Over the past 15 years as a singer, guitarist, songwriter and arranger based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I have built a career rooted in Brazilian popular music1, with influences from jazz, pop and various other genres. With my master studies at Gothenburg University, I intend to dive deeper in my own artistry, reflecting on the music I have been making so far and also on the musician I want to be from now on, which means investigating new possibilities of expression and setting goals for my development in the short and long term.
Born and raised in Brazil, I grew up listening mostly to Brazilian popular music, which certainly influenced my choice of the acoustic nylon-string guitar as my first instrument. A bit later, I began performing as a singer and writing my own music under the stage name Clara Gurjão. I consider myself to align with the singer-songwriter label, or, in Portuguese, cantautora.2 As most of Brazilian musicians, I had no musical training in elementary school and my first experiences with studying music were self-taught, through listening and imitation attempts and through private lessons. My formal education in music came only after being enrolled in the bachelor of Arrangement in Brazilian Popular Music at one of the most important universities in Brazil, Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO).
When I launched my own artistic career, driven by both personal taste and commercial viability, I gravitated towards a more pop-oriented format for my songs and performances. This choice made sense at the time, as it allowed my work to reach a relatively wide audience. Some of my songs were indeed played on the radio and in high-traffic places, such as the Rio de Janeiro International Airport, as well as in various stores and shopping malls. I also performed on TV shows and at various venues in Rio, as well as in other cities both within Brazil and abroad. My career did not evolve in an experimental or jazz-oriented context, even though some Brazilian musical genres are closely linked to jazz. In fact, I used to approach even the jazzier repertoire with a singer-songwriter attitude, focusing more on the song itself than on the possibilities of experimentation and improvisation. However, after a couple of years I started to feel signs of fatigue and dissatisfaction with the pop approach – not to mention with the music industry itself. I felt stuck in my technique and aesthetic and sought to explore new approaches in my music, yet I did not find the space to do so. It was at this point when I started to consider returning to academia and starting an artistic research project.
When I decided to move to Gothenburg, Sweden, and pursue a master's degree in Improvisation and World Music Performance, I had a purpose that may not have been entirely conscious at the time, but that became increasingly clear to me throughout the program: to be in a musical and educational environment completely different from my place of origin. With less hierarchy and rigid models to follow, and more opportunities for innovative experiences, I would have the possibility to develop unique aspects in my music. From my previous experience as a bachelor's student for one semester at University of Örebro, also in Sweden, and from many conversations I had with my former teacher, Hans Balstedt3, I knew that the Academy of Music and Drama4, University of Gothenburg, would provide the ideal place and opportunity for me to develop as a musician with the greatest freedom I have ever had.
First and foremost, I was looking for an institution and a program that would not be restricted to a single musical genre, where typically all students are taught the rules and aesthetics of a specific style, such as jazz, classical music or Brazilian music. I aimed the freedom of being able to work with the music I make, based on my background in Brazilian music, while listening, playing and exchanging ideas with students and teachers from other countries, fields and genres, opening my music to new influences and possibilities. In other words, one of my goals was to foster a meeting between my own personal musical tradition and new artistic inputs.
After a few years inside the music industry of my home country, I also began to feel restricted by certain musical formats and procedures, realizing the need to challenge myself and step out of my comfort zone. Therefore, another of my goals in this master was to stretch the limits of the “3-minute song” format I was used to working in. This meant, for example, working with improvisation, playing body percussion or using extended techniques in my instruments.
As a Brazilian musician performing in another country, bringing some level of awareness to the audience about my background and about the music I play was something essential to me. Addressing important political and historical issues behind the music was also crucial. Based on that need, another goal of mine was to enhance communication through my music and my performance. Singing in Portuguese and presenting music that has its roots in a distant culture could easily place me in the “exotic” box, leading to some level of fetishization and distance in relation to the audience. However, I wanted the audience to be an active participant in the concert. We will dive more into how I approached this issue later in this text.
Finally, another aim of my research project was to feel more creative and free with my music, seeking the playful aspect of music that we often lose as we become adults and focus excessively on professionalism, or, in other words, when we take music overly seriously.
PURPOSE
A central concept to be investigated in this artistic research is identity. I intend to explore how the new knowledge acquired through this research can deepen and enhance my musical expression, both affirming and reshaping elements of my identity.
Thus, the purpose of my artistic research is to explore the encounter between my own musical tradition as a Brazilian singer, guitar player and songwriter and new artistic inputs such as improvisation, extended techniques, unusual instrumentation and genre crossing collaborations with artists from other fields. This research project examines how these new influences will affect my musical expression and artistic choices.
Furthermore, another important goal of this research is to develop tools that help me reach a state of freedom, joy, and openness while performing, communicating honestly and truly with myself, my fellow musicians, and the audience.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1) How will my musical identity develop during my studies?
2) What tools can I develop to broaden my expressive possibilities as a cantautora in both composition and performance?
3) How can I express my artistic intentions and political concerns through music?
4) What tools and preparations can enhance my experience of freedom, joy and openness when performing?
