Tuesday, November 29, 2005

DEODATO. EUMIR DEODATO.

Ave Maria (by Deodato)

"The Eternal spoke to the Spirit of the Nations that he had just created, he said: "You shall go in reverse order, last one in, first". The Spirit of Brasil thus found itself among those closing the recession. With a polite gesture, the Lord made Michelangelo understand that he was interrupting the pause. Having caught up with the Spirit of Brasil he slid a minuscule object to him with a wink. Brasil caught the gesture and closed his hand.

As some other spirits were looking at the Eternal with astonishment, He tapped on Brasil's shoulder and spoke so as to be heard: "You were about to forget it my friend". Everyone was thus reassured. Once they were all back on earth in their places, Brasil opened its hand and saw a small shining white stone with whiter stripes. He looked closer and read "Saudade". He didn't understand. He read the word aloud hoping to catch its meaning. SAUDADE.

He immediately felt overcome by a deep violent, desperate melancholic feeling. He was about to cry, he batted his eyelids to let the tears out but nothing flowed. He open his mouth to scream but he was feeling so oppressed that no sound came out. Then Brasil started moaning that he could not cry. There, coming from the palm of his hand , a voice told him: " Don't cry. I know what to do. Take me to your ear" The Spirit of Brasil obeyed and heard: " Tempinho Bom " . Brasil smiled while looking at the stone. She said: " It is one of your children, a gift from God. His eyes will be melancholic and his name DEODATO. Eumir DEODATO.

He will compose pieces that will make you smile laugh and dance. He will accompany the works of the worlds great. In all colors of music. You won't have just him. You will have many, many, many children who will make you dance. But, beware, if you take me out of your ear, it's finished : you will only have tears and sobs. It's the only way to bear me SAUDADE, by dancing and singing. Otherwise, you will cry to death; Brasil had heard the essentials but he was so busy dancing that he did not hear SAUDADE add: " The only way the entire Earth will see you is singing and dancing. It will not be understood that you can ever be melancholic, suffer from depression and spasmophylia.

Even when it will be chic to be sad, you, you will have to sing and dance because no one will believe you if you say : Me Brasil, sometimes I'm a bit blue. They will laugh, believing it's a joke and they will say: " Come on Brasil, cut it out, you're kidding, holy Brasil, come on, you are always cheerful, we know that. Come, be nice, make us dance. We need you Brasil, make us dream. " And seeing their insistence, seing their distress, you will forget yours and you will give them music and dance. For eternity Brasil. Eternity. But Brasil was already dancing for Deodato. He was not hearing SAUDADE."


Mag MagCartier
mag@magdotcom.net
============

While searching for Deodato's works on the Net, Geer Bazin had gone from click to click to http://www.dougpayne.com/ who offers the true complete data about Deodato's work. She also found a photo of his on Martin Cohen's site. _ http://www.congahead.com/ . Deodato was this gentlemen with a vague and melancholic look whose neck Cohen hugged. Geer was wondering if it was quietude or sadness in his eyes. This glance looked good, unless detached. He had lost that " Catch me if you can " look he exuded during the seventies.

1964 Her recollections of the Hammond organ played by Deodato go back to when she was just six years' old. The chords played by this musicman logged themselves under her skin and became part of her blood just like the cells. A complete cell count would have revealed all the deodatine already contained in her blood.

She didn't know who was playing nor what was playing. She just was feeling the urge to stay immobile in order to follow the path of those chords under her skin and into her soul. An impression of something already lived crept into her then. When you're 6, 7, 8 years old you don't know how to name things but this temporary handicap is replaced by acuity and precision in the feelings. It was not the organ itself, nor the rhythm, nor the melodies nor the chords, it was their alliance. That organ then, those melodies there and those particular chords.

She was feeling that strange emotion which she would identify later: nostalgia. What can you be nostalgic of at that age? She felt that she would never forget those moments of her childhood they bore the iridescence of this strange color given by the organ's chords. Geer would return to her hopscotch on the garden's pavement and land on the sky.

This musicman has no simple note, everything is texture and depth. What seems to be a note is in fact the tip of an iceberg of sounds that an uninitiated ear cannot catch. Deodato doesn't linger on a motif. He changes on the third, even bluntly on the second rather, and right away proposes something else. Deodato makes you cry, of happiness for so much joy. Because with him the melody is cheerful even when played with melancholic chords. Emotion with Deodato borders on grace.

Deodato's chords carry an hymn to the new day, the morning dew and that of the evening, the hissing of the cricket and the anolis song, the sun through the branches, the boat gliding on the sea, the water droplet on the skin, the laugh and joy of childhood. Geer often imagined that a stream of angels joyfully quarelling to propose their chords to this musicman.

