Alô! Hola! Hello! Hallo!
This is the fifth edition of my newsletter.
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* My soundtrack for the feature film “1976”, by Manuela Martelli, is available today on all digital platforms.
You can listen to it on your favorite platform through this link, and buy it in your favorite digital format or pre-order the K7 and the LP at Fun in the Church's Bandcamp.
The release follows “1976” French premiere, which will be next Wednesday 22nd at L’Arlequin in Paris (If you are in town and wish to attend, send me a hint replying to this e-mail, as there might be some invitations left!). From Wednesday on it will be shown in more than 100 different cinemas in France. The movie also opens on March 24th in the UK and May 5th in the US, and it's already being shown in Greece and Switzerland. And you can stream it at Filmin.
En latinoamérica la película ya pasó por Chile, Perú y se estrena esta semana en Buenos Aires, en la Sala Gaumon. Además, en este año estará disponible en alguna plataforma para todo el continente.
The movie is set up in Chile, year 1976. Carmen, the protagonist, heads off to her beach house to supervise its renovation. Her husband, children and grandchildren come back and forth during the winter vacation. When the family priest asks her to take care of a young man he is sheltering in secret, Carmen steps onto unexplored territories, away from the quiet life she is used to.
That's the movie synopsis. From that, one could assume that the movie is about Carmen, this (anti-)heroin and the situations and transformations she goes through. It is, in fact, about Carmen, but as an individual immersed in a net of complex power relations. Though the gender topic is in the foreground in “1976”, other types of hierarchisation and segregation, such as race and class, are intrinsically intertwined with the main character's role as a woman, with what she should and shouldn't do, how she should and shouldn't act. We can't think about Carmen without the nanny Estela, or the construction workers working in her beach house, stepping with dirty feet on her clean kitchen. And we can't think about Carmen without her husband, her children, her grandchildren. They are not just background figures or supporting players, but really constitute the main character's personality and her actions in life. This is a typical Latin American dynamic, which was maintained and strengthened during the far-right dictatorship in Chile and other Latin American countries. I can see a parallel portrait in Chico Buarque's masterpiece Leite Derramado, although there everything sounds irremediably Brazilian, when “1976” is irretrievably Chilean.
Well, I could fill a whole newsletter with digressions about “1976”, the movie, but the best is if you just go watch it at your nearest movie theatre or your favorite streaming platform. I will just share some words about the music and how it was created.
I've been discussing “1976” music with Manuela since my first reading of the script, about 7 years ago. But I would say the composition process started in fact in January 2022, at Artur Joly's studio in São Paulo. Joly kindly left all his synthesisers, the ones he builds and the ones he collects, at my disposition, not without first giving me a quick class on how to use them. I spent some pleasant afternoons at Joly's place, having lunch with his dear family, talking about politics, synths and vinyls, another of Joly's specialities.
After several days, I left the studio with only one theme: what is now the track “Elías”, and which became the movie's main theme, developed also in “Náusea” and “1976”. One theme, and a HD filled with improvised sessions done with Joly's synths.
Because the movie is a period drama that also plays with the thriller genre, my idea was to experiment with musical genres and anachronisms, using idiosyncratic synth sounds from the 70's which could transport us to a certain age, repertoire or mood. Manuela accepted the proposal and, funnily enough, was really aware when I tried to secretly infiltrate some 80's sounds into the soundtrack. Even though she had no special knowledge about synths, she spotted them every time. Nonetheless, you can hear in “1976” some synths from the early 80's, like the Jupiter-8 (1981), the Moog Opus-3 (1980) and a very austere TR-808 (1980). But the real responsible for the soundtrack identity are the Moog family and, above all, the ARP 2600. All of them born in the 70's.
