An attentive gaze

Today was one of those days - almost inexistent now -  throughout which we only got one recording done. But nothing is lost, for we had the so awaited participation of Rui Camacho. He had been here with us a couple of days ago, photographing as usual whilst deeply interiorising the sketches one by one. Today, he requested that Rodrigo would explain to him some of those in greater detail and, after some time, he picked up his Adufe [tradutional Iberian hand-percussion instrument] from a bag full of instruments he had brought from Xarabanda [cultural institution Rui is the director of]. After some loose rhythms, he decided to try his flute out. He chose a drawing fragment which displayed several harmonic fields related to grammatical classes and surprised us with these curious melodies, somewhat post-romantic, but with double-phonics, whistle-tones, ghostly harmonics and other contemporary techniques. It is strange to think that we were comfortably expecting a Mourisca [Moorish influenced traditional music genre from Madeira].

Mariana B. Camacho also joined the group at PIPINOIR, having arrived on this morning from Andanças [a world music and dance festival] as she was participating in Ethno Portugal [a traditional music international exchange programme]. Being told about so many enriching life experiences and amazing performances, Rui sighed 'I wished I was there, man!'

Photograph by Sara Rodrigues