Hermeto Pascoal
Zabumbe-bum-á (Warner Bros)
Experimental, elusive, and singular musician Hakushi Hasegawa told us about their love for a Hermeto Pascoal gem...
Hakushi Hasegawa: If I come across something I deeply love, I tend to listen to it, and only it, over and over again, until I feel I've memorized every last detail. Then I put it away, only to come back to it from time to time, repeating this cycle over and over. Listening at random is my lifelong work, yet I spend an extraordinary amount of time on this kind of intensive listening. So when someone asks me what my favorite albums are, there are actually very few that I can name. “Zabumbe-bum-á” is one of them.
In “São Jorge”, there is the sound of a curtain being opened by countless lips, then the pandeiro offers the briefest glimpse of the rhythmic framework before dissolving into the chimes. In “Pimenteira”, there is the uncanny ensemble and the breathtakingly luminous break created through parallel transposition. "Suite Paulista" unfolds through improvisation and explosive, mercurial rhythms that seem to drift toward electroacoustic music. Then comes the exquisitely beautiful composition of “Santo Antonio”, as though it had suddenly regained its sanity. In “Suite Norte, Sul, Leste, Oeste”, parallel transposition returns with its unsettling chords, joined by a flute trill and shaken percussion that seem to recall “São Jorge” once again, and a voice like that of an angry cat - the strange contrast of an angry cat in a bright alley. And then “Susto”.
I do not love Zabumbe-bum-á only as a source of compositional language. I love this work as a brilliant example of how time can be used, and of how music itself can be veiled and concealed.
Hakushi Hasegawa's Honest Feeling Album is out now.
Photo credit: George Asakura
