By request: Hermeto: Made of Music

Glimpses of the spirit realm in the work of Hermeto Pascoal.

We begin with Hermeto Pascoal talking animatedly in Portuguese, on a 2018 EP. The piece is called “Copa D’Agua,” and it eventually evolves into a sound painting: Water dancing in a glass, water being digested up close, water sloshing around the mouth of Pascoal.

The sounds may not be peak art, but they illustrate something important about the legendary Brazilian multi-instrumentalist: Though he has enviable command of his “main” instruments (piano, accordion, flute), he is inclined to play anything. A table, a water glass, even (on the transcendent Slaves Mass and several tours) a live pig. As Pascoal told the Guardian in 2011: “The quantity of instruments is infinite because of me – wherever I am is an instrument. A chair is an instrument. A table is an instrument. There are so many instruments."

This particular philosophy of creative activity is something music culture might try to hang onto in the digital age.

Because as efficient as samplers and workstations can be, the simple act of creating vibrations out of physical objects – not wavefiles – involves something more than just everyday resourcefulness: It’s an intimate form of intention. The transfer of energy from brain to object doesn’t just result in random sounds – it conveys (at least when Pascoal does it) a distinct spirit. Energy and aftershocks leading to more energy.

After I posted thoughts on Pascoal here the other day, an old friend from Miami, the bassist Bob Grabowski, recalled on Facebook the time when he alternated sets with Pascoal at the city’s famed club Tobacco Road. “Hermeto was big into Tupperware at that time and personally did a huge solo on them both sets.”

I couldn’t find any Tupperware solos in Spotify’s disappointing and woefully incomplete Pascoal discography. (Cut to the sidebar rant about the dismayingly limited offerings of music from Africa, Cuba, Brazil and elsewhere in the Spotify database. It’s only a tiny bit better on other streaming platforms. Sigh.) Still, here are some bursts of genius from one of the masters….

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