# How do I even begin to describe Hermeto Pascoal? Videos, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2021/07/01/how-do-i-even-begin-to-describe-hermeto-pascoal-videos-photos/
- Published: 2021-07-01T01:08:05+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**I want to celebrate the birthday of one of my musical heroes. But first I need
to tell you what he does, and why you should care. In this case, that’s not easy.**

How do I even begin to describe Hermeto Pascoal? It’s possible—perhaps even likely—
that you haven’t heard his music. Pascoal has never enjoyed a genuine hit record
in the United States. I can’t even recall hearing his music on the radio. I’d like
to show you his picture on a magazine cover, but I doubt he has ever been featured
on one.

I own some choice albums by the man they call _O Bruxo _(The Sorcerer), but many
I had to purchase in Brazil because, as far as I can tell, they have never been 
exported. Lately a few of these titles have appeared on streaming platforms, but
many still haven’t. Just finding a way to listen to his music in any systematic 
or comprehensive way remains difficult.

If I’m forced to come up with a quick description, I tell people that Pascoal played
with Miles Davis. And that’s technically a true statement—in fact, Miles allegedly
called Pascoal “the most impressive musician in the world”—but perhaps a misleading
one. Pascoal’s stint with Davis was so short that it was over before most people
knew it started. Yet Davis was clearly fascinated by his new hire, and featured 
him in several capacities on the _Live/Evil_ album, recorded in 1970, where Pascoal
serves as keyboardist, drummer, and composer.

But even that short tenure in Miles Davis’s band represents quite an achievement,
especially when you consider that the other pianists on the _Live/Evil_ album were
Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Joe Zawinul. Why did Miles need Hermeto
Pascoal, if he already had those talents available to him?

Adding to the puzzle, Pascoal is hardly a pianist or drummer. Or, let me phrase 
it differently: Pascoal is much more than a pianist or drummer. He does _many_ other
things.

And _what_ other things, you ask?

Well, take your pick.

[[

A friend tells me he once saw Pascoal in a concert where he played a different instrument
on every song, including the proverbial kitchen sink (with a trumpet mouthpiece 
attached). If you’ve caught him at the right time or place, you might have heard
the Sorcerer make music from teapots, toys, napkins, pints of beer, the carpet, 
parts of his body, pretty much anything. There’s a video circulating online of [Pascoal visiting the dentist](https://www.facebook.com/faroutrecs/videos/10154186803551981),
and interrupting the procedure to create a song with the saliva sucker.

On one of the _Live/Evil_ tracks, Pascoal is credited as “whistler”—and that’s maybe
the only time the old puckeroo shows up on a Miles Davis album. I tend to gravitate
to Pascoal’s work on traditional instruments (he seems capable of playing all of
them), but those only give you a small taste of what he represents to his fans, 
or how he views his craft. “A chair is an instrument,” Pascoal once explained to
an interviewer. “A table is an instrument. There are so many instruments.” He complains
that it would be_ tedious_ to view music in any other way.

So, at some point, I stopped calling Pascoal a musician—it seemed more accurate 
to describe him as _musical_. His nickname is well chosen, because his ability to
extract music from the world around him is a kind of sorcery. Pascoal is like a 
character in a superhero movie, where each person has some amazing power. His superpower
is that he’s the most musical person in the world. And if you disagree, you need
to show me someone who makes more music with more things in more ways. Trust me,
you can’t.

“A friend tells me he once saw Pascoal in a concert where he played a different 
instrument on every song, including the proverbial kitchen sink (with a trumpet 
mouthpiece attached).”

Pascoal was born on June 22, 1936 in Lagoa da Canoa in Algoas, a state in northeastern
Brazil known for its lakes, cattle, and sugarcane crop. At age 14, he ran away from
home to try his luck as an accordionist in Recife. By the mid-1960s, he was showing
up on some of the classic bossa nova recordings, but as accompanist or band member,
not a star. Pascoal wouldn’t make his first album as a leader until the 1970s when,
with Miles Davis’s enthusiastic endorsement, he started gaining a cult following

The relationship with Miles didn’t end happily. When _Live/Evil_ was released, Pascoal
noticed that songs he wrote were attributed to Davis, and initiated a lawsuit to
reclaim his rights. So I’m not surprised the he wasn’t invited back for Davis’s 
next album. But even this short fling allowed Pascoal to secure a recording contract
with Cobblestone, which resulted in the album _[Hermeto](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofN1DqeNdrY)_(
also known as _Brazilian Adventure_).

