Bang on a Can

"I consider Hermeto Pascoal to be the father of modern contemporary music coming from Brazil," says Jovino Santos Neto, who for 15 years played piano and flute for Hermeto's group. "He is very fertile, always composing -- orchestral symphonies, string quartets, as well as music for his group. He is a great pianist, a great improviser and collaborated with Miles Davis in the early seventies. People like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Ron Carter, Hubert Laws, they would talk about Hermeto and pass around his tapes, getting people turned on to his music. Jazz, improvisation, folkloric, ethnic, Brazilian music -- Hermeto is open to any influence. It's like cooking -- sometimes you come up with a new dish by adding new seasonings, but in the end it has to taste good. We played every day, six hours a day, seven days a week, to sew the musical ideas in our heads. They are highly elaborate, sophisticated compositions, but they never lose contact with the earth and are always linked to the basic Brazilian dance rhythms. The rhythm in Quiabo is what we call in Portugese maracatu. It is a traditional rhythm from Northeastern Brazil. What distinguishes it from other rhythms is the strong rolling movement of the snare drum throughout, along with the particular rhythm of the bass drum. On top of that, Hermeto added another drum rhythm that you usually play only on the samba, so he got this special hybrid combination of rhythms. Quiabo means 'okra,' the vegetable. That was a joke of Hermeto's because there is another rhythm in Brazil that is called mashishi, which is also a vegetable. I can't really tell you why they gave the name of a vegetable to a rhythm, but this is a very old rhythm and the name has been known longer than I can remember. So for this piece, Hermeto said, 'This is not a mashishi, this is a quiabo.'"