Some composers give us vertigo, but we listen to them piously reserved. Enraptured is the word. Deodato also enraptures us to make us dance and laugh of dancing so much. Because one cannot refrain from laughing hearing so many notes, authentic bubbles of elation that tease our every senses. Deodato plays in the sense of having fun with the music. However one can listen to him if one considers that to be the seal of a certain quality. Besides, a music that one listens to, is it thus superior to another that one dances to? The pleasure, the rapture, the enjoyment, are they in anyway different? Do we enjoy anything in a way that is compartmentalized? It is as if, once again, as for everything.

Geer had found Deodato and his music again at a time when you hear things differently. Twenty years earlier she had not heard the quintessence brought on by the violin in Moonlight Serenade. At 1'24 you hear the violins rise, rise (they will go away no more, truly). The others rise also, forte for everyone. During twelve seconds (a century of delectation) all the instruments are at their peeks. All of them aiming at something that their short arms don't seem to be able to reach. The piano takes off and everybody follows. An explosion of sound works that one renounces in following at the same time. 12 seconds of levitation. It is done at 3'27, the piano bursts, rings a suspended chord, round and hollow that resounds in your temple, your heart and your gut. Aaah! Deodato, he tears the liver out. You wouldn't get it ! Smile.

She wanted to be alone to listen to this man's music. The same way that she liked to be alone to admire a painting by Schmidt-Rottluff. There are those expressions that no one must catch on your face.

She would call generosity that way for a lead instrument to accompany the others more often than the other way around. Deodato's piano would stay in the background or would stick to the drums that anyway would follow it in step. That gives it a supreme authority. Other times the piano accompany itself just like its own rhythm box. There is no space for a gap. And that has nothing to do with the silence between different movements of a classical piece.

Trombone and trumpet. Those of O Som Dos Catedraticos. Geer remembered that in her childhood she used to go to the movies with her brother. It was a neighborhood open air movie house, run by a neighbor friend of her parents. Mr. Desmangles no doubt took his work as a calling, for the seats made of concrete because of the ever possible rain were empty most of the time, Geer remembered she had watched many movies alone with Johnjohn her brother and Marie-Carmelle who kept a watch on them. At the Canape-Vert movie house, Mr. Desmangles played Eumir Deodato's music. Geer would listen to the music with a strange pleasure that the film would alas interrupt.

It takes two to be bright or dumb, two to cry or laugh, to be good or bad, well, two to exist. We are nothing, we do not exist without the other. The others among whom Deodato chooses to be, are good, and he gets even better among them.

One works on all levels for the good of humanity. The keyboard, not unlike the test tubes and like numbers, formulas and theoretical concepts, can contribute to evolution of the specie toward higher levels. The healing power of Eumir Deodato's music on Geer was huge. When Geer is feeling blue, she listens to Deodato. That music is good for any mood.

1974 : It was the time of her adolescence, of Herby Widmaer's "From 10 to 11" Radio Metropole's program. Herby would play Deodato every night, and also Bob James, Egberto Gismonti, Freddy Hubbard, Hubert Law, Stanley Turrentine, Grover Washington, Billy Cobham, Herbie Hancock, Ramsey Lewis, Maynard Fergusson, etc. He would only play top of the line. To Geer, Deodato would dominate by several heads. But the text itself has something very personal and affective. Something coming from the gut, even...

*Dadadada, dadadada, dadadada. Dadadada, dadadada, dadadada dada Dadadada, dadadada, dadadada. Dadadada, dadadada, dadadada Dadadada Dadadada dadada dadada Dadadada_Da_dadada, dadada. Dadadada_Da Dadada dadada dadadada_Da Dadada dadada, dadadada_Da Dadada dadada, dadadada_Da

Geer doesn't know the rudiments of music, she goes by ear. It is rather good says her singing teacher. She doesn't know the title of the piece that she cannot find neither on Napster that is already a memory nor on KaZaa. Yet, she's been humming it for twenty years, twenty times a day. That tune is the backdrop for her thought processes. When she says nothing, thinks nothing, sings nothing, Geer sings it, that tune : Dadadada, dadadada, dadadada*.

Geer imagines a stroller, his dog leaping about ahead of him, the forest is as mute as the man is serene. Its is twilight. With Deodato, even at high noon, it is always twilight. With Geer above all. Twilight is a woman says the poet. "La fin du jour est femme" . Smile.

