, click on the following link.<<

cover: graphic art by O.M. from the triptych of the Brabantine painter / engraver, born in 1450, Hieronymus Bosch;
"The Garden of Earthly Delights".

>>You can see the triadic closed frame. Represents the globe, with the Earth in a transparent sphere, symbol, according to Tolnay, of the fragility of the universe. There are only vegetable and mineral forms, there are no animals or people. It is originally painted in grey, white and black, which corresponds to a world without the sun or the moon, although it is also a way of achieving a dramatic contrast with the interior coloring, between a world before man and another populated by infinity of beings. Traditionally, the image that shows the triptych cerrado was interpreted as the third day of creation. Number 3 was considered complete, perfect, since in itself it contains Beginning and End. Is here, when it closes, it turns, in the circle, into 1: again it allows us to glimpse the Absolute and, perhaps, the divine trinity. In the upper left corner, a small image of God, with a tiara and Bible on her knees. At the top one can read the phrase, taken from Psalm 33, IPSE DIXIT ET FACTA S(OU)NT / IPSE MAN(N)DAVIT ET CREATA S(OU)NT, which means "He says so, and everything has been done . He sent it, and everything was created." Others, throughout history, interpret that
it could represent the Earth after the flood.<<




appointments
on creation

<<'brumarian'
is a term coined by me that brings us the lexical confluence
of both catastrophes that are so incisive to
the viscera and veins of Minas Gerais.

idealizations and principles took as north: a symphonic reading under the wings of contemporaneity, both conceptually
and in pulps and adopted conduits.

I turned to a perspective on terrestrial rather than territorial substantiality. What it would be like, therefore, to transplant
on sonic soil: prisms departing from the terrene phenomena
that took place there - and literally! -.

[Compositionally, there is an inexorable, indelible parallel:
if geological layers are those in sonic connotation here,
the quadruple skeleton - that is erected in such a Brumarian Oeuvre - mirrors strata, crusts, sediments of audible stylistic-Melgacian offspring, in frank kinetics and hybrid mating.]

if the causes and effects of the calamities that
devastated Mariana and Brumadinho, respectively, started
from human hands to later strangle not only the lives of
their fellow human beings but also of complex sequential
biomes, the polyphonic polysemy which is the content of
the continent symphonized here: all encompasses.

However, it was necessary for me to go beyond
the hominal epicenter (under the face of
holocaustic negligence and delugeful slaughter).

essential was to end symphonic movements
in those of the (dystopized) soils themselves!

Fourfold earthly at the core however, gradually
incorporating locomotions of breaking, rupture, disruption;
displacements of overflow, entomb, inearth, bury.

earth|earth, primeval; untouched in visceral
tectonic choreography under equilibrium - in natura -.

earth|water, signs of the gradual distortion of others swarm,
the imposition of a certain anthropoid parasitarianism and here,
under the liquid metaphor that moves, disarticulates, disjoins.

earth|fire, points to the process-in-itself of the surf, continuous shattering invoking the mobile hell that absorbs everything,
bites, ruminates and metabolizes in cataclysm, calamity, hecatomb.

earth|air, ´post-apocalyptic´, dubious epilogue...so much to reveal
the muddy, uliginous mask of dramatic sepulchres as each
´who-and-what´ has regenesiacly resisted and (re)exists.
to claim survival, despite or exactly because it persists
before the human - too human - Misjudgment Day.>>

(Otacílio Melgaço)