At a time when most jazz fans associated Brazilian music with gentle bossa nova 
musings, this wild and unpredictable album must have shaken up listeners. In fact,
Pascoal was already developing a reputation as a rule-breaking performer who rarely
took the familiar path. (Check out, for example, how he plays “Girl from Ipanema”
on [this track with Elis Regina](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjddSQlE5xo), especially
the chords he uses in the bridge.) He makes occasional nods in the direction of 
bossa nova stylings on [his debut leader date](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofN1DqeNdrY),
but his maximalist tendencies ultimately subvert any crossover potential for the
record, which relinquishes the sensual Copacabana sensibility for something showier
and more free-form, more akin to what the Brazilian squad was doing at the World
Cup at almost at the same moment Pascoal was recording this music.

[[

Yet even after this _Brazilian Adventure_, Pascoal still seemed a promising bet 
for US labels. After all, he possessed so much talent. There had to be some way 
for him to rise above his insider status and capture a larger dose of fame. On his
1977 album _Slaves Mass_, he seemed on the verge of doing just that. With the support
of his label Warner Bros., Pascoal enlisted the services of Ron Carter, Flora Purim,
Airto Moreira, and incorporated elements of jazz-rock fusion and contemporary Brazilian
popular music into his personal soundscapes. Would this be the decisive moment when
the man who sued Miles Davis gained recognition as a global star?

How did Pascoal handle this opportunity? On the title track to _Slaves Mass_, he
mixes dissonant guitar chords with screeches and what sounds like loud grunts of
percussive intensity—yet even this experimental music is eerily danceable, and features
a hypnotic chanting interlude that pushes at the borderline between artistic performance
and magical ritual. This was hardly a formula for a platinum album, but was perhaps
something better, a propulsive invitation to a probing mind determined to take songs
to hitherto unknown places.

Pascoal’s style and instrumental palette would change over the years, but the strangeness
and surprises never stopped. When he released an album of forró music, that traditional
dance style so popular in northeastern Brazil, where he grew up, Pascoal turned 
this folk music into true [devil’s dances, unrelenting and maddening in their melodic complexity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItKm9Wgpkok).
In other instances, his songs [veered between free jazz pandemonium and funky grooves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CiRcHYc5oI),
refusing to recognize the subgenre boundaries other musicians took for granted. 
Or he might sit down at the piano to [play a languid waltz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mJ5O9GP1cI),
but soon the tempo is changing, the chords getting stranger, and finally the pianist
starts shrieking and talking to the keyboard.

Then there was that time Pascoal made his whole band jump in a lagoon and play a
kind of water music never envisioned by Handel.

Jovino Santos Neto, who was a member of Pascoal’s band for fifteen years, recently
called my attention to an even more unusual recording made at Jovino’s home in 1980.
Some frogs were croaking on a rainy day, and Pascoal, in typical fashion, viewed
this as an invitation to join them in performance. The master pulled out a piccolo,
and here was the result:

Or consider Pascoal stepping away from the piano at the 1:45 mark in “Autumn Leaves”
in order to take a percolating solo on the coffee mug.

The experiential or humanistic aspect of Pascoal’s work is of paramount importance,
as these examples make clear. But his legacy is just as rich when approached from
the more purely analytic perspective of music theory. Check out, for example, this
transcription of his remarkable recording of Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight”—
which is part of a [series of 14 online lectures](https://boukas.com/music-of-hermeto-pascoal)
on Pascoal by Richard Boukas.

The more deeply you become immersed in Pascoal’s life and music, the more you realize
that his vision can’t be contained in an album. As I promised (or warned) at the
start, he represents _a musical way of life,_ and no recording can convey more than
a small taste of what that actually signifies. I’m reluctant to even provide a playlist—
how can any curation on my part, however astute, show you how to follow the musical
paths embedded in your own destiny? Because that’s what the Sorcerer is ultimately
all about—discovering ecstatic sources of music ready-at-hand that you always took
for granted. Pascoal should have lived in some other time and place, when the most
prominent musicians were shamans and gurus—instead he’s expected to operate as a
mere _recording artist_. Despite what the music business tells you, that’s a small
thing compared to what an artist of this stature potentially offers us.

A tribute of this sort requires a summing up. But that’s the one thing Hermeto Pascoal
won’t allow. For a man who views the whole universe as a source of music, no box
or category is large enough to contain him. So I won’t try to attach him to a genre
or a style or even a country. Instead I’ll pay tribute to a career and an oeuvre,
but even more to an attitude, or perhaps what I might call a philosophy of music—
almost a real-life demonstration of Schopenhauer’s claim that songs are our best
entry point into the greater reality that surpasses our everyday experiences.

Let others point to the Grammy awards and gold disks on their walls. Pascoal, the
most musical man in the world, may not have those honors. But, to his credit, he
doesn’t even recognize the walls. To follow his lead, we may need to tear down a
few ourselves.

![](https://i0.wp.com/cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456%2Cc_limit%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%
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png?w=640&ssl=1)

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