The Brazilian artist will play these instruments, made by a luthier firefighter with wood remains from the fire at the Historical Museum.
fly. “Playing these guitars is a special experience because their wood has centuries of energy.”
“This time I’m going to Argentina with two special guitars, made with wood salvaged from the fire at the National Historical Museum of Brazil,” singer and actor Paulinho Moska told this newspaper. “Playing them is a special experience because they are not ordinary instruments, they have centuries of energy and their very existence gives a special metaphor to all my songs.”
From his home in Rio de Janeiro, Moska sounds ecstatic when telling the story of the guitars with which he will do his solo show this Friday at the Belgrano Auditorium in Buenos Aires (after performing tomorrow in Bariloche). The show in has to do with a documentary film and is entitled “The Phoenix Guitars of the National Museum”, and will combine images from the film with Moska’s usual songs, including hits like “Thinking of you” -the first one he sang in Spanish with the contribution of Jorge Drexler- and one that has to do especially with the show, “Todo novo de novo”.
The Boa Vista headquarters of the Historical Museum in Rio de Janeiro suffered a devastating fire on September 2, 2018, and the entire Brazilian people watched live on TV as the once residence of the royal family burned almost to the ground. The documentary and Moska’s guitars have to do with this disaster, but the events that led to his concert tour both inside and outside of Brazil began several years before, when a journalist called him to participate in a strange story related to fire. and music. “I was called in as a musician to see if a guitar actually sounded good or was it just an ornament, some kind of prop instrument. It turns out that there was a firefighter, Davi Lopes, who was being interviewed because, in addition to putting out fires, he said that he was also a luthier, and that he had learned to use the wood saved from a fire to make musical instruments, especially guitars. And they wanted me to appear in the middle of the note to play one of these guitars and give my opinion live, as well as demonstrate how the instrument sounded. And the truth is that it sounded so good that I was amazed and immediately bought one of these guitars from him. I still have it.”
The fire at the Historical Museum destroyed its invaluable catalog of priceless objects on the history of Brazil, with more than 20 million cataloged items disintegrating in the flames. “One of the many firefighters who went to put out the fire was Lopes, and since he couldn’t be any other way, he had the idea and asked permission to use the remains of burned wood from the ruins to turn them into instruments. They gave him the authorization and I connected with him and other musicians to support any idea that would contribute to the reconstruction strategy of the museum, and the idea that those two centuries of energy next to furniture and objects of all kinds, including sarcophagi with Egyptian mummies and relics of our history that had been lost to somehow resurface in the sound of an instrument made of that wood seemed excellent to me and to other colleagues who thought we would support the museum”. In this sense, it is enough to note that in the documentary of the Fénix guitars, whose main factotum is Moska, who has a long career as an actor, names of the caliber of Gilberto Gil participated. Paulinho da Viola, Hamilton from the Netherlands, Felipe Prazeres and Nize Carvalho. And of course, the luthier-fireman Davi Lopes, who built several guitars, including a 10-string, plus a mandolin, a cavaquinho and a violin that, in the hands of Prazeres, made its debut in the National Symphony Orchestra.
The origin
“They are exceptional instruments” affirms Moska in the talk with this newspaper. “For starters, they’re made from wood that was never intended for an instrument. As there was not much left after the fire, the remains of wood that could be used by the luthier had to be from large parts, either from furniture or, above all, from beams. One of these guitars with which I travel to Argentina is made from the remains of a showcase, that’s what Davi told me, and the other from a fragment of the floor of a room on the top floor, where Pedro II used to be” . But beyond the hypothetical “blue blood” that the guitar could have, something that Moska assures convinced is that they are not normal instruments, and that somehow they have a mystical halo. “They sound good, with a special texture that is difficult to explain or define, and I try to play them with special microphones, well prepared for this sound. But there are strange things. For example, although I sound more rock when I play with my band than when I give an acoustic show, I have a strong punch when I play a chord or strum. That tends to put all guitars out of tune, but these two that travel with me never go out of tune, and it’s something that I can’t explain in any other way than with the energy of so many centuries that these woods have”.
Finally, Moska explains that the mere existence of these guitars that resurface like the Phoenix gives a metaphorical meaning to all his songs, especially “Todo nuevo de nuevo” “that I composed more than 20 years ago and that, in the documentary, is sung by all the other musicians. It became a symbol of this transformation that we show in detail in the documentary, which has already received some 30 international awards and which will be seen in fragments at the beginning of the concert, since above all it is a musical show with my music and my songs”.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
