U of T and Guitar Society of Toronto
Music Review: Brazilian Ways with Guitar plus some Friendly Detours
The New York Times
July 8, 2004, pg E4
Fourth Annual New York Guitar Seminar
By Alan Kozin
"Celso Machado, a Brazilian guitarist, composer, singer and percussionist, whose music draws on the classical and avant-garde techniques, but veers well into the sounds and textures of Brazilian pop" ..." Mr Machado's set was inventive and unbuttoned, and included mostly his own works, including straight forward popular songs and somewhat involved instrumental pieces. The highlight was his finale, "Rainforest" in which he drummed on his body (and persuaded the audience to do the same) and used rattles, whistles, electronic effects and an uncanny ability to imitate birds and animals, all in the service of evoking the supremely musical chaos of nature.
University of Toronto Alumni and The Guitar Society of Toronto
Vincea McClelland
September 2004
"Carlos Barbosa Lima and Celso Machado were the 'show stoppers' of the evening ... it would be no exaggeration to say that the already receptive audience was now totally bewitched and in a raptures of delight" (After playing a choro by Pixinguinha)
"The University of Toronto Guitar Ensemble conducted by Jeffrey McFadden gave a very polished performance of a fabulous new work by Celso Machado for eight guitars entitled 'Folguedo'. Celso himself introduced the piece which he whimsically described as J.S. Bach on vacation in the northeast region of Brazil. He then enthusiastically accompanied the ensemble on an astonishing array of percussion instruments."
The Rhythm Maker: the instruments Celso Machado plays are the fruits - sometimes literally - of his love of music. Dried-tangerine-skin samba anyone?
The Georgia Straight : Vancouver’s News & Entertainment Weekly
Volume 33 - Number 1647
July 15-22, 1999
Cover and pages 15 & 17
By Tony Montague
It’s dinner time in Celso Machado’s East Vancouver apartment. His brothers Geraldo and Carlinhos, recently arrived from Brazil, have cooked up a potful of rice and pork neck bones - a favourite delicacy from their childhood. Before anyone has finished eating, Celso reaches into the pile of bones on his plate, picks up one of the vertebrae, puts it to his lips, and blows repeatedly across the hole -trying to play it like a whistle or a flute.
Celso doesn’t lack basic table etiquette. It’s just that he can’t prevent himself from exploring the possibilities of creating music -wherever he is, and with whatever comes to hand.
“It never stops in this house” says his wife, Jessica. “Celso’s always on the lookout for something that can make an interesting noise. He particularly enjoys clacking together my best plates. Miraculously, none have been broken so far.” Jessica points to some dried out and hollowed-out tangerines on a shelf. “He plays them -they’re ocarinas. Around here I constantly have to ask myself “Is this garbage or is it an instrument?’ It can be hard to tell.”
But there’s another side to Celso’s musical inventiveness and versatility: He’s a highly respected multi-instrumentalist and composer, with nine solo recordings to his name - including 1997’s Juno-nominated Varal. Marcus Vinícius, one of Brazil’s leading critics, has hailed him as “ the most important Brazilian guitarist of the new generation.” And in France, where he lived for a number of years, Celso’s compositions are taught the conservatories.
For the mercurial Celso, the serious musician and the eternal kid are
never in opposition - both facets of his artistic personality developed
naturally. Born in 1953, the fifth of six brothers, Celso was raised in
a poor neighbourhood of Ribeirão Preto, a city some 500 kilometres
north of São Paulo, Brazil. “ We didn’t own any
instruments in the house, but that didn’t stop us from making music,
especially in the kitchen,” he recalls. “Often we would be sitting
together around the table, and it’s surface became a percussion instrument
for our hands. If one brother started drumming a samba, then the others
would quickly join in, taking a different line to make up the beat. Or
they might play something else, like a chair, a pot, a frying pan, a matchbox,
anything. That’s where it all began for us -and everyone except my
older brother Euripedes became a professional musician.”
When Celso invited electric guitarist Carlinhos and percussionist Geraldo to perform with him across Canada this summer in a trio, he asked them to bring a small gift from Brazil as a memento of those times.
“I wanted a Brazilian matchbox - one made of wood, not cardboard like here,” he explains, pulling the prized box from his pocket. “When we were kids they were a lot of fun to mess around with. Even now, when you’re playing guitar in a bar there’s nothing better than to have someone pick one up and accompany you.” Celso proceeds to demonstrate the range of sonic possibilities of the humble item -shaking its contents to an afoxé rhythm, running one edge over his teeth to imitate the effect of a rasp, rubbing the matches over the rim to make a surprisingly loud squeaking sound.
