Brazil’s Secret Musical Weapon: Jards Macalé (includes exclusive photos)

Jards Macalé (right) With Waly Salomão

This month, I published a long feature about Brazilian musician Jards Macalé in one of my favorite American magazines, Wax Poetics. Jards Macalé is an overlooked musical genius, and one I bet will be discovered and rediscovered hundreds of times before gaining recognition as one of the most influential creators (I purposefully use a broader term than the simple musician) of the artistically rich 1970s in Brazil. Wax Poetics magazine’s summer issue focuses all its attention on Brazil, and includes takeouts on Gilberto Gil, Tim Maia, and others. I interviewed Macalé via phone, and though I knew how immersed he had been in the wider artistic, literary and design work of Brazil’s counterculture, he surprised me by talking almost exclusively about interdisciplinary cooperation. Our conversation, reflected in my piece, touched on a mind-boggling quantity of names. Macalé, and his long-haired, bohemian friends, helped turn Brazil, despite its military dictatorship, into a cultural engine. Macalé, in a way, ties them all together: psychedelic poet Waly Salomão, maverick artist Helio Oiticica (who lived for a stint in New York); columnist, lyricist and poet Torquato Neto who wrote in a sort of coded slang in the newspapers in order to avoid censorship, but killed himself in 1972; sculptor Lygia Clark, famous for her bichos or ‘critters’; not to mention the musicians Macalé collaborated with– Caetano Veloso of Tropicália fame, Maria Bethania (Veloso’s sister), Gal Costa, Clara Nunes, and Nara Leão, to name only a few. Real Grandeza, Macalé’s 2005 double album featuring his collaborations with poet Salomão, is available on Amazon as an import. Wax Poetics magazine #36 can also be ordered online. Below are exclusive photos of Jards and friends provided by his agent Maria Braga, including a few not included in the Wax Poetics article (click to enlarge):