Petrobrás presents

2008 is Macunaíma's 80th birthday
Iara Rennó releases the album Macunaó.perai.matupi or Macunaíma Tupi Opera
The São Paulo born composer and singer starts solo career with an album entirely done with passages from the book "Macunaíma – the hero without a character", by Mario de Andrade

Singer, composer, instrumentalist, arranger and musical producer Iara Rennó, who has songs recorded by Elza Soares and Ney Matogrosso, releases her first solo album, "Macunaó.perai.matupi" or "Macunaíma Tupi Opera", in April 2008. The project is sponsored by Petrobrás and has 14 tracks, all composed by the singer from São Paulo, exclusively, with passages from the book "Macunaíma – the hero without a character", by Mario de Andrade.

The new work of the member and founder of the São Paulo band DonaZica, which has two praised records on the market, counts with a particular production for each song. The productions are signed by artists like Siba, Kassin, Moreno Veloso, Benjamin Taubkin, Beto Villares, Alexandre Basa, Maurício Takara, Daniel Ganjaman, Quincas Moreira and Buguinha Dub. Tom Zé, Fuloresta (Siba's band), Arrigo Branabé, Dante Ozetti, Funk Buia, Barbatuques, Tetê Espíndola, Toca Ogã, Da Lua, Bocato, Anelis Assumpção, among others.
The project Macunaó.perai.matupi or Macunaíma Tupi Opera began with the study of Macunaíma during a Literature Course at the Linguistics College at USP – University of São Paulo, when Iara identified the latent musicality of the book. The songs are parts mostly already shown in verses. Three songs have been recorded before and are now part of this album with new musical arrangements "Valei-me" and "Mandu Sarará", from the record "Cartografia Musical Brasileira / São Paulo – Rumos Musicais 2001" (the Itaú Cultural collection), and "Macunaíma", from the record " Composição" from DonaZica band (2003).
The first copies of the album, sponsored by Petrobrás, will be distributed among public education departments, culture foundations and in teachers' graduating centers all over Brazil, as a complementary study of the works of "Macunaíma – the hero without a character", a book that is often asked for at the "vestibular" (pre university exams).

The musicality of the book
"Macunaíma – the hero without a character" is a masterpiece of national recognition. More than just a clipping of fables, myths and Indian rituals, with African and Portuguese flavoring, it is the reading of the development of Brazilian culture. With the attempt to make the piece fit into a literary classification, the term "rhapsody" was used, which for the author, "referred directly to instrumental fantasies that used themes and procedures of improvised composition, taken from traditional or popular songs."
Music being the rawest means of expression and continuity of popular oral tradition, Macunaíma is full of songs and musicality. It is "the Tupi opera", a modern odyssey that, by the actual esthetic modernism, does not present itself in a metric and rime scheme pre determined by the traditional epics. At the end of the book this is clear. "I crouched on top of these leaves, caught my ticks, fingered the small guitar and in an effusive touch I raised a howl singing in the impure speech the phrases and stories of Macuaníma, the hero of our people."
This work, which already received so many literary essays, has been adapted to film and theatre, but has not yet been directed exclusively to its musicality, so latent and vibrant, that it pumps into our ears by the first reading. Its prose has rhythm and is filled with repeated phonemes, which reminds oneself of improvised verse, rap. In some places there is a much defined rhythm, as is the case in the first part of the text: "Deep inside the wild forest / Macunaíma was born / the hero of our people / he was coal-black / and son of the fear of night." Therefore the suggestion to transform into music some of the passages of the proper text that can become independent as songs, due to the construction of the clipping structure that the book shows, proposes at the same time unity and independency of the themes and stories told. Some repeated phrases and expressions sound like refrains, as for example: "Oh! I'm so lazy…", besides the popular sayings (that already exist or were recreated) which also have set rhythms; "thorn that pricks when it's small is already pointed", "when the moon wanes don't start anything."
The book brings sixteen verses preceded by indications such as "sang sadly" and "singing long lasting hymns" that give evidence that they are in fact songs and/or prayers. Evidently this musical manifestation in the book is due to the fact that the author was an important musicologist, who researched and documented through books and the Mission of Folklore Researches, in the 20s, several musical manifestations from Brazil unknown up until then. Some of the passages show in their form and/or contents which folkloric manifestation they were taken from, like the songs from "bumba meu boi", the song of the beggar, lullabies, Indian beliefs, etc. Others show elements of Indian religion, or even mixed forms, without definition. These 'songs', they don't bring about the melody in the book, which permits their creation. Form and subject of each passage suggest a musicality that works as a starting point. Not in a simple way, copying the forms of the folklore they refer to, but mixing them and adding other sounding elements, maintaining and corrupting the tradition, clipping and recreating, very much like the poet and the whim of the book: "in an impure way of speech".


INFORMATION: macunaopera@gmail.com