Ultimately, though, Celso doesn’t need any objects or instruments to make music. “Corpo”, one of the tracks on Varal, is almost entirely made up of mouth and body percussion. At the Machado Brothers’ first performance together in Vancouver, earlier this month at Granville Island’s Canada Day celebrations, a jazz-inflected samba instrumental segued effortlessly into an elaborate routine of body-slapping and scatlike vocalizations. They maintained the samba rhythm without dropping a beat.
Audiences can expect to hear more of the Machado Brother’s’ inspired blend of musical minimalism and sophistication when they appear at Jericho Beach Park on Sunday ( July 18) as part of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. The trio will host three daytime workshops before taking the main stage for an evening performance.
Since coming to Canada as a landed immigrant in 1992, Celso has made Vancouver home. He feels in tune with the city’s multicultural identity and the growing folk, jazz, and world-music communities. But there’s one aspect of life in Brazil he misses: the sense of rhythm that both pervades everything Brazilians do and constitutes a common ground for all the country’s musicians. “That’s why it’s so great to have my brothers to play with, because they understand the real syncopation, the swing, “ says Celso. “With them I can just relax and play free and loose.”
For many years Celso, Geraldo, Carlinhos and Filó ( another brother) attended “ samba schools” - which are not really schools at all but local organizations that organize and rehearse for a costumed percussion and dance parade at the annual Carnaval. “They gave us real instruments to make the rhythms with - surdos, tamborims, agogôs, caxixis”, Celso recalls. “I don’t remember anybody actually teaching me. I also banged on a frying pan, which was very heavy and hard to hold.”
To the young Machados, music was not just a boisterous celebration. It was also a vehicle for communication between them, and a means of survival. Their father died when Celso was still a small boy; and when his mother, too, died a few years later, the family was split up. The three youngest sons Celso, Carlinhos and Filó, ended up with the eldest Machado, Benedito, who had already left home and was eking out an existence as a guitarist in a dance band. Celso became fascinated by the instrument and took careful note of everything when his older brother practised or gave lessons.
“ If he went out to eat or for a game of football, I’d take the guitar and, having memorized where he put his fingers, I’d play,” Celso confesses. “One day I remember Benedito came back and caught me -and was amazed at what I could do!. After that he started to show me some bossa nova chords, but would only teach them once, and if I didn’t get it right he’d become annoyed. I also learned just by stopping to watch anytime I saw someone playing guitar on the street. But I felt too shy to ask them to let me try things out. I was just a boy, walking around in bare feet.”
Celso proved a precocious student, and he soon picked up enough technique to give a neighbour, who had just bought a guitar, some basic lessons. In exchange, he got to practise on the instrument whenever the neighbour was at work. It was not until five years after he first picked up the guitar that Celso obtained his own instrument, a gift from a local admirer.
“ That was in 1969, and I was already teaching quite a bit. The guitar was nothing fancy, but it was so great to have one of my own at last that I almost cried.” He made rapid progress, and started taking formal lessons with a series of classical-guitar teachers. “ I never had to pay for a single session. They were happy to show me what they knew. The condition was that I wouldn’t miss any classes, and that I learned everything they taught.”
Little by little Celso was able to put together a career as a solo artist, performing in bars and theatres, even appearing on TV. He played classical compositions, as well as popular Brazilian pieces in styles such as chôro, baião, and samba. In the early ‘70s, Celso moved to the sprawling city of São Paulo to live in a house with Geraldo, Carlinhos and Filó, and performed in a quartet with them. Despite the pleasure of being reunited with his brothers, it was a difficult time. “ I was still young, and trying to figure out how to get into the music business in Brazil, which is extremely competitive. There were so many promises made to me - but for a long time they never came to anything. Eventually, though, I did manage to put out a couple of records of instrumental music on guitar - Brasil Violão and Violão”.
Released in 1977 and 1980 respectively, the albums established Celso’s reputation at home and abroad as one of Brazil’s most outstanding new guitar players. In 1983, he was invited to perform in London, and such was the response that he decided to stay. Celso remained in Western Europe for almost a decade. He was joined there by Carlinhos, who had developed into a fine jazz-based guitarist, but lacking permanent legal status in the EC, the Machados were obliged to be almost constantly on the move. In the summer of 1986, they came to Vancouver to play the inaugural du Maurier International Jazz Festival , the Vancouver Folk Festival, and Expo 86. Celso fell in love with the city and decided that he wanted to live here.
Over the next six years the multi-talented guitarist made many visits to B.C. He’s since become one of the pillars of the world-music scene here, and has collaborated with many artists - with none more closely than Chinese pipa ( lute) virtuoso Qiu Xia He, whose group Silk Road Music also appears at this year’s VFMF. When they met for the first time, backstage at the festival’s 1989 edition, neither Celso nor Qiu Xia could speak English.
