Case Stu­dy: Ser­tão

Two gene­ra­ti­ons cross over two count­ries. Mile­na Kipf­mül­ler uses tape mate­ri­al of the 70ies done by her father Gün­ter Kipf­mül­ler in north-east Bra­zil: recor­dings of popu­lar tra­vel­ling musi­ci­ans in the ser­tao that trans­form news and sto­ries in vir­tuous­ly impro­vi­sed poet­ry, the “violei­ros”. The source mate­ri­al enters a nowa­days pro­cess of elec­tro­nic trans­for­ma­ti­on in dia­lo­gue with the three other string instru­ments. Vio­la and cel­lo are play­ed by father and son, Guil­her­me and Ernes­to Rodri­gues, thus by two gene­ra­ti­ons that com­po­se in their own, dif­fe­rent (ana­lo­gue) lan­guages. Klaus Janek at the con­tra­bass, com­bi­nes both aspects in his artis­tic prac­ti­ce, the ana­lo­gue instru­ment and elec­tro­nics – bridging the two duos of gene­ra­ti­ons and trans­for­ma­ti­on pro­ces­ses.

Andrzej Nowak spon­ta­neous­mu­sic­tri­bu­ne

Mile­na Kipf­mül­ler /​ Ernes­to Rodri­gues /​ Guil­her­me Rodri­gues /​ Klaus Janek case stu­dy: Ser­tão (Crea­ti­ve Sources, CD 2020)

We end our today’s Por­tu­gue­se sto­ry in… Ber­lin! Mile­na Kipf­mül­ler (tape and elec­tro­nics) and Klaus Janek (dou­ble bass and elec­tro­nics) as Sound­ing Situa­ti­on some time ago recor­ded intri­guing mate­ri­al that con­su­med the sounds of a live dou­ble bass, elec­tro­nics and field recor­dings from Bra­zil, from the 70s of the last cen­tu­ry (songs cal­led Violei­ros; we wro­te about this idea when dis­cus­sing the dou­ble bassist’s 5‑disc epic). Now we get a kind of repri­se of this pro­ject (recor­ded last year), and for its imple­men­ta­ti­on were invi­ted – Ernes­to Rodri­gues on the vio­la and Guil­her­me Rodri­gues on the cel­lo. The who­le musi­cal jour­ney (one track) is 46 and a half minu­tes.

We are invi­ted to the land of elec­t­ro-acou­stic non-obvious­ness when we are invi­ted by strin­ged instru­ments that flow low (dou­ble bass) and extre­me­ly high (vio­la and cel­lo) – rum­ble, sque­al, seem light, elu­si­ve, but also extre­me­ly mas­si­ve. The who­le thing, alt­hough a bit gent­le at first, has its own rhythm, its some­ti­mes hid­den dyna­mics. Elec­tro­nic sounds do a lot from start to finish. In gene­ral, they crea­te a mys­te­rious back­ground, some­ti­mes they are the result of some live pro­ces­sing acti­vi­ties, they never go out of line, and most of all, they force field sounds into the strin­ged nar­ra­ti­ve in an inte­res­t­ing way. The lat­ter appear after a few minu­tes. They are loo­ped, muta­ted, as if they came to us from a com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent world. Kind of cham­ber with field elec­tro­nic tas­te! The Por­tu­gue­se are per­fect­ly stuck to this Ger­man idea – they prepa­re sounds when neces­sa­ry, other times they flow in long, char­ming pas­sa­ges, and they do not look for silence on the fin­ger­boards of their instru­ments.

The first real exci­ting moment is around 14 minu­tes, when this elec­t­ro-acou­stic bund­le of sounds falls into an almost medi­ta­ti­ve pul­se, not wit­hout a dark ambi­ent fla­vor. After ano­ther few minu­tes, a lot of good comes to us from the dou­ble bass neck, which rum­bles and rum­bles con­nec­ted to the cables, like a muta­ted bass gui­tar. Soon after, as a result of a com­bi­na­ti­on of seve­ral cir­cum­s­tances, flow takes on a dub echo, and the atmo­sphe­re of post-tech­no Ber­lin from 25 years ago seems to be tri­um­phant. The­re is no end to the kalei­do­scope of intri­guing and sur­pri­sing sounds. The strings fall into a demo­nic dance, beau­tiful­ly plung­ing into the pul­sa­ting dro­nes of elec­tro­nics and hea­vi­ly pro­ces­sed field recor­dings. At around 22 minu­tes, the artists offer us a moment of breathing and sen­su­al pas­sa­ges of purely acou­stic string sounds, after which the splas­hes of violei­ros enter the action again, which sow anxie­ty and seem to ask exis­ten­ti­al ques­ti­ons about the place of sound in time and space. Just befo­re 30 minu­tes is over, we have a real pile of sounds and emo­ti­ons. The string orches­tra and elec­troa­cou­stic ambi­ent take a won­derful toll! Befo­re this gre­at sto­ry final­ly resounds, we still have a short des­cent into silence, pas­sa­ges of string sawing and grin­ding, and a dro­ne pha­se that seems to build up like a thun­der­storm in light­ning. The final of the recor­ding is full of elec­t­ro-acou­stic sound pearls, it fades to the accom­p­animent of live sounds and ano­ther repri­se of voices straight from the Bra­zi­li­an jungle.