Ahead of the release of Congo, the debut album from Brazilian guitarist and composer Rodrigo Tavares, Marc Teare caught up with Rodrigo to discuss his inspirations behind the album.
Maintaining a meditative mood across it’s nine instrumental pieces, Congo blends composition and improvisation with subtly experimental yet sophisticated arrangements that evoke the mood and rhythms of classic Brazilian artists such as João Gilberto, Dorival Caymmi, Tom Jobim, Milton Nascimento and Caetano Veloso.
Rodrigo’s work draws on a lifetime of disparate influences and immersive listening, and on Congo we can hear elements of jazz, post rock, minimalist composition and disparate global sounds melt together to create a deep listening experience that falls between genres and wilfully defies categorisation. From reverb drenched solo guitar pieces such as Cidade Sol I to expansive full group pieces such as De Roda or A Raposa E O Corvo, Rodrigo has crafted a lush soundworld that rewards exploration and will appeal to fans of music as diverse as Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society, Collocutor, BadBadNotGood, Slint or late Talk Talk, as much as it does to lovers of Tom Jobim or Milton Nascimento.
How much of Congo was composed and how much improvised? Tell us something about the process.
I had most of the song structures done when I began the rehearsals with drums and double bass only. I had them written. The harmonies and melodic themes were almost all there as well as the ideas for drum parts, the general rhythmic structures, etc. I had sent Felipe Continentino, the drummer, and Pedro Santana, the bass player, a lot of music by other people as references and many conceptual notes before we began. I had thoughts about how I wanted every song (and sections within the songs) to sound. I don’t know how much of it they read or listened to, but they got the general idea: the repetitive, circular nature of the music and the sort of emotional state I was trying to convey. Of course, they also proposed things that were eventually incorporated in the music… Both are very good, very musical players.
I left some empty spots for some things that would come in later, arrangements or improvisations. At that point, the music sounded good but bare. We recorded drums, double bass and guitars in less than two days and I was left with this skeleton of a record to fill. Months later I started to conceive in more detail what sort of instrumentation would make sense in that context and then decided I would add guitars, saxophone, vibes, percussion and a Fender Rhodes in one song.
But as for your question more precisely, this was one of the ideas I wanted to play with: I wanted improvisation and composition to overlap a bit, I wanted one to sound like the other. So, somethings that may sound as improvisation are not and vice versa. In Congo I or Cidade Sol II, for instance, nothing is improvised. I am not sure where this idea stands, but I wanted improvisation – and whatever felt like improvisation – to serve not as an index of musicianship but as a line of flight out of this trance like mindset the music proposes, as freedom from the joys of obsession.
Who are you’re musical/artistic inspirations?
The list is too long but first of all there is a Brazilian canon, especially from the second half of last century: João Gilberto (above all), Dorival Caymmi, Tom Jobim, Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé, Milton Nascimento, Lô Borges, Djavan, leaving tons of people out, of course. This is bread and butter, so to speak. From the Anglo-Saxon world, also up there for me there is Prince, Stevie Wonder, Scott Walker, Robert Wyatt, Joni Mitchell, Sun City Girls, Brian Eno, Nick Drake, Fred Frith, Bill Frisell, Joanna Newson, Charles Ives and there is Arvo Part, Can… More recently, I have been enjoying Yves Tumor, Floating Points, Joshua Abrams, Nicole Mitchell, the new Tony Allen record is very nice. I listen to a lot of new music nowadays, I guess I have got a researcher’s approach to music to some extent. Many hours of my week are filled with immersive listening. I really like to be exposed to new music and I like to like things more now.
What inspired you to embark on this project?
In the second half of 2014, I guess it was September already, I drove some 6 hours to see a Sun City Girls concert in a small town in the Southern part of my home state, Minas Gerais. It was one of the greatest performances I have seen. We were about 40 people in the room, a former gay club next to a highway, far from the town. All very surreal and special. Right after it, I went to the very middle of Brazil, to a town called Abadiânia, taken by my wife to meet a spiritual healer called John of God. Not a cause and effect thing but back home from these two trips I began writing Congo.
Some years earlier, I had gotten back to studying guitar improvisation and, as had always been the case whenever I got into music studies of any sort, that made me want to make new music; more than to follow any established material. (I am far from being proficient on guitar. I can be interesting on it I guess but I am not technically impressive at all.) But, for some reason, when I got back from these trips, there was a more focused need to compose. So I began to make my sketches, chord changes, melodies, bass lines, beats, to think of instrumentation and about the people who could be in the project with me. Thiago Nunnes, who coproduced the album, introduced me to most of the musicians, some of whom I knew from the local instrumental/jazz scene in Belo Horizonte; all very good, highly musical and inspired young musicians, whose contributions can be easily sensed on the record.
On a side note, this city has a very well established music scene. It doesn’t get the same amount of media attention as Rio or São Paulo but it is Brazil’s third largest metropolitan area, it is a big place and has got expressive amounts of musical and artistic talent in general. This is where Milton Nascimento started, where Clube da Esquina was formed. Sepultura is also originally from here. It’s a very vibrant place for literature and visual arts as well.
Back to the album, I had the drummer and the bass player, Felipe and Pedro, for this first round of rehearsals and recordings and as ideas matured I called in the rest of the group to record their determined parts and to improvise.
What was the vision/idea behind Congo? What feelings and thoughts are you hoping to express through this album?
I think Congo was in great part conducted by an unconscious drive for letting some issues go, for having them solved, for getting my wheels rolling. I had been fighting for a while with some professional and identity traps and as music is, for me, maybe this only thing that has always been able to hold me together and give me a sense of personal unity, I kind of stuck to it I gave it a shot. But, more precisely, what I had to let out was memory. The music in Congo for the most part are blocks of memory, memory as affection, personal and collective. The choice of Arthur Omar’s concept of Congo and epigraph has to do with this and to how I decided to conduct the composition process: whatever came to me as music would remain only if it came from the unknown, the impersonal, the very old. I also had this conscious desire of being geographically imprecise, I wanted this music to sound geographically deceiving, something I admire in Sun City Girls, for instance. And of course, there was no desire to make it into a genre or more recognizable forms. Visually, in my mind, I thought of this group of songs as a plane of music, a place you could wander around.
When did you start playing music & have you played in bands or on other projects?
I started playing guitar at the age of 11, had bands, did some festivals performing just by myself but only up to my late teens. From then on music became a private, domestic activity. I went to college to study Communications (Radio and TV) and later on got a Master Degree in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College in London. For some ten years I was also part of an independent research group on pop music. I was in a band for a very brief period of time in my early 30’s but that was it.
What does it mean to be an artist or musician in modern Brazil?
Here we have to deal with different, disparate layers of time. The old and archaic Brazil is back in full force as in the illegitimate government we are living under. There is a major reactionary movement against the recent progressive developments we went through. There is an enormous amount of vitality that can’t be contained, however; some amazing creative power. The whole funk culture is a good example, the broadening in the forms of living, in the use of the bodies and the visibility of the poor have disturbed a lot of people.
I think it is time for everyone to act, to resist and transform, to get into whatever form of political action. At the same time, as artists, if we can, we must help to strengthen and broaden the reflexive and sensible abilities of society what is clearly lacking here and elsewhere. I also think we should realize that the country needs a reinvention of some kind. We still carry too many illusions about what Brazil represents, some people idealize it too much, especially in regards to the ideas of tradition and the general character of the nation, there is a deep self-image crisis going on.
We’re excited to be able to premiere ‘Cidade Sol II’ from Rodrigo’s forthcoming album. It’ll be out on the 15th March via Hive Mind Records, you can order your copy here.