Art on the Radio and Brazilian Radio Art
Music, literature, and poetry were present in the historical development of Brazilian radio since its early moments. The first radio broadcasting equipment was tested in 1922 in Rio de Janeiro, when the first listeners of this new medium listened to a speech by Brazil’s President Epitácio Pessoa, followed by a performance of the Opera Il Guarany by Antônio Carlos Gomes, staged in the Municipal Theater of Rio de Janeiro. Despite its declared purpose of disseminating scientific information, Rádio Sociedade do Rio de Janeiro, the first radio station in the country, collaborated with well-known artists, such as the poet Catulo da Paixão Cearense and the composer and guitarist João Pernambuco, in addition to singers and amateur musicians.
Storytelling was an established practice since the 1920s, especially in radio programs for children. In the 1930s and 1940s, amateur theater groups were formed for broadcasting plays on the radio. One of the programs created at the time was Teatro Encantado (Enchanted Theater), initially broadcast on Radio Escola Municipal and later on Radio Ministério da Educação. Children and young singers, pianists, violinists, and actors participated in this program. However, the fact that word and sound artists contributed to the production of content for this medium does not necessarily imply the development of works that might be considered radio art.
Perhaps the Brazilian idea of performance art created for (and by) the radio might be the soap opera[2] – especially its sound design. One could argue that sound effects created for radio soap operas were not substantially different from the sound effects traditionally created for theater. However, in Brazil there was a whole school of sound design developed exclusively for radio, especially for the star station of the 1940s and 1950s: the Rádio Nacional (National Radio). When speaking specifically about radio art, however, we consider its inception to have ostensibly occurred during the 1970s; during these years – with the collaboration and support of the Goethe Institute, Grupo Opinião, and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation – the first experiments with radio drama were made in Brazil, following the lineage of the German Neue Hörspiele, with seminars and competitions for radio plays. As a result of this initiative, playwrights Fernando Peixoto, Germano Blum, and João das Neves were invited to study the genre with the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln (West German Broadcasting Cologne, WDR).
In 1985, playwright Heloiza Bauab was awarded a prize in a contest sponsored by the Fundação Padre Anchieta (Padre Anchieta Foundation), Rádio Cultura FM, and the WDR. This prize consisted of a grant for Bauab from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation for an internship with the WDR. As part of her seminal experiences and productions in radio art, Janete El Haouli was invited by the WDR – the Studio Akustische Kunst (Studio Acoustic Art) – to undertake the project “Stratosound” (1994), a portrait of the Egyptian-Greek-Italian acoustic researcher and voice performer Demetrio Stratos. In 1999, Deutschlandradio invited El Haouli to develop a sound artwork, “Brasil Universo,” in partnership with the Brazilian musician Hermeto Pascoal and coproduced by the WDR. In 2002, Regina Porto – who worked for 11 years at Rádio Cultura FM – was commissioned by the WDR to create the piece “Metropolis – São Paulo,” an acoustic portrait of that city.
However, mainly because the majority of Brazilian radio stations are commercial broadcasters with no interest in experimental works, very little progress was made to improve or innovate radio art; sound art in Brazil could only be heard on university, state, or community stations. Since 2010, this has begun to change, mainly because of the expansion of the Internet and lower prices, democratizing the acquisition of equipment for recording, editing, and broadcasting. A number of interesting sound works began to spread through social networks, live exhibitions, web radios, and even through a few FM broadcasters, allowing a broader audience to tune in to experimental radio art.