His music is an eloquent testament to who he was and how he lived. Percussionist Dom Um Romão (born on August 3, 1925) may have met his Maker two years ago in July, but he remains alive today through the beat of his favorite drums.
He fused the music of his native town of Bahia in northeastern Brazil and that of Harlem, a section of northern New York — both centers of the black culture in the New World and known to have fathered a rich musical legacy that, in turn, charted and enhanced the vast body of world music.
“Saudades” is the most sought-after LP he ever did (going for $300 on eBay), and it’s easy to understand why. Dom was in his element all throughout. Anyone who listens to his drums’ percussive tongue will be seduced and hypnotized. Dom was suave, primitive and pagan all at the same time. He used his berimbau and chants to call upon the ghosts of the primeval ones. He skillfully pounded on a slew of instruments, such as beaten Turkish brass, bamboo, conches, gourds, shells, skin and wood. He used them to mimic the sounds of nature, and transport his listeners to the jungle accompanied by the sounds of tropical birds and tinkling shells.
Considered by many as a percussionist whose heart beats like a drum, Dom was a master of the art of samba — a secularized urban form of the sacred, ritualistic candomble dance and music of Bahia — and equally adept in capoeira, a highly choreographed dance-like Afro-Brazilian martial art. He harnessed these skills so well that his live performances left his audience awed, breathless and wanting more. From his humble beginnings making a living out of the rites of street samba bands and their shared dynamics, Dom gained a sympathetic understanding of people, and how music and rhythm could affect them.
He accompanied Edith Piaf in her early musical career, trail-blazed new musical opportunities with the Weather Report, and collaborated with legendary figures such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sergio Mendes, Carlos Jobim, Gil Evans, Cannonball Adderley and Astrud Gilberto. He started his musical career helping Sergio Mendes record the version of the classic Mas Que Nada in 1962. Through all this, Dom was a visual and auditory delight as he pounded on his drums. He displayed a genuine grasp of his audience and producers realized he could be on his own.
“Saudades” wasn’t only a musical collaboration between Dom, Alex Blake (bass), Waltinho Anastacio (percussion), Izio Gross (piano) and Chico Freeman (saxophone), it was also a technical collaboration between Vandersteen Audio, which funded the album, and Water Lily Acoustic, which recorded the album inside the Santa Barbara Church.
The recording was the kind of assimilation of the technical and the artistic, which Water Lily always wanted to do: pure analog with no limiters such as equalization or noise reduction. It wasn’t as sophisticated as the recordings usually done by Telarc Records; it was fragile, submissive and, yes, imperfect, but it has what it takes to complete your musical journey into nirvana.
Arthur Salvatore (high-endaudio.com), the acknowledged guru of most audiophiles, ranks the album “Saudades” among the best alongside the album “For Duke.” Personally, I believe “Saudades” is in a league of its own. The record is aptly titled for it conjures in its listeners a hopeful desire more poignant than nostalgia, and more powerful than sadness or wistfulness.
The Portuguese word saudade cannot be translated successfully into English. No English word is succinct or expansive enough to capture the depth and scope of the feelings saudade conveys. Saudade is tantamount to the Portuguese musical tradition of fado, which means a passionate desire or craving for something treasured or something lost. Dom’s percussive vocabulary made it easy for us to understand what the word really means: it is the pain of life, the anxieties of the present, and the promise of the future, which Dom gave musical dimension to through his drums.
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