The Role of Rádio Cultura and Rádio MEC
Rádio Cultura FM in São Paulo and Rádio MEC FM in Rio de Janeiro are two of the rare radio stations in Brazil that open space for arts in general (literature, poetry, music of various genres) and sound experiments.[3] Both have as a major programming line the transmission of classical music but also include program broadcasting times – usually in the early hours – for experimental music, electroacoustic music, and in the case of Rádio MEC, sessions of free improvisation and noise music, genres which are not covered by any other radio station in the country. These windows for other sound possibilities are scheduled, however, in a sporadic and extemporaneous way.
Before the broadening of listening possibilities, Rádio Cultura and Rádio MEC were the first radio stations to produce radio art; especially Rádio Cultura, where Regina Porto worked, and was one of the most important producers and broadcasters of more innovative radio programs. With a background in communication and music,[4] Porto was the director of and a producer for Rádio Cultura from 1986 to 1997. One of her most important productions was “Mel Nacional,” a collective work, performed in 1993 by Anna Maria Kiefer (musicologist, researcher, and lyric singer), Fernanda Pompeu (writer) and José Augusto Mannis (composer, electroacoustic performer, sound designer, and composition teacher). “Mel Nacional” is an interdisciplinary creation based on the life of Brazilian modernist writer Mário de Andrade and his time. Excerpts from various fiction and non-fiction texts by De Andrade and other authors were cut and combined. The superposition of layers of textual and musical materials was a significant contribution to this innovative narrative form known as radio art.
Regina Porto encouraged this opening for creation and experiments at Rádio Cultura, and this was crucial for the work of other professionals at the radio station: Cynthia Gusmão, Júlio de Paula, Peter O’Sagae, and Roberto D’Ugo. Gusmão – a musician with a BA in Greek, a MA in philosophy, and experience in art education and theater – was a broadcaster, screenwriter, and program director at Rádio Cultura from 1996 to 2012, and from 2013 to 2018 she directed programs and coordinated the musical programming of the station. One of her creations – Mapa-Mundi, uma Geografia do Som (Mapa-Mundi, a Geography of Sound) – was a program series on the music and languages of diverse cultures from around the world. In Mapa-Mundi, a careful and unusual musical selection was always accompanied by text, the result of thorough research into the culture of the places highlighted. Another production dedicated to musical radio was the series Paisagens Sonoras do Brasil (Brazil’s Soundscapes), which received an award at the International Radio Biennial (MEX/MEX 2000). Gusmão also produced the award-winning experimental program Ouvidos e Caracóis – Labirintos da Escuta (Ears and Snails – Labyrinths of Hearing).
Júlio de Paula, another prominent radio artist, worked both at Rádio Cultura and in art galleries. One of his main interests is in field recording (specifically soundscapes, voices, and music from traditional cultures in Brazil), using this as raw material for artistic creations. Part of his production could be heard on Veredas – Música e Tradição Popular no Brasil (Veredas – Popular Music and Tradition in Brazil), a series awarded by the VI International Radio Biennial of Mexico (2006). Outside the station, he performed works like “SP Microkosmos” (2004), created by mixing pieces from the collection of São Paulo’s Museu da Imagem e do Som (São Paulo Museum of Image and Sound); “Edgard” (2012), a radio performance at Mobile Radio BSP for the 30th São Paulo Biennial; and El Sur es el Norte (2015), commissioned by Kunstradio – Radiokunst.
Peter O’Sagae was a radio artist who expanded the boundaries of formats and themes in creations on Rádio Cultura. Today, devoted to children’s literature, he produces radio series for children that blend music, poetry, and traditional or original stories. O’Sagae made his debut on Rádio Cultura in 1990 as a producer and screenwriter for the series Opus Um: Música Clássica para Crianças (Opus One: Classical Music for Children). For this series he created original stories inspired by the movements and dynamics of works by Ravel, Mussorgsky, Villa-Lobos, Meschwitz, Vivaldi, and others. In 1993 he began producing the series No Balanço do Balaio, a program that introduced folk songs and children’s poetry in the Rádio Cultura's programming grid. In 1997 he also worked at Rádio USP – a station based at the University of São Paulo – where he developed the series Sonhamundo (Dreamworld), consisting of original texts by himself, texts from other authors, and musical works.
Roberto D’Ugo, who is currently primarily occupied with academic activities at the Cásper Líbero College, also ran significant projects at Rádio Cultura. From 1998 to 2005 he managed the coordination of programming and production at the station. During this period he collaborated with influential people in Brazilian classical music – such as the conductors Jamil Maluf, Julio Medaglia, João Carlos Martins, and John Neschling – to create radio and audio-visual projects. He also produced series and special programs on contemporary composers, such as R. Murray Schafer and Philip Glass, and acted as producer and broadcaster of the weekly program Música Discreta – o novo tempo do som (1997-2006), a program dedicated to minimal, contemporary, experimental, and avant-garde music.