“We had to communicate by sign language and by music only” Qiu Xia recalls. “ But Celso made it clear that he wanted me to demonstrate certain aspects of my technique, in particular how I make a ‘roll’ - a strum that uses all five fingers - across the strings of my pipa. He learned it quickly because he’s such an intelligent and enthusiastic musician.”
Since that occasion the two have worked together on various musical projects. Most recently, Qiu Xia contributed to a couple tracks on Celso’s latest album, 1998’s Jongo Lê, which was recorded in Vancouver but is currently available only in France . The four sections of Celso’s brilliant “Suite Popular Brasileira” are featured on Silk Road Music’s Juno-nominated 1997 CD, Endless. Later this month, Celso and Qiu Xia will travel to France together to play as a duo at a series of festivals and workshops.
Fusing elements from Chinese and Brazilian musical traditions may seem like an unlikely venture, but when it’s undertaken by such techniquely gifted and sensitive artists, the results can be enlightening.
“We share our music very openly, we’re almost like family now,’ says Qiu Xia. “Most rehearsals are creative explorations, without any set goals. We just experiment playing together on tunes that could of come from either of us. It’s almost like having a conversation. Celso becomes inspired by the particular moment, and improvises. But we do practise hard, and fine-tuning a piece for performance can be a very long process. We spent at least a year working on Celso’s suite. He’s the most musical individual I know of in Vancouver - always trying out new things, and learning new instruments.”
In his quest for innovation, however, Celso is extremely respectful of the roots of the different musics he plays. He’s conducted much research - into Brazilian folk traditions in particular - and made some significant cross-cultural discoveries. For several years, he has also been gradually mastering the intricacies of the Moroccan sintir - a long necked bass lute with a rectangular camel skin sounding board and three strings of camel gut. It’s the principal instrument of the Gnawa, an Islamic brotherhood whose members are descended from black slaves brought across the Sahara.
“When I first heard the sintir played by Gnawa musicians, “ he says, “ I was amazed to find that the rhythms they use are essentially the same as Brazilian samba de roda and afoxé - the feeling, the groove, even the way the voice is used. Incredible!. I believe some of these people must have been taken as slaves to Brazil.” Similarly, he has demonstrated the close links between the Egyptian maqsoum and the Brazilian maxixe rhythms.
“There are still a lot of connections that I want to explore between Brazilian and other African, or African-based, musics,” Celso points out. “ I’ve started to play the kora ( a 21- string West African harp), though it’s a very difficult instrument, and that will take me a long time. I’m also interested in combining Brazilian and Cuban music. Four years ago, I was the percussionist for Jane Bunnett’s Rendez-vous Brazil/Cuba project, in which my brother Filó played electric guitar. At times, it was hard bringing together the complex rhythms of both cultures, but I learned a lot from that experience. I also want to know more about the black traditions of Peru; they have a music they call lundu, and there is a lundu in Brazil. And I’m learning how to play the Congolese nconfi (lyre) I bought two years ago in France.”
The apartment is full of strange and exotic instruments - the fruits (sometimes literally) of Celso’s unremitting labour of research and exploration. He made or invented several: a beautiful birchbark shaker; a dried grass mbira, or thumb piano; a long bamboo flute that is played simultaneously by four people. “ It’s sometimes hard to use the instruments in a concert setting, but they’re good for film scores when I’m looking for a different kind of sound.”
Celso plays one of his flutes on the soundtrack of the 1992 IMAX movie
Mountain Gorillas. Working with Sal Ferreras, he also scored, using
various instruments that he created or found, Nettie Wild’s 1998
film A Place Called Chiapas. Having just completed the music for
another film, a Colombian documentary entitled In The Company Of Fear,
with Carlinhos and Geraldo, Celso is eager to embark on a studio recording
project with his two brothers. “ We’re already thinking of touring
together through Canada next summer, and it would be good to have an album
of our music”, he says. “But right now things are happening
too fast in my life for me to sit down and
plan it properly.”
On June 27, just minutes before Celso had to catch a plane for the Victoria Folk Festival, Jessica gave birth to their son Caio. (The name means “happiness” in Portuguese.) “Throughout my pregnancy Celso sang to the baby,” Jessica reveals. “ And he pressed the kora up against my belly to play it. Now he’s trying to figure out what Caio picked up from that - what soothes him, and what doesn’t.”
“I’m already improvising lullabies on the kora and the guitar for him,” says Celso. “ I wish I had a tape recorder to help me remember afterwards. And I try out all the little wind and percussion instruments around the kitchen. He’s looking around to find where the sound is coming from, and really responding to things. The reaction in his eyes when I knock together two plates or bang a pot lid on the table is incredible!” Mealtimes in the Machado apartment are destined to become even more exuberantly messy and musical in the future.