José Mário Branco; Comuna/Teatro de Pesquisa - A Mãe (1978)

Ah, the power of the collective. This is an album made up from the music José Mário Branco (leftist, intellectual, musician, and JMB from here on out, all for short, more on that later) composed for a staging of the Brecht play The Mother (in turn based on Gorki's homonymous novel) by a portuguese theatre group called The Commune, only a few years after the authoritarian regime that ruled the country for nearly half a century was swiftly put to an end on April 25th, 1974; but enough years, by 1977 (when work on this began), for the cultural embers from that political epiphany (particularly its socialist fumes) to be fading, as representative democracy settled in, which made this staging of the play, despite all the fight still in it, something of a political requiem. 

So, we are unquestionably dealing with a period piece here, but in a very good way - one comparable to, say, the honourable likes of Stavros Xarhakos/Nikos Xilouris' Το μεγάλο μας τσίρκο, also resulting from the staging of a play; in this case, one that did its best to culturally challenge the rule of the military junta in Greece (also brought to its demise by 1974) through an allegorical retelling of the country's political history.

As such, this record works as a wonderful time capsule, consciously preserving a number of traits from the context that gave rise to it, in a tapestry that skilfully weaves musiques de scéne, stretches of dialogue and soliloquies, and galvanizing chorales embodied by the theatre collective itself (whose "unlearned" singing voices add beautifully to the verismo of the performance); all of it assembled so aptly, in a musical découpage of sorts, that I don't think you actually need to understand what's being said to be drawn into its narrative flow (for some that partial ignorance might actually be a blessing, but I don't think it need (let alone should) be, unless you're only interested in art you can entirely identify with). 

All that is also achieved through a series of formal experiments through which JMB fully explores the relative but specific musical freedom afforded by working in support of another artistic medium, such as theatre, in that, while you are compromised in advance with a diegetic or conceptual scheme (among other external constraints and demands), you get to reach for a wider use of sound as a dramatic resource, to create diverse and dynamic atmospheres. That's what you get here; for instance: in the spectral prologue (bringing Ligeti, of all people, to mind); in the grounding of the internationalist  rhetoric over local musical templates like traditional work songs; or in an unrelenting crescendo of no more than increasingly unruly voices in protest (coming to terms with the contingency of the proverbial monopoly of legitimate violence) that progressively join in unison over the backdrop of the Internationale (whistled at first, triumphantly chanted by the end), perfectly depicting the politicization of civil unrest, as it keeps building tension in a masterful exercise of aural mise en scène (somewhat anticipating what JMB would do, shortly after, in his gut-wrenching 25 minutes long live musical performance piece FMI (as in 'International Monetary Fund', which should be a much more self-aware organization if it had that blasting non-stop in its work environments)).

However, as the irrelevant fate of nearly all "original soundtracks" of the world shows, that formal leeway only gets to be musically productive if you are able to come full circle and give the music resulting from that process not only a functional role but an aesthetic ontology - producing music that not only has an existence of its own, but could not have come to be outside of those conditions; that is both autonomous and integral to its circumstances; music, at long last, that is self-sufficient not because it transcends its context or immediate purpose, but by being a full-fledged aesthetic expression of it. That is what JMB achieved here. 

Beyond that still, even for more conventional forms of musical appreciation, this contains some of the best and most moving music JMB (not the most gifted performer (who needs that?), but an immensely knowledgeable musician, which also made him a highly sought-after producer/arranger) ever composed - of which Hanns Eisler would be proud. Even if, as an arranger, it could be argued that JMB did some of his best work on other people's records (first and foremost when his arrangements matched and stretched José Afonso's polymorphous songwriting), usually taking a rather austere approach to his own creations, here, again, that works perfectly, as he deftly practises a sort of musical materialism, that echoes the physical restrictions imposed by the stage, narrowing the musical means at hand (voices and percussions, a guitar or a piano, a double bass and little more), to ultimately produce a uniquely enveloping and concentrated dramatic experience.

For better or worse, good art can make a case for people, ideas, and feelings you wouldn't empathise with in the first place, be familiar with, or even begin to know how to process. As such, one might come to one's previous senses shortly afterwards, have them reinforced (depending on what they were in the first place), or simply gain some appreciation for how people could be drawn to ideas you may keep on having (serious) issues with, but, as you are listening to this, I do believe the normal emotional reaction, at some point, should still probably be to feel like storming the Winter Palace - not that, to this day, one wouldn't be hard-pressed to find a period in russian history when some version of that mightn't have sounded like a reasonable proposition for quite a few.