Hermeto Pascoal: The popular avant-gardist who played with car horns and animal sounds has died

If you pull on a pig's curly tail, they'll grunt or squeal. Hermeto Pascoal used this in his composition, combining the voices from the stable with melancholic guitar chords in his piece "Slaves Mass" (1977). In any other work, this would have remained a cheap joke. The Brazilian composer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist, however, created organic music in which he highlighted the disturbing parallels between animal husbandry and slavery.

This example is typical of Pascoal's exuberant musicality. The distinction between entertainment and art was as nonexistent in his work as the contrast between folk culture and the avant-garde. In the work of this Brazilian genius, everything converged in contrapuntal harmony.

This artist's originality was evident. The man, who in his old age sported a shoulder-length braid and a bushy beard almost as long, was born with albinism in 1936 in Alagoas, northeastern Brazil. His white skin gave him a special status. While other children had to work in the fields, Hermeto was apparently left at home, where he studied birdsong and played around on his father's accordion.

The family later moved to the port city of Recife and finally to Rio de Janeiro. During these years, Hermeto Pascoal taught himself the rich culture of Brazilian music—from choro to samba and bossa nova. At the same time, he mastered one instrument after another. But he not only distinguished himself as a virtuoso on the accordion, various flutes, guitar, and saxophone. He also continually incorporated new sounds and noises into his sound. Later, he often performed with his son Fabio, who played on plates, tools, car horns, and cooking utensils.

Pascoal owed his local fame to his collaborations with Brazilian stars. In the 1960s, he performed in bossa nova formations led by Sérgio Mendes and Carlos Jobim. In his trio Sambrasa, founded in 1964, he played with virtuoso percussionist Airto Moreira, with whom he increasingly embraced influences from jazz and jazz-rock. The Brazilian became an internationally acclaimed musician when he played in jazz trumpeter Miles Davis's band in 1971. Pascoal can be heard on three tracks he composed on the album "Live-Evil" (1971).

His compositions, in which he occasionally combined adventurous virtuosity with wit and mother wit, seemed to reflect the composer's dazzling personality, who on stage sometimes played the comedian and sometimes the stern conductor. Indeed, the demands on his fellow musicians were so great that the bands, which rehearsed daily, coalesced into commune-like communities – under the direction of guru Hermeto Pascoal. The great musician died on Saturday at the age of 89.