The Seekers by John Densmore

Author:John Densmore [Densmore, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2020-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Airto Moreira

Percussion Healer

Your hands know more than your brain.

Born into a family of folk healers in Brazil, Airto Moreira’s musical talent was obvious very early on. At age six, he was asked to do his own radio show. At thirteen, he was asked to play drums in a band when the drummer wasn’t available. He said he’d try, having played hand percussion already for many years. He rocked, and soon he was playing on the streets for change.

Eventually migrating to New York City, Airto hooked up with the greatest jazz trumpeter of all time: Miles Davis. Together with other future jazz greats, such as Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea, they created the genre called “jazz-fusion.”

Moreira participated in creating the seminal jazz recording Bitches Brew in 1970. Back in the day, I was blessed to see that ensemble live, and what a brew they stirred up. Miles was his usual elusive self, while the band burned a hole through the stage. Backstage after the show, an overenthusiastic critic was waxing rhapsodic about his brilliant performance, when Miles snapped, “I don’t care how I played… how did I look?” That reminded me of the kind of responses Bob Dylan threw at journalists.

After leaving Miles, the mad stick beater joined Weather Report, recording several important albums and touring the world with them. Bruce Botnick, the Doors’ longtime recording engineer, told an insightful story about working on one of those albums. They had finished a take, and Bruce asked the never-humble Joe Zawinul if they wanted to do another. “Are you kidding! Bruce, this is Weather Report. We only do one take.” Arrogant, yes, but they were the best.

Airto eventually moved on to Chick Corea’s group Return to Forever, another vital jazz force in the world of fusion. Then, in 1974, Airto formed his own group, along with his mate, Flora Purim, and they recorded many albums for big record companies.

I went down to see them live at the Whisky, where we had been the house band many years before. When Airto performs, he is surrounded by percussion instruments that look like artifacts from a rainforest, and he can sound like one too. He has percussion instruments from around the world. There are no borders around the well of his creativity. Picking up just one instrument, the pandeiro (tambourine), Airto performed a ten-minute symphony of such musical brilliance that I felt, along with the audience, as if we had just experienced every human emotion possible.

The world-renowned architect Frank Gehry says that musicians and architects are similar. “Architecture is about making feelings with inert materials, and music is making masterpieces with spatial sound environments.”

Through miraculous handwork accompanied by his chanting, shouts of encouragement to himself, and primal shamanic grunts, Airto created a kind of séance. He is a hypnotist. Gehry again: “In designing a building, you’re trying to create a feeling, and musicians and composers also talk about trying to create a feeling.” Airto started slow, weaving a sound web, and then you were caught; there was no escaping this web.

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