To Greg Beyer, the sound of the berimbau is dark, haunting and magical.
“It sounds like one string of a harp,” says the assistant professor in the NIU School of Music, “only the resonating chamber isn’t the harp frame. Instead, it is the sound of a calabash gourd that’s been hollowed out. You open and close that gourd against your chest, and it produces a really intimate vibrato. You have a stick in one hand, responsible for the percussive attacks, and the stone in the other to change the pitch.”
Beyer’s passion runs deep for the berimbau, which has its roots in Southern African Bantu culture and is today commonly associated with capoeira Angola, an Afro-Brazilian blend of martial art, game and music created by enslaved Africans in Brazil during the 16th century.
His “hero,” however, is Brazilian musician Naná Vasconcelos.
Beyer traveled to Brazil in 2004 as a research fellow of the Sacatar Foundation and spent six months doing field work for his doctoral dissertation. During this time, he arranged for a two- or three-hour lesson on the berimbau with Vasconcelos. Last summer, Beyer returned to Brazil for another two weeks of performances and teaching with his flute/percussion duo, DUE EAST. On that trip, he arranged to spend two or three days in Vasconcelos’ home in Recife, Pernambuco, to conduct a long interview that became a lengthy article in the October 2007 issue of “Percussive Notes,” the journal of the Percussive Arts Society.
“I really haven’t studied with him – I studied him,” Beyer says. “That study forms a major chapter in my dissertation – some 40 pages – and half of that chapter is made up of musical transcriptions of Vasconcelos’ recorded performances on the berimbau.”
Meanwhile, with capoeira becoming a “worldwide phenomenon” that not only has rescued the berimbau from extinction but actually elevated its popularity, Beyer is embracing the opportunity to “stretch the boundaries of the instrument beyond its traditional context.”
He has traveled the world with his berimbau (and many other percussion instruments) to perform, including concerts in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, England, Poland, Switzerland and the United States.
“I’ve created a project that I call ‘Arcomusical,’ which means ‘musical bow’ in Portuguese,” he says. “I’ve developed a repertoire of contemporary, avant-garde pieces of music that feature the berimbau. Some of these works involve the use of electronics, and some use the berimbau in an ensemble context. Two of the works are for berimbau sextet. I’ve started a student ensemble here at NIU and have commissioned some really great students for my students and I to perform together.”
-- by Mark McGowan, NIU Public Affairs