Américo Rodrigues no Leonardo Music Journal. Dec.2005.

Américo Rodrigues: O som que circula nas veias.Written and performed by Américo Rodrigues (voices, pumpkin stalk, electronics and sound poetry). Recorded, mixed and mastered by César Prata, Reque Rec Studios, Portugal, March 2005.Contact: Américo Rodrigues, Rua Mouzinho de Albuquerque, 59, Third Floor Esq., 6300 Guarda, Portugal. E-mail: americo.rodrigues@iol.pt.
The piece O som que circula nas veias (The Sound that Circulates in the Veins) belongs to a work that I named Aorta tocante (Playing Aorta). In this recent work, edited in Portugal, I use my voice, electronics and a vegetable instrument commonly called “pumpkin trombone,” which is, very simply, a pumpkin stalk. This “trombone” is an ephemeral toy, with a short life that poses a stimulating challenge to its users. One starts by cutting the stalk from a pumpkin, preserving the membrane, which, when blown, vibrates in a unique way. Each tube has its own voice. To the voices of the tubes I added my own voice, my own voices. The tubes/stalks of the pumpkins, sticky on the inside, look like the arteries of the body that carry blood and other fluids. This association between the vegetable tubes and the body’s tubes (some of which carry the sound of speech) led to the Aorta tocante. What I now do I call sound poetry and vegetable music. To create these pieces, I also studied the shamanistic traditions of several parts of the world. My vocal work is inspired by those practices.In this project I use words in my first language (Portuguese) and voices of the world in a kind of cosmic communication. The pumpkin stalk is a source of sound, used as a wind instrument but also as a percussion instrument, in a rhythm that induces the search of ecstasy. I used more than a hundred tubes in Aorta tocante, thus building a big pipe organ. I also used the sound of the friction of the tubes against each other and the sound of their own destruction.In O som que circula nas veias I use this poem:The water that circulates in the body/The water that circulates in the veins/The sound that circulates in the body/The sound that circulates in the veins/The sound that circulates in the water/The water that circulates in the sound/The sound that circulates in speech/The speech that circulates in the veins/The words that circulate in the water/The words that circulate in the sound/The sound that circulates in the words/The words that circulate in the veins/The letters that circulate in the words/The words that circulate in the words/The words that circulate in the letters/The water that circulates in the letters/The letters that circulate in the letters/The water that circulates in the water/The music that circulates in the words/The water that circulates in the music/The music that circulates in writing/The writing that circulates in the body/The sound that circulates in the sound/The blood that circulates in the words/The music that circulates in the veins/The blood that circulates in writing/The writing that circulates in speech/The words that circulate in the voice/The voice that circulates in speech/The voice that circulates in the body/The voice that circulates in the blood.To the poem I added the sound of the pumpkin stalks and, in a dominating crescendo, a recording I did in the State of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, of an African ritual, presented by the group Coco de Zambê de Tibau do Sul. The words of the poem overlap each other until they are suffocated by the rhythm of the drums and the voices.Américo Rodrigues was born in 1961, in Guarda, Portugal. He has done experimental work with his voice since 1979, when he worked with actress Catherine Dasté in Paris. He is a sound poet with several books and object-poems published. He has participated in musical and vocal improvisation sessions with Carlos Zíngaro, Günter Müller and Silvia Barrios, among many others. He has edited the CDs O despertar do funâmbulo (The Rise of the Funambulist) (2000); Trânsito local, trânsito vocal (Local traffic, Vocal Traffic) (2004) (with Jorge dos Reis; and Aorta tocante (Playing aorta) (2005). In 2003 he edited a record of sound poetry, Escatologia (Eschatology). In 2001 he created two sound-poetry shows, Como um relâmpago and Chamamento (Like Lightning and Calling). He is the artistic director of Teatro Municipal da Guarda. Rodrigues has presented his work at several festivals in Europe and South America.
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