Wynton Marsalis salutes Doctor of Music Hermeto Pascoal - Doutor Hermeto (com legendas)
Wynton Marsalis' citation to honor Hermeto Pascoal's honorary Doctoral Degree from Juilliard.
Recorded in New York, May 19, 2023
Discursco de Wynton Marsalis ao entregar o Doutorado Honoris Causa para Hermeto Pascoal na Juilliard em Nova Iorque, 19 de maio de 2013
Now I have the honor of turning to the master, Hermeto Pascoal.
And I’m going to take my time because I enjoy doing this.
You are known universally as "O Bruxo," "the sorcerer." Every musician who has worked with you throughout your long career has been forever touched by your magic. You are a towering, central figure in the history of Brazilian music... though your influence and creativity are felt in every corner of the world.
You were born in Arapiraca, a small and poor rural village in the semi-arid Northeast of Brazil. Drawn to the sounds of nature from a very early age, you created a flute from a pumpkin stem to play for the birds around your home. As a small child, you took spare materials from the shop of your blacksmith grandfather and used them to make music. At the age of seven, you experimented with your father's accordion. Those explorations started an eight-decade musical ascension as a composer, arranger, bandleader, and multi-instrumentalist.
You moved to the big southern cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in the 50s and 60s during the height of the Bossa Nova movement. With your talent and restlessness, you changed the international soundscape forever. Expanding the harmonic aspirations of Bossa Nova to heighten tensions and deepen resolutions with ever-more fundamental and complex forms, you also brought sounds previously considered non-musical, like natural noises and the myriad recurring timbres of life, into the mainstream of Brazilian music.
In addition to your enormous abilities as an improviser, you also contributed to a quantitative and qualitative leap in the scoring of your country's music. Even though your sight is impaired by congenital myopia, you are a compulsive composer with a constant flow of fresh ideas which you write on paper napkins, concert programs, hats (like the one you are wearing today), and that you draw like artwork on the walls that you pass. Every day, anyway, anywhere and everywhere, you write with intensity and with a burning, unquenchable fury.
Your colorful and diverse music has transformed the percussion universe. Before you, great percussionists thought mainly of rhythm and groove. But you opened up this traditional concept and encouraged them to introduce new sounds that brought images, landscapes, and atmospheres of everything from the sounds of birds to the howling of nocturnal animals, to the organized chaos of a popular marketplace.
Exalted master, Hermeto Pascoal, your music goes far beyond any one style to encompass choro, baião, bossa nova, maracatu, frevo... and a wholly original jazz and symphonic palette where improvising meets rigorous written forms. You've said, "I don't play one style, I play nearly all of them!" Well... you've mastered multiple traditional instruments, but you also play teacups, wood, found objects... whatever catches your imagination. You've even hamboned on a high and low pitched couple of pigs.
Throughout your career, you have created numerous definitive groups, have collaborated with musicians like Flora Purim, Gilberto Gil, and Miles Davis, and have also worked with every major Brazilian musician. Yet, on your most recent tours, you spotlight and celebrate the youngest musicians. You have been honored with multiple Grammy Awards and have played at every major international festival in the world, traveling across North and South America, Europe, and Asia. We are immensely fortunate that you graced us with a residency in Juilliard Jazz this winter that resulted in two complete programs of your music. It was elevating and transformative for students and teachers alike.
O Brazilian Bard of rhythm and tune, you embrace the entire world of music with boundless joy and imagination. You've said, "It comes from the universe. That's why I call it música universal. It's an energy that never stops.
O Brazilian Bard of rhythm and tune, you embrace the entire world of music with boundless joy and imagination. You've said, "It comes from the universe. That's why I call it música universal. It's an energy that never stops. It hovers over us wherever we are."
Mr. Hermeto Pascoal, you call everyone "the Champ." But you are the true champion... an actual wizard and sorcerer whose music has given our world a much more comfortable seat in the cosmos. Obrigado!
