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Band Jazz World

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"El Fad"

(...) José Peixoto lembra com o seu projecto El Fad os séculos de presença moura no lado mais ocidental da Europa a que se chamou Gharb al-Ândalus. Para cá de Gibraltar, já em águas do Atlântico, cresceu um país de cruzamentos culturais. Foi assim no passado e essa tradição prossegue nos dias de hoje, com a Lisboa da passarola de Saramago em “Memorial do Convento” transformada numa das urbes mais cosmopolitas do mundo. Pegando numa linguagem musical de carácter universalista, o jazz, El Fad revê o conceito de fusão nascido nas décadas de 1960 e 70 e dá-lhe uma dimensão portuguesa, ibérica e mediterrânica. Em temas multidireccionais e de tempos variados da autoria do seu líder, associam-se uma rítmica afirmativa e vizinha do rock e um sentido melódico com raízes no Norte de África e no Médio Oriente. Mesmo a abordagem guitarrística de Peixoto é herdeira das gramáticas formuladas para o alaúde árabe (oud) desde pelo menos Al-Kindy, no século IX. Numa altura em que o jazz cada vez mais se define pelas suas práticas localizadas, levando inclusive ao surgimento de uma nova palavra para as designar, “glocal” (junção de “global” e “local”), a oportunidade da proposta é óbvia.

Rui Eduardo Paes

- Jazz.PT (Portugal)


Discography

VIVO - 2008 - Grão

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About EL FAD

In a time when some people dangerously use the term “civilization shock” about the relationship of the West with Islam, it is important to remember how much the Iberian Peninsula – as well as all of the European continent – owes to the Arabs civilizational capabilities in a long period that went from the 8th century to the 15th century. This is precisely what José Peixoto does musically, with the El Fad project. We can not turn our backs to this past – it is integrated on our culture in multiple aspects, from philosophy to science, from poetry to music. In a way or another, we are all sephardits, heirs of the melting pot resulting from the pacific encounter between muslims, jews and christians in one of the most creative phases of all human history. The first treaty about the lute, medieval instrument that strongly influences the guitar playing of Peixoto, was written by an Arab, Al-Kindi, in the 9th century. Among the most ancient documents on the “magical” properties of music we find also the ones from another Arab, Al-Haitham, even if his purposes were mainly practical issues like the walking of the camels and the cure of insomnia. Avicena one of the great thinkers of the muslim empire, , formulated one of the most consistent microtonal systems in existence. His are also some studies on acoustics and the frequency control of flutes, frame drums and plucked strings. The same Avicena elaborated as well on the different types of consonance on intervals, establishing the bases of procedures still kept today. All this we are able to perceive in El Fad’s music. Because today’s Portugal, as in those times, is a place of meetings and trades, El Fad is some other things besides those coming from our Mediterranean influence. Our European condition, geographical position in relation to the Atlantic and African connection turns the Tagus river in a port of passage of various sonorities. One of them is jazz, universal music language created by the men and women taken violently from their home land and turned into slaves the other side of the ocean. José Peixoto and his friends use it as their stylistic matrix and they add to this “lingua franca” other musical vocabularies with global dimension, and one of them is rock, specially evident in the energetic and rhythmic character of the songs they play. This is fusion music, in some proportion keeping on the tradition coming from the sixties and seventies, another part coming from the reinvention of those coordinates in the wider spectrum of “world jazz”. Vicky’s drum set is completed by a pair of Saharian doumbeks and by the flamenco’s cajon, and that changes entirely the identity of that instrument invented by jazz and commonly used in rock. Peixoto’s guitar has some similarities with the mourish oud and at the same time we find on it some of the figures used by Ralph Towner with the ethnic-jazz group Oregon, but what we detect is more allusive than a reiteration, and put at the service of creativity. If sometimes Carlos “Zíngaro”’s violin reminds us of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, in others he enters decidedly in “terra incognita”. The contrabass of Miguel Leiria Pereira has a “classical” and chamber presence, as much in the pitch and timbre as in the articulation, coming as a very agreeable surprise in this context. And then there’s all the electronics, complemented by “Zíngaro” and José Peixoto, more concretist and minimal than anything already done in the domains of jazz-rock. Few times this mixing of references has had as a consequence such natural music with strong impact, but El Fad is one of those rare accomplishments…