Even the most committed students of Brazilian music might not have been familiar with the work of composer Priscilla Ermel until 2017. That was when Music From Memory released Outro Tempo: Electronic and Contemporary Music From Brazil, 1978-1992, introducing a number of obscure Brazilian artists who were making music at the tail end of the country’s military regime. Ermel described that era as not just “another time” but “another tempo,” inspiring compiler John Gómez to title the anthology after her phrase.
Ermel has called recordings from that period “portals through which stories, people, and cultures can be revealed.” It’s an apt metaphor for the uncanny soundworlds glimpsed in Origens Da Luz, a crucial compendium of Ermel’s singular work, drawn from the four albums she released between 1986 and 1992. Born and raised in São Paulo, Ermel, who studied cello and guitar, was reared on Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos and bossa-nova master Tom Jobim, and both sensibilities filter down to her own music. Just as crucially, while researching for her master’s thesis, Ermel traveled to the Amazon rainforest to study the songs of the indigenous Cinta-Larga and Ikolem Gavião people, for whom music is inextricable from storytelling.
A similar sensibility runs through Ermel’s astonishingly layered work, whose arrangements unfurl more like short stories than pop songs. “Luar,” which opens the compilation, begins with the sounds of birds and chirping insects, situating us in a twilit landscape. Ermel’s strong, clear voice crests at the midway point, and as she falls silent, her guitar and melodica are rejoined by the sounds of the rainforest. Those chirps and calls are present in many of the songs, turning any negative space in the music into an open window—as though to suggest that the natural world is ever-present, and one need only become silent to become aware of it. Even when she isn’t directly incorporating the ambient chatter of the wilderness, the rattles and bamboo flutes that Ermel deploys emulate natural sounds; on the title track, so does her own wordless voice, whose squawks, howls, and purrs sound almost primal.
It often seems as if Ermel is striving for an equilibrium between her own music and the beautiful, chaotic density of the rainforest. But even in the absence of field recordings, her songs are strongly evocative of a sense of place—even if no such land exists anywhere but in her own music. “Meditação,” featuring her gorgeous cello, piano, and acoustic guitar, starts off like an English folk ballad before wandering further afield, while “Campo De Sonhos” conjures two worlds at once: The synth line moves like Indonesian court music while the cello is worthy of a modern classical recital. An elegant braiding of piano and keyboards, “Cristal De Fogo” toggles between smooth new age and soap-opera soundtrack.
The gem of the original Outro Tempo, the masterwork “Corpo Do Vento” is also the highlight of Origens Da Luz. Translated as “Body of the Wind,” it remains the finest amalgam of Ermel’s classical upbringing and ethnographic studies. Atop bombo and cultrun drums, Ermel adds ocarina, Chilean chirimia, and Nepalese flute; after letting the piece build for five minutes, she introduces piano and viola caipira, a Brazilian 10-string guitar, playing themes redolent of modern classical composition. By the third act, the hand drums and woodwinds return, quickening to a ritualistic climax. It feels like a condensation of the Brazilian composer’s own story into 16 spell-binding minutes—and a portal to another world.
Buy: Rough Trade