If I had to choose a symbol for this soundtrack, it would be for sure the ARP 2600, which is a powerful machine, and at the same time has a friendly interface for newbies like me (it was actually built to serve as an education tool). With it, I could generate beautiful, surprising sounds, which became the spine for most of the music I composed later. It provided, for example, those ubiquitous glissandi that became some sort of 1976's motif. It is present in almost every track, either in the foreground, like in “Primeira Missão”, “Segunda Missão”, “Horror”, “Noite”, “Floresta”; or underneath, like in “Perseguição”, adding tension and paranoia to the theme played by the brass and woodwind instruments.
Brass and woodwind—more specifically, clarinets, bass clarinets, tubas and french horns—were already in the first idea I had for the soundtrack. Later on, I've abandoned that and insisted in using only synths. But Manuela, wisely, recalled me that the movie needed some “humanity”, since the trajectory of the main character, Carmen, was also a trajectory of humanisation, of increasing sensibility towards what was happening around her. I was reluctant at first, as I believe synthesisers sound as human as clarinets, although in a (rather) different way. But then I had the idea of building the soundtrack trajectory as a sort of metamorphosis, in which the music would slowly develop from the artificial/synthetic to the natural/organic. I did a similar process in a soundtrack I've composed ten years ago for the theatre piece “Tão pesado quanto o céu”, by the group pOleirO dO bandO, but in that case birds transformed into clarinets and flutes, which then got swallowed by a brutal low synth sound. And I can identify a similar strategy throughout “Um olho aberto”, the last track from my album EROSÃO, which speaks about the artificiality of the concept of Nature, and how this same concept is constantly being remodelled to serve as a power device to subjugate people and other beings.
Back to winds and brass, I counted with the very special contribution of the Rotterdam-based french hornist Romain Bly, the Brazilian clarinetists Maria Beraldo and Joana Queiroz, colleagues from my band Quartabê, and the German tubist Carl Ludwig Hübsch, colleague at my EROSÃO septet. It was very magical to see how indeed these instruments—played beautifully by these wonderful artists, whom I admire so much—added so much body, so much life into both the music and the film, as they are so intrinsically connected to breathing, and therefore are an inevitable metaphor of human voice. The sum they make with the synths is just gorgeous. And I had lots of fun writing for them—a very different process than the act of improvising by turning knobs, moving faders and connecting cables.
Improvisations made by both Beraldo on bass clarinet and Hübsch on tuba have also a special part in this soundtrack. Thinking in traditional terms, Beraldo's bass clarinet is perhaps the soloist here—together with the ARP—, as it can be heard on “Horror”, “Segunda Missão” and “Perseguição”, with her high and agile phrases acting almost as a premonitory message in the film. And Hübsch's improvisations (Just think about boats!, I told him on the phone) present in “Rastros” and the end of “1976” really sounds between synthesis, field recording and acoustic instrumentation.
Last but not the least, “1976” was beautifully mixed by Gustavo Lenza, who understood really quickly what the music needed and was absolutely precise in his proposals; and mastered by Maurício Gargel, who also mastered my album EROSÃO and as always did an impeccable work. It's always a joy to work with both of them.
Now turned into an album, 1976 continues to be original music for film, in the sense that it was meant to contribute keenly to a story, outlining with its contours what can't be seen or told. I decided to release an album faithful to that, leaving the tracks in order of appearance in the movie and doing only minor editing. So think about it as a collection of musical cardiograms of a character increasingly affected by the contact with her environment. Something that, during that time in Chile and many other Latin American countries, could mean losing your life.
Currently reading: Lima Barreto: Cronista do Rio, a compilation of chronicles by Lima Barreto about Rio de Janeiro during the turn of the twentieth century.
Currently listening: Chants, Craig Taborn Trio.
Currently learning: Oscar Bolão lessons on maxixe.
* For those who arrived at the end of this newsletter,
a small treasure: the short documentary “Nossa escola de samba”, by Thomas Farkas, which shows a year in the life in and around Vila Isabel samba school during the 60's, from the first rehearsals to the parade. English subs.
Take care!
o/