It's been a minute since my last post. As life continues to morph into a new and interesting creative adventure for me, I've been chewing on the direction of this blog. How do I want to focus my writing and explore different creative realms that inspire and incite? Methinks that sending out shorter postings may be the way to go...
This past summer, I've discovered a unique universe of amazing music, film, visual art, and books that have caused the range of my artistic influences to widen. Where once I accepted 'enough' from myself as a musician, writer, director, and peformer; I am now no longer willing to accept 'good enough' in any form. Not just 'good enough' from myself, but in the artistic energy that I breathe in and absorb. These new influences have provided me with insight into the kind of artist I would like to be as well as my general aesthetic. Using the concepts of 'Cultural Cannabilism' that the Tropicalistas adopted in their manifesto, I'll be exploring and sharing more about these artistic realms that encourage this type of artistic investigation.
So rather than sending out long posts about the various subjects of interest, I'll be sending out shorter posts so as to be more consistent. This will include: Song of the Week (a track that will get you going for the rest of the week) and Inspiration Station (a spotlight on an inspiring subject, artist, etc...). That's in addition to longer posts on issues of interest.
And that's it! Slowly, but surely, I'd like to expand and build this site to include more video as well as co-conspirators. For now, I am content with establishing a community of like-minded peeps that are looking for the new/different in life.
As discussed in my previous post about the Tropicalia movement, the Tropicalistas decided to present their manifesto in the form of an album. On the album, Tropicália ou Panis et Circensis (Tropicália or Bread and Diversion), a diverse array of musicians were able to play with the sounds of psychedelic guitars, vocal manipulation, and digital delay.They incorporated these manipulation techniques to present the distorted view of the utopic lifestyle of the Brasilian elite. The Tropicalistas included members of Os Mutantes (including Rita Lee...one of my faves!), Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Tom Ze, and Gal Costa. By uniquely playing with their lyrical content they were able to speak directly to the bourgeoisie.Bruce Gilman mentions in his article "Times of Gall", “Metaphors of cannibalism were employed to encourage the creative adaptation and integration of European aesthetic ideas” (pg.4 Gilman) as they were constantly playing within the space between Brasilian intellectualism and Brasilian popular music in order to activate the discourse on social justice. Tropicalistas engaged their audiences by juxtaposing modern imagery and folkloric/archaic perceptions of the world. They were also able to do this musically by incorporating traditional Brasilian music with their illustrative lyrics. “The traditional folkloric dance bumba-meu-boi (buck-my-bull) and Brazilian rock, iê-iê-iê, become the “same dance,” optimistically pointing toward possibilities for new styles based on traditional music and imported pop.” (p. 8, Dunn) It was this incorporation of different traditional elements that made it interesting when Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso began to incorporate Axe rhythms into their music as well as Candomble imagery and text.The Bahian influence seamlessly blended itself into their rhetoric on the Tropicalia movement.They were able to bring the local culture of Bahia with its African based rhythms to the forefront of popular music. In the end, the Tropicalia movement was disbanded due to the military coup weakening its strength by imprisoning its members and forcing them into exile (the movement lasted for about 2 years in the late '60's).However, it has had a lasting effect on Brasilian popular music, as many of the musicians are still very popular and working in the industry today.It was an important movement in redefining the musical culture and its power within Brasilian society. The basic tenets of the movement, and its manifesto are what inspired me during my travels and are guiding me creatively. I continuously listen to Tropicalia music, as it’s the type of creative energy and philosophical ideas that are pushing me to create the kind of art that activates and engages the audience during and after the performance. It’s a lofty aspiration, to be sure, but I’m really excited about the opportunity to be able to include these new ideas into my work. The Tropicalia movement is the musical movement that caused me to creatively awaken and seek out the new and interesting within my art, my spirituality, and myself.
This post is an intro into the album that started it all. There will be more posts about specific elements of the music soon!
Here's a vid of the title track from the album:
Dig the facial expression of the audience!