Deodato's music is sexed and whole. It is not on the way to anywhere. It has gotten " to the point " in its very essence. This musicman displays a touch that is bright, playful, funny, instinctive, domineering, moving, smart, sentimental. Nothing to do with the lukewarm and charming docility of some. No legato hanging around. For Chris sake there must be somebody playing. Well, it's obviously a man. Deodato is flow, torrent, natural stream. Just like the river flows, the rain falls, the seasons go by, the bird that sings, the fire burns. This musicman does music by nature. His chords are in place on earth as in heaven. With the ear of a layperson, Geer would hear one note inside another, then another one inside the preceding one and so on and so forth. The melodies of this man ring like bells, hanging way above, far behind the head.

Music's Breath must have presided over the birth of Deodato. There are a few for whom He takes the trouble. It was the explanation that Geer had found for when quantity does not chase quality, like in the following case. The flute in the end of Amani.....The notes' brisk and friendly discussion at the end of Speak low.....

Whether you like them or ignore them, even his disco compositions sound great. Extraordinarily positioned. The fact is Deodato excels in all genres. Deodato savours all musics and remodels them with a zest of Brasil. Nothing very emphasized. A music that is interpreted by Deodato becomes his. It bears his mark. Geer wanted the whole world to admit the ground for her love of Deodato's music... for the good of the whole specie of course.

Notes and chords translate more or less the ambiance, the atmosphere, the color with which we want to cover the instant. In Spirit of Summer you hear the children playing in the distance. On the piano, his sister plays Try to Remember, (oh yes life becomes tender at once, each time I listen to Spirit of Summer)... the pestle crushes the spices...Kop Kop Kop Kop, somewhat the same sound as the claves. The claves can make the sound kopkokop kum kopkokop kum kopkokop kum kopkokop without varying during the whole length of the piece. But above all don't go and take them out for they are as indispensable as they are modest. They are the musicians cues. They are the Petit Poucet's stones. She looks at the butterfly that come around Saint John's day and flutter about the hibiscus. The cars go by behind the thick row of bamboo. The hot tar melted by the sun sings under the tires. Chui, Chui, Chui, Chui, Chui. It is hot. The people drive fast toward the beach. The butterflies have different colors, yellow, red and violet. The multicolored notes flutter about also. It happens that one butterfly gives a sad feeling, but several butterflies make for a joyful spectacle for a little girl. Spirit of Summer suggests summer under all latitudes.

Deodato's compositions are true paintings, one-page novels. The communion of two Soul Mates is rendered with power and soundness. It is an exercise that seems easy for a professional. What is of an uncommon domain, is to be able to reach the credibility and touch the sensitivity, the soul of the listener. Moreover, Deodato's piano possesses a sound similar to none. You could say that the instrument's keys are filled with a liquid whose color determines the sound, by octave: eight yellow, eight red, blue etc... All of that is of the world of dreams of course and very subjective, and biased. But there is nothing worse than a soul that has decided to be biased. And that, no amount of reasoning can help.

On the platform where you take the A train - Take the A Train - a man is limping. The rhythm of his handicapped gait overlaps that of the train. Dance and rhythm.

She imagines a Robinson without Crusoe, lying on the sand of Love Island. (Well, don't worry, his Boston-Whaler is moored a little further with a tank full of fuel). Lying on his back on the sand his arms under his neck, he follows the birds flying into the sunset. The sky turns to orange red and the trees are already dark. He thinks? Not even so. Just like God sometime before him, he sees that everything is fine. It is the summer. A long summer twilight.

Some people can catch their Ego, they then walk both in step. And in accord with their personal nature, they make-up those marvels that push life forward... They make her smile and dance and laugh. They know that nothing can replace joy. Deodato, Eumir Deodato, belongs to those people. Or then his music does. But then, your identity, is it your work, your art, your creation, your production? The answer is in the choice that you make of the word to designate the fact of returning what you have received, your collaboration with the human undertaking.

When she listen again and again because two legs are not enough to dance this avalanche of notes, these multicolor bubbles of sound that burst at the same time, Geer starts turning around and around, a true dervish. Virgin Priestess with firm breasts, she dances to be thankful, in the name of humankind, to have received this God -the Merciful One-given grace, with such an appropriate name : DEO - DATO. DEO GRATIAS!



* YOU CAN GO simply arranged by Deodato for Joao Donato, but obviously stamped by this DEODATO's signature.

PS/Eumir Deodato is also
Pavane for a Dead Princess,
September 13
Also sprach Zarathustra
Juanita
Sans parler de son obsession pour les "Strut" (attitude)

Super Strut
Havana Strut
East Side Strut

Deodato MySpace
Official Site

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

A propos, saviez-vous comment peut-on trouver la partition de "Spirit of Summer" de Deodato ? je ne la trouve pas dans les magazins de musique. Merci d'avance.

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