There are many anecdotes about Hermeto Pascoal, the Brazilian musician who died on Saturday at the age of 89, that have become the stuff of legend. From punching Miles Davis in the face to playing for five hours straight one night in Rio and being widely known as “the sorcerer” of Brazilian music, with a long white beard to match, these episodes would make an average artist infamous. But beyond the outre stories, Pascoal truly was a mythic figure: a musical genius with few peers, who pushed music beyond boundaries.
This self-taught, skilful musician learned flute, tambourine, piano and many other instruments by mimicking gestures and transposing techniques from one to another. But his first teacher was nature. Born in 1936 in Lagoa da Canoa, a small town in the north east, the young Pascoal took his earliest musical inspirations from the noises of rural Brazil: frogs ribbiting at a placid lake, birds chirping in the small hours, bullock carts rolling in the morning; church bells calling the mass and popular festivities pulsing through the region, such as the winter festas Juninas, soundtracked by the accordion-laced forró.
