Jards Macale: the music pulls you into a trance

A new festival in the beautiful Portuguese town of Amarante was the venue for a powerful concert and a showing of Eryk Rocha's film about Macale. With 50 years performing and being politically committed, it is extraordinary that he is not well-known in Europe. While displaying his intense energy in performance, he is very easy to talk to and likes to joke. 

Jards Anet da Silva got the nickname Macale from the player who was supposed to be the worst footballer in Rio while Jards was at school. One of Brazil's greatest performance artists, at age 74 he is still not well-known in Europe.

This is probably explained by the fact that his art has always been more important than commercial success although he has worked as a performer or a producer with some of the best-known names of MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira) and the Tropicalia movement, such as Caetano Veloso and Maria Bethania. He has also contributed to the sound tracks of many films, including several by Glauber Rocha.

Always politically committed, he was involved in putting out the album "Direitos humanos no banquete dos mendigos" (Human Rights in the Beggars Banquet) in 1974, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which was immediately banned by the military government who were keen to promote the arts as long as they weren't critical of the government. He was also imprisoned in 1977 during the dictatorship in Brazil, and didn't record any music for 10 years afterwards.

At the 1974 concert, he had read a satirical poem about a chick (pinto) that has trouble growing and standing up. 'pinto' is also Brazilian slang for penis, and was the name of a member of the military government. After the show, they found the theatre had been surrounded by police and many people were arrested.

Although he has released 15 albums he is also an actor and a composer, and his more recent work is multimedia and often improvised. In recent years he has been involved in documentary films. "Cancoes do exilio" (2011) is a documentary about the experiences of several Brazilian musicians during and after the dictatorship, and 'Jards Macale Ao viva", is a concert in Porto Alegre in 2014, directed by Jard’s wife, Rejane Zilles.

Eryk Rocha's 2011 film ''Jards" was recently shown at the MIMO festival, now in its 2nd year in Amarante, Portugal (and its 15th in Brazil), which also featured legendary Brazilian band Nacao Zumbi, and Richard Bona and Mandekan Cubano.

As Jards recounts in our conversation after his Q&A, Rocha's film was the result of the incredibly close sintonia that he has with the director. I found it completely stunning, or alucinante to use the better Portuguese word, both for the powerful extreme close-up camera work and its use of psychedelic effects and abstract images.

Incredibly, the DVD is still not available in Region 2 format for Europe.

Our conversation was published in The Prisma Multicultural Newspaper on /th August 2017 and can be read in full with photos here:

https://theprisma.co.uk/2017/08/07/jards-macale-the-music-pulls-you-into-a-trance/