The Brazilian percussionist Djalma Corrêa is best known for playing alongside so many illustrious compatriots like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Jorge Ben, Chico Buarque, Maria Bethânia and Gal Costa and for founding the percussive jazz fusion ensemble Baiafro, who collaborated with the vibraphonist Dave Pike, but the prolific performer and composer also held a love for incidental and spontaneous music. A new compilation on the São Paulo label Lugar Alto, with the full title Espontaneamente se Tenta: Aventuras Sonoras de Djalma Corrêa, serves as both a primer and a guide through his tempestuous soundscapes.
A double vinyl which features previously unreleased recordings, most of which were digitized for the first time for this set in collaboration with Corrêa before his passing in December of 2022, the compilation moves from the haunted house theatrics of the electroacoustic piece ‘Evolução (Para Fita e Filme)’ to free jazz excursions like ‘Evolução (Excerto Djalma Corrêa & Banda Cauim)’ which unleashes woodwinds as a flock of shrieking birds to the more quintessentially Afro-Caribbean and bossa nova flavours of ‘Brasil Mal-estar (Excerto Ensaio)’. Then the palette-cleansing ‘Exemplo de Sintetizadores’ plays out as a proto-mixtape or pleasantly chintzy compendium of louche jazz with wispy ambient New Age interludes, stretched out cymbal reverberations and carnival melodies with the spinning nausea of a carousel, winsomely and judiciously described in the album notes as a series of transitions ‘from transcendental drones to astral cha-cha-chas’.
‘Suíte Contagotas’ brings nothing but the bathroom sink and a depleted one at that, in so far as the piece delivers not quite running water but the dripping of a tap which briefly breaks into a flurry of splashes before the kerplunking climax, as the suite is subsumed by a swell of strings which feel like they’ve been tautly waiting for some action. The 16-minute experiment demonstrates Djalma Corrêa’s bond with the Swiss-born composer, sculptor and instrument maker Walter Smetak, with whom he shared a studio during his formative years at the Universidade Federal da Bahia, an inquiry into the randomness of dripping water just one of the ideas envisioned by Smetak for his Projeto do Estúdio Ovo, which was conceived as an egg-shaped sound and listening studio for the exploration of his interests in resonances, miking, amplification, microtonality and space.
‘Stress’ shrouds mallet percussion and strings in layers of distortion, with electroacoustic engine revving and a gaggle of noise which sounds like unruly students in the midst of an attempt to get a Mexican wave going inside a lecture hall. The final track of Espontaneamente se Tenta: Aventuras Sonoras de Djalma Corrêa comes from the famous Nós, Por Exemplo . . . concert which inaugurated the Teatro Vila Velha in Salvador, the capital city of Bahia, in the winter of 1964. An assemblage of friends which has been credited for giving birth to the tropicália movement, the night was capped by a duet as Gal Costa and Maria Bethânia performed the ‘Sol Negro’ of Caetano Veloso up on stage. Corrêa was the only artist in the lineup to use electronics, by way of oscillators and contact mics which were intended to augment his percussive palette. In setting up his equipment, he left a tape recorder on the stage which wound up documenting the entire show. Thus we can hear on ‘Bossa 2000 DC’ his submerged baroque melodies, which are brusquely overcome by teetering electronics and the percussive throes, as his scattered cymbals and riddled bass drum finally give way to a crisp surge of audience applause.