METHOD
To explore possible answers to my research questions, I employed a combination of methods which are listed below. They concern practice sessions, compositional process, rehearsals and on-stage performance:
- Composing new material based on specific elements drawn from the music of other composers
- Approaching improvisation in an expanded way
- Working with different types of instrumentation
- Working with body percussion
- Using texts and poems in the concerts
- Systematic documentation and reflective practice
The first method of the list was planned prior to the beginning of my studies, based on a discography I have compiled5 , which served as a departing point for analytical and creative exploration. I intended to have a consistent composition method that would allow me to create new songs in a relatively easy way by using specific rhythmic, melodic, harmonic or thematic elements chosen from other songs as starting places. However, upon beginning my research and after my first classes with my supervisor Anders Hagberg6, I realized that my possibilities for musical exploration and development would go far beyond this realm. Thus, I developed methods 2, 3, 4 and 6 with the guidance of my supervisor and other teachers. Finally, method 5 emerged intuitively based on my need of communication; I only became aware that I was applying it as a method as time went by and I started to reflect on what I had been doing so far.
I will delve deeper into these methods and how they unfolded in the upcoming sections.
CONTEXT
“Brazilian popular music” is my own translation of the term música popular brasileira, which is widely used by both laypeople and scholars within the field of musicology in Brazil to refer to music created and disseminated in an urban context, coinciding with the emergence of a national identity from the 18th century onwards. Music historian and critic José Ramos Tinhorão defines “popular music” in the following way:
In opposition to folk music (by unknown authors, transmitted orally from one generation to another), the popular music (composed by known authors and spread through graphic media, like sheet music, or through the recording of discs, tapes, films or video tapes) constitutes a contemporary creation of the emergence of cities with a certain degree of social diversification. In Brazil, this is equivalent to saying that popular music emerged in the two main colonial cities - Salvador and Rio de Janeiro - during the 18th century, when the gold from Minas Gerais shifted the economic axis from the northeast to the center-south, and the coexistence of these two important administrative centers from distinct economic areas made possible the formation of a relatively differentiated urban middle class.7
Although widely used, this term and its variations are open to different interpretations, some of them with greater specificity. The acronym MPB (Música Popular Brasileira), for instance, generally refers to music produced from the 1960’s onward, right after the Bossa Nova era. It represents an attempt to encompass the diverse range of Brazilian musical genres under a single label. Nevertheless, in this work I will adopt the broader definition of the term as proposed by José Ramos Tinhorão and other scholars. That is, I will consider Brazilian popular music to encompass everything produced from the 18th century onward, within the context of urbanization and the formation of a national identity, up to the present day.
In the history of Brazilian popular music, the voice and the acoustic guitar play a leading role. From modinha and lundu8 to the songs post-Bossa Nova, it is safe to say that the intertwining of these two instruments is in the core of Brazilian popular music, having a strong influence on the creation of many musical genres. Besides the unique history of the guitar as an instrument that has developed in an exceptionally rich and virtuosic manner in Brazil - also within the realm of classical music9 -, the figure of the cantautor is also quite prevalent. The Portuguese term cantautor (cantautora in the feminine form; cantautores in the plural form) refers to the artist who sings and plays their own compositions.10
Throughout my journey of learning and performing, I nurtured a great interest in the work of several of these cantautores, particularly those who have the voice and the acoustic guitar as the core of their musical expression, developing a rich and unique language within both instruments. Under this category I include artists like Chico Buarque, Gilberto Gil, Djavan, João Bosco, Caetano Veloso and Joyce Moreno, who began their careers still in the 1960’s, as well as Badi Assad, Lenine, Chico César, Vanessa Moreno, Dani Black, among many others younger contemporary artists.
The concept of cantautores dates back to the medieval troubadors, artists who used to compose and sing songs, accompanying themselves by some kind of string instrument, as described by H.J. Chaytor in the following excerpt:
Troubadour poems were composed for singing, not for recitation, and the music of a poem was an element of no less importance than the words.[…] Consequently music and words were regarded as forming a unity, and the structure of the one should be a guide to the structure of the other.[…] The singer accompanied himself upon a stringed instrument (viola) or was accompanied by other performers; various forms of wind instruments were also in use. Apparently the accompaniment was in unison with the singer; part writing or contrapuntal music was unknown at the troubadour period.11
Within this tradition and its developments in different parts of the world, melody and poetry (lyrics) are intricated and indissociable parts of a whole that today we call canção in Portuguese, song in English, or visa in Swedish. Many of the artists within this field do not have formal music training and are self-taught. Although their poetry and music may be complex and sophisticated, they communicate easily with ordinary people, which can explain their huge commercial success. During the 1960s and the 1970s we could see the spread of this tradition all over Latin America, Europe and the US. In Sweden we can call back names such as Olle Adolphson, Cornelis Vreeswijk and Evert Taube. Naturally, in each country this tradition took particular forms and directions. However, considering that all these artists were composing songs, singing and playing instruments (mainly the acoustic guitar), and for the sake of mapping the field, we can put them under the same conceptual umbrella.
As I look back on my musical path, I realize I have come to appreciate the "song" format and have learned intuitively how to compose and perform within this style. When playing music from other composers, I often stayed faithful to the original versions and arrangements. After all, we were talking about the greatest names in Brazilian popular music, such as Tom Jobim and Chico Buarque. I had a great (and probably excessive) respect for them. Who was I to question what had been created by these geniuses?
Although I have naturally identified myself as a cantautora since the beginning of my trajectory in music, during my master studies I had the opportunity to develop other abilities, like performing in a more improvised context, practicing free improvisation, approaching my instruments in non-idiomatic ways, arranging for a big band and playing with musicians from different musical traditions. This environment contributed to constantly challenging my own vision of my artistry.