This song is on the album and is recorded as a duet with Caetano Veloso & Gal Costa. I found this vid & love her outfit and it's 70's vibe. This is a great example of the Bossa Nova influence in the Tropicalia movement.
This Sunday at Prospect Pond in Brooklyn, July 18th from 10pm-2am, I'll be playing trax from the Tropicalia movement along with Funk, Soul, and Psych Rock from around the world. Check it out & stay tuned for more posts about international psychedelic rock and funk.
"Tropicália brought a new attitude, a new way
of looking at music within the culture, a feeling
of plurality and democracy." (Pg. 2, Gilman)
As I wrote in my previous post, the Tropicalia movement is the artistic movement that fully sparked my interest in traveling to Brasil. This post is all about the movement, its elements and philosophy, as well as what it is that intrigues me. The Tropicalia movement began as a direct response to the oppressive Brazilian military regime that came into power in 1964.While I can't directly relate the current American political situation to the one that they were experiencing in Brazil at this time, I could certainly relate to feeling a deep desire to express my utter disappointment in the present American government. While this isn't a blog post on America politics, as an artist, I definitely feel like there’s some sort of statement I would like to make on the current state of affairs.Even if that statement is that we as a country have detached ourselves from one another and many of us are attached to this consumer based society that we’ve created as well as complacent to our current state of affairs (including myself!), while watching an extensive and expensive war continue. That, in and of itself, would have been enough of a reason for me to respond so positively to the political message the Tropicalia musicians were making.
Two people, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, brought together a group of musicians and created a manifesto that would ultimately become the group’s first album. They began with a written manifesto based from concepts of French Dadaism. As the military dictatorship established itself (beginning in 1964), many of the basic social rights that Brazilians had enjoyed (like Habeas Corpus) were subsequently revoked.This produced a tremendous amount of tension and Brasilian citizens proceeded to organize rallies and events to protest the oppressive military regime.Musically, during this time period, the Brasilian charts were dominated by Bossa Nova.While Bossa Nova had a hold on the popular music charts in Brazil and around the world, the music didn’t reflect the current social situation in Brazil. I equate this musical time period with our present situation in America. One in which American popular music is not reflective of the pressing concerns that we have as a country, such as unemployment and lack of adequate healthcare for many U.S. citizens (including myself). The manifesto borrowed heavily from Oswald de Andrade's, Manifesto antropofagico. As Oswald de Andrade states in his seminal work, the manifesto also incorporated some elements of Dadaism:
“In his “Anthropophagite Manifesto” from 1928, Oswalde de Andrade, a central protagonist of Brazilian modernism… introduces the notion of cultural cannibalism, the metaphorical consumption of aspect of foreign or past cultures, which are then worked through, analyzed, assimilated, equipped with new elements and transformed into a new product” (pg. 15, Dunn)
This concept of cultural cannibalism conjures up violent imagery on purpose as the manifesto was intended to challenge old perceptions about Brasilian music as well as Western philosophical ideology.The full frontal assault on ideology was an attack on the oppressive military regime that had taken much of the basic rights of Brasilian citizens.By assimilating the musical influences of bands such as The Beatles and combining them with the musical elements of popular Brasilian music such as Samba and Bossa Nova the Tropicalistas were able to penetrate the previous perceptions that dominated Brasilian popular culture.They used the concept of Anthropophagy, developed by Oswald, to shape their manifesto into existence. This became such a huge influence for me because as a first generation American, I would like to integrate the international cultural influences that have inspired me so much. For example, my parents are from Haiti and some of the lyrics to my songs are a mish-mash of English-French-Creole with cultural references to all three cultures. Instrumentally, I am influenced by Brazilian, Haitian, African, and American rock as well as a big fan of Trip Hop. I found this idea of cultural cannibalism to be extremely exciting because it was a solid reference point from which I could continue to build my compositions. The absorption of different musical styles was seen as the creative crux of the Tropicalia movement.This ideology that incorporated the neo-cannibalistic view of devourment and the cultural assimilation from foreign cultures deeply embedded itself into the development of this countercultural movement.In many ways, it was the only way that the movement could be formed, as it sought to push beyond the confines of the MPB (Brazilian popular music) movement that was dominating the charts. As we’re a richly diverse country, I feel that it’s time that different cultural experiences make their way to the forefront of the current artistic sphere. I am specifically talking about American popular music, which has a stunning lack of diversity in its perspective and doesn’t accurately reflect the cultural landscape of this country.
Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, enacted this anarchistic view towards art by actively seeking out way to subvert the Brazilian popular culture. Brazilian music festivals, which were showcased on television throughout the 60's, were seen by many as “implicitly understood to be televised rituals in defense of high-minded popular tradition against the incursions of rock-inflected pop music” (p. 4, Dunn) and were, therefore, seen as an extension of the military regime.While most musicians came to the festivals with their acoustic MPB based songs, Veloso and Gil brought the new avant-garde to the masses by incorporating their electric guitars into their performances. They were intentionally seeking a specific response to their performances:
“He (Gilberto Gil) refers to one of the principle ideas behind the Tropicalistas project: artists had to aggressively engage the mass media, or “structures”, in order to effect change.His intervention in the festival was one of the key happenings of the period…which also sought to involve and provoke enraged audiences.” (Pg. 6, Gilman)
This was done in order to violently awaken the collective consciousness of the Brasilian population to the social injustices that were occurring. An angry response is better that no response at all, right? Again, I found myself inspired by doing research and finding this information. Eliciting a response from your audience with provocative performances while highlighting social injustices and referencing different cultural influences is the type of show that I was seeking to create. In order to create their manifesto, Gil and Veloso decided to focus on what would become some of the defining elements of the movement.The group placed an importance on the interplay of music and text.As Gilman writes, ““Compositions were perceptive, humorous, and often paradoxical blends that created controversies, critically assessed cultural traditions, or focused on the incongruities in society.” (Pg. 4, Gilman) As much of the Tropicalia movement began at the Universities in Brazil, this sub cultural movement incorporated the ideas formulated within the intelligentsia and sought to incorporate Western influences as well.Their goal was to engage the Brasilian high culture in discourse regarding the economic disparity as well as highlight the hypocrisy within the military regime.Their creation of a concise movement came in the form of an album...
If you dig the Tropicalia movement, please share your thoughts below. If you're new to the movement, check out this vid. Stay tuned for more posts!!!
All human life is entrenched in mind. It is our mind, our outlook and responses that make our life ugly or beautiful. We must, therefore, learn to take care of our mind. Taking care of the mind means preparing the mind to live the ideal.
- K. R Paramahamsa from “Living In Spirit”
December 10, 2010
I was so close that I could almost feel the warm breeze on my face.After 10 years of dreaming, plotting, and (somewhat) planning I was finally at the point where I was actually on my way to Brasil. I should have been so excited, but instead I was uber numb.After being in New York City for 6 years, I couldn’t say that I was definitively closer to my dreams of being a performer.If anything, I felt so very far away. Even though I’ve been in school working towards my degree, having to work in restaurants for 10 years had drained me of my life’s energy. Even after taking a year off from waiting tables, I still felt energetically depleted from the artistic ‘scene’ in New York City. Honestly, I didn’t feel like there was much sincerity in any of the work that I was seeing and all of the cynicism and irony that permeated the arts scene in the city is why I hadn’t been feeling too passionate about much of anything. Also, there was a deep part of me that was trying to stay in tune with my spiritual needs whilst being in the 'grind'.It was time for something new…an entirely different vibe. One where there was spiritual connection to performance and the community, at large, identified with this energy.
That’s one of the reasons I chose to study abroad in Brasil.