In terms of the development and expansion of radio language, the most remarkable work on Rádio MEC was undoubtedly done by Lilian Zaremba. Researcher, music producer, radio artist, plastic artist, and curator Zaremba began to produce on Rádio MEC in order to share her knowledge of ancient music, a genre which was not covered by the station in the 1970s. For some time this musical and historiographic interest and knowledge guided her productions. A great change came about when she obtained a Master’s and Doctoral Degree in Communication at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. This pause in her direct production work and broadcasting on radio enabled her to explore different academic studies in the area of radio, which resulted in the publication of new literature and also transformed her own style for producing for radio.[5]
Zaremba promoted programs dedicated to unusual themes or ways of rethinking the medium. She also explored many formats beyond music programs: radio fantasies, radio documentaries, and sound portraits. The term “fantasy” – in music an instrumental piece in which the composer’s imagination takes precedence over conventional styles and forms – was used to define “Crab Nebula,” a piece from 2007, transmitted during the documenta X in Kassel. “Crab Nebula” takes the German language as a base and explores its sounds through phrases uttered by narrators with varying degrees of fluency in German. The work also has sound interventions by the artists Tunga and Cabelo. A “sound portrait” is in essence close to a soundscape or a sound postcard. The purpose here is to show what an image sounds like. The editing and the way you compose these sounds in relation to an image can be scaled to the format of a soundscape, a sound postcard, or a sound portrait. Zaremba used the term to designate projects dedicated to personalities in the history of radio, such as radio producers Luiz Carlos Saroldi and Padre Landell de Moura. “Ressonâncias Saroldi,” a work dedicated to Saroldi, was presented at the Intercom Conference in Recife in 2010 and later broadcasted in her program series Rádio Escuta at MEC-FM. As described by Zaremba:
The idea is starting from the perception of sound identity as a voice or the expression that a voice can offer. So, the program highlights the voice of Saroldi and also other voices and its expressions that entered the national listening culture, so to speak.
Whereas in “Ressonâncias Saroldi,” excerpts from interviews and locutions made by Saroldi are de- and recomposed in search of the musicality of his voice, the sound portrait of Landell de Moura followed another dynamic. To “portray” this scientist of the early twentieth century, Zaremba mixed excerpts from his biography, writings, the sounds of equipment he used, and sounds of communication machines, such as the first telegraphs. A description of the motivators of the work can be read in the text “Landell de Moura, a sound portrait.” In her article “O que eu faço é Rádio” (“Radio Is What I Do”) she tells us:
From 2005 on, [...] I began the Rádio Escuta series, where I tried to expose listeners to some of what is being constructed as radio language through its nearly one hundred years of existence: radio-documentaries, soundscapes, radio art, sound poetry, radio drama, highlighting historical works such as those undertaken by Artaud, Russolo, Brecht, Marinetti, Welles; the international outlook of the twentieth century punctuated by the output of Helmut Kopetski, R. Murray Schafer, Glenn Gould, John Cage [...].
At the same time, Zaremba offered the most innovative radio production known in Brazil, broadcasting pieces by Janete El Haouli, Regina Porto, Cynthia Gusmão, Roberto d'Ugo, Rodrigo Manzano, Romano, Alex Hamburger, and Philadelpho Menezes; productions by Marssares, situated in the junction between DJ music and sound art; and the research of composers like Tato Taborda and Vera Terra on chance and indeterminacy procedures in music. In the 2000s, parallel to her work on Rádio MEC, she began to create and produce sound works for other media and to promote exhibitions and lectures designed to rethink and expand radio art as well as the listening experience.[6] In 2008 Zaremba produced a radio documentary on the work of Walter Smetak, a Swiss musician who worked in Bahia between 1960 and 1970. This work was part of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia and the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art. She has also created electronic sound objects for the exhibition Arte e Música (Art and Music) in the Caixa Cultural galleries in São Paulo, Brasilia, and Rio de Janeiro, curated by Luiza Duarte and Marisa Florido. This exhibition brought together a number of pieces in which radio played a part: various soundscape works by Paulo Vivacqua and the “Chuveiro Sonoro” (Sonorous Shower) by Romano, consisting of a range of voices, “shower singers,” associated with radio emissions. She also exhibited her installation “Rádio Rasgo de Luz” (Radio Rip Light), assembled with an old tube radio set and several MP4 gadgets.[7] This installation was also exposed in 2009 for the 7th Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre. This seventh biennale was also the first event in Brazil including space specifically for sound art: Radiovisual: excitadora de frequências (Radiovisual: exciter of frequencies), curated by the artist Lenora de Barros. Radiovisual was a small radio station created especially for the biennale, operating 24 hours a day on the web during the complete period and broadcasting one hour a day through an FM station in Porto Alegre. Several artists were invited to produce content, one of them being Zaremba, who carried out a series of short-lived programs entitled Entreouvidos sobre Rádio e Arte in which she highlighted topics pertinent to the fields of communication, music, and sound art in relation to the work of various artists.
Zaremba’s work on Rádio MEC resonated through the emergence of other programmers connected with the production of contemporary music, such as Marcelo Brissac and Servio Túlio, who produced the series Música de Invenção (Music of Invention). In addition to offering an unusual musical selection, the program also promoted “unusual radio,” a “radio of invention.” Túlio explored, without restraint, timbral possibilities, speeds, sound overlaps, and fragments of discourses. Música de Invenção also provided room for plenty of improvisation and errors in the recording and editing of the speeches, conversations, and comments.