It’s easy to list Hermeto Pascoal’s accolades and impressive statistics – two Latin Grammys; multiple honorary doctorates (including one from Julliard); more than 10,000 compositions to his name; featured on many hundreds of albums – but his real achievement is that he has crafted an absolutely unique sound, a deeply personal style that continues to resonate around the world, and which has given him the status of living legend in his native Brazil.
Pascoal has a dislike for labels of any kind, and indeed, he doesn’t fit into any neat categories. He is a multi-instrumentalist, creating his art across keys, saxophones, flutes, accordion, guitar, drums, and more. If pushed, he’d settle for referring to his style as ‘universal music’. We might begin our description with jazz: Pascoal’s music is informed by all manner of jazz, from big band to bop, from hard funk fusion to the free. And it was jazz that first brought him to international recognition, especially his collaboration with Miles Davis on the 1971 album Live/Evil. From that basis in jazz, he takes off to different worlds. The avant-garde has always been an important reference in his work, allowing him to expand outwards in all directions, but he also looks inwards. He looks to his roots as a Brazilian, bringing in forro, bossa nova and Afro-Brazilian styles; and to his place in the world as a human being and a part of the wider ecosystem, working with natural materials and spaces, and experimenting with the connections between music and the Earth.
Pascoal’s approach paints a picture of a man so thoroughly immersed in music that it flows through and around him; he hears music in the world that few else can, and harnesses it, to bring it to the attention of us mere mortals. His music is not necessarily always easy to listen to, but it is always fulfilling, both intellectually and spiritually. Add in his iconic hirsute look, his famously eccentric persona and his playful self-mythologising, and it’s all led Brazilians to embrace him with many nicknames, chief among them O Bruxo – The Wizard.
In a country and culture so large and steeped in musical heritage as Brazil, it takes someone very special to be able to rise above the crowd with a distinctive, individual sound. It is for his extraordinary and uncompromising artistic vision as a musician and composer; for the breathtaking quality and sheer quantity of his recorded and live output over a 74-year career; and for influencing and inspiring generations of world-jazz explorers in Brazil and the world over, that we are delighted that Hermeto Pascoal is the WOMEX 24 Artist Award recipient.
Photo: Hermeto Pascoal and his band The Mothership, by Gabriel Quintão.