Another huge reason was the music. Specifically, the Tropicalia movement and its concepts about cultural cannibalism lured me into the folkloric aspects of the music as well as its philosophical message.It wasn’t just psychedelic rock with Tropical influences. There was a whole movement behind the discontent that spawned this short-lived artistic movement. The many influences that I recognized included African rhythms, Middle Eastern instrumentation, British Rock, and Bossa Nova. The indiscriminate usage and blending of genres, the conceptual foundation of cultural cannibalism, was extremely exciting to me as it showed me the different ways in which the melting of multiple cultural influences was possible. Lastly, the weather was another major influence as well. After living up North, first Chicago then New York, I decided not to be here for winter. As my plans became more finalized, I realized that when I came back I wouldn’t be the same person that I was when I left. I hoped that it would be a positive change and that I would have time to focus on my work while I was abroad. Admittedly, I was naïve to the living conditions in Brazil and while I recognized it as a developing country I still thought that I would have regular Internet access while I was there.Unfortunately, that was not so and a lot of the actual studying that I had to do never came to pass as internet access became more challenging to find the longer I was there. Another concern I had was safety as I had heard many stories about the level of violence in Brazil, and specifically, Salvador. Above all else, though, I was excited to experience the rich musical culture and dive into my studies as much as I could. Little did I know, that this journey would encompass spiritual study and growth that was necessary in order for me to move forward creatively...
Stay Tuned for more ruminations on my travels in Brazil....
It's been a minute since my first post as the daily rigors of life have descended upon me once again. Being back in New York has been a whirlwind and I am reminded on a daily basis of some of things that pushed me to travel abroad for so long. At the end of the day, though, there is still something that is drawing me to this city.
CUT TO: The end of 'Lost'
So, yes, I am a fanatic of 'Lost'. I didn't start watching until the beginning of the 5th season (not my fave, btw) but the storytelling made such a strong impact on me. I dig creative narrative techniques so the show had me hooked from the pilot ep.
Here were these people who were on an Island fighting for their lives on a daily basis and navigating through this surreal universe. Somehow, many of them were able to find love, courage, and friendship through their many trials and tribulations.
What exactly does this have to do with my current situation? Well, really, it just reminds me of the power of having Faith and surrounding yourself with the peeps you love. Life is super short...and, in the literal blink of an eye, can pass by you without amounting to much. So it's in all of our best interests if we live and love fully. That's what I got out of the finale of 'Lost'.
This quote seems quite fitting for the 'Lost' finale, but (methinks) applies to life in general:
"Life is a voyage in the infinite ocean of time, where scenes are perpetually changing. Life is a journey from impurity to purity, from hatred to cosmic love, from death to immortality, imperfection to perfection, from slavery to freedom, from diversity to unity, from ignorance to eternal wisdom, from pain to eternal bliss, from weakness to infinite strength." ~ Swami Sivananda
I am grateful that we even had a show like it on television and am going to miss growing with the characters as well as experiencing their new adventures. R.I.P. Lost... 'til next time...
1: a substance that enables a chemical reaction to proceed at a usually faster rate or under different conditions than otherwise possible 2: an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action
~How does this word relate to this blog? Well, if anything, it relates to the blogger. Throughout my travels, I've been on the lookout for something. There was definitely an existential crisis involved. But it was less about "What's it all for?" than it was about "Where is it and how can I get some?". What I've been looking for is more than 'Joie de Vivre'. While it does encompass a passion for life, I was also looking for some sort of consciousness altering event/thing/person that would slap it all into place. The 'all' I am referring to is more than life...it's art, love, humanity, kindness, compassion, and intention. Some of these qualities, I do possess, but in recent months there had been a major disconnect within myself and towards NYC. As I return from my travels, I'd like to retrospectivally look back on my travels as well as find those things (music, art, people, food, events, workshops, etc...) that invoke deep passion within me. I'd like to chronicle more than the next artistic movement and, instead, focus on those things that inspire a deep response from people and even incites some kind of action.
The time is now for a positive change in our paradigm as a country, global community, artistic enclaves, and families. I'm more than willing to share those that inspire me and you, the reader, are welcome to share with me your thoughts and/or inspirational words/photos/vids.
