CHARACTERS FROM BRASIL: Blind Aderaldo
By the time Elis Regina, who if alive would do 70 years old this March of the year 2015, presented the program "O Fino da Bossa ', on TV Record São Paulo-Brazil, she impressed me with some verses of singers Northeastern. It was an excerpt from a contest (challenge) between the blind and Deraldo Zé Pretinho. I always loved that - and I adore the Elis (see text "Women Icons"), Raptured me in front of those lines as consistent at the same time that trivialized the content of speech of the opponent. To know:
Deraldo-blind, "Arre with so much talk, that deny capybara / No one spit up, do not you fall on your face / Who paca expensive purchase, pay the guy Paca ..."
-Zé Pretinho: "Now blind, hear me:
I sing the paca already
Theme so it's a lamb
The beak of a caracara!
Who paca expensive purchase,
Face Paca do will pay!
And follows:
-Zé Pretinho: "I'll change my tune, to one that scares / never met singer who dismantle this plot / Is a finger is a given is one day is a day is a given is a finger ..."
Deraldo-blind, "Zé Preto, this thy plot serves mocking you / You now blind with rage / The devil is your guide / It's a day is a finger is a given, it is a given is a finger is a day ... "
(Reportedly in various publications that 80,000 reis were divided between the two singers that night. The year was 1914 !!!!!!!!!!!!!)
WHO WAS THE BLIND Aderaldo?
Aderaldo Ferreira de Araujo, the Aderaldo blind (some treat it as Deraldo), was born in Crato (CE) Brazil, on June 24, 1878 and died in Fortaleza (CE) on 29 June 1967; so at 89 years of age. It appears that even newborn was taken to live in Quixadá (CE).
The Aderaldo blind never married, but created 24 adopted children, many of them traveled with the singer the northeastern backlands where Aderaldo showing (and selling) their art.
In 1914, he played a challenge, very famous with the singer Zé Pretinho of Piauí (see end of this article). This challenge became consecrated, because the verses were recorded (and published in pamphlet literature) at cordelista Firmino Teixeira do Amaral, with the title "The Peleja the Blind Aderaldo and Ze Pretinho".
The ballads introito presented in this article are part of such a notice, historical, the Firmino cordelista, whose original is in the Ministry of Education's website -www.dominiopublico.gov.br/download/texto/jn000002, which is materialized.
Analyzing old edition of magazine "O Cruzeiro" in Rachel de Queiroz text, October 3, 1959, I met a little more blind Aderaldo, also known as "Blind Aderaldo." I will try to summarize here all the immortal writer has spoken of this "living".
Rachel de Queiroz tells us that once, at about three in the afternoon and under a scorching sun, "... so strong that dazzles, over the one-eyed bush rises to the sky a trembling glow, made of light returned hitting on the floor and back pair where it came from, as if the earth were a mirror ... "; the Blind Aderaldo came to his farmhouse, on border to a jeep van.
According to her, when you met him, he was a tall old man, barrel-chested, slouch hat on his sunglasses, accompanied by a boy who held him by the hand and led him, as if it were boy. The man who had just arrived to the farm of Rachel's parents was a kind of Prince, perhaps the last survivor of the great singers: it was the blind Aderaldo.
As the descriptions we have of who personally knew, he was really tall, broad-chested, slouch hat on his sunglasses, always accompanied by the hand of a dark-haired young man with a thin mustache, which drove the footsteps of the Blind Deraldo, as he was child.
When he got on a farm, all rushed to greet him and serve him the best we had in the house and wanted him to participate in some way in their lives; networks were abandoned, housework, work on the cytosine and mills, all in order to approach the blind singer. Everyone was running to receive Deraldo.
According to the report of Rachel de Queiroz, who personally met when the Blind Aderaldo was already old when he arrived in a house the news spread made wildfire and the very Ceará state writer compared it to "a Christmas star" illuminating the porch of his house, where the singer sat down to talk to the parents of the writer (who at fifteen wrote "The Fifteen", referring to the year 1915, of course). Rachel told us that men leaving hoes in clearings, the women left pillar corn, forgot the bread in the oven and dinner time. And, slowly and softly, men, old men and women, girls and boys, were slipping and drawing close: when they gave faith, the yard and the porch were full of people and Deraldo, sitting in the house Canvas Chair writer, he released his most lively laugh and tell the "stories" that all appreciated, whether they were fabrications or not; unraveled motes of challenges and when he felt at ease, picked up the guitar great who accompanied him and remembering challenges and loose verses, and, as a rule, greet and praise the gifts and the home owner.
That's when he always bought to the heart of the lady of the house, because the saw only with the spiritual blind eye, said in a shot from sextain, she was "way like a bee ..."
I, who am also coming from the interior, wonder what the renowned greatness of a singer is like that. He is the voice of a people who have no other form of self-expression, people who cannot read or write, but he feels the lack of poetry and forms of direct communication; with the northeastern singer, the people speak and understand. It was no radio or the newspaper that the northeastern people learned Lampião's death (righteous bandit), the war in Europe, the death of Getúlio (political) and "resurrection" of Father Cicero Romão (holy father), or the arrival of man on the moon. Even if they heard on the radio, through more democratic to stay current, the rural worker would not believe; But if it is said by the singer, the event becomes true!
And why this happens: the singer is the expression of a whole people who have no other form of self-expression. It's the singer to meet the needs of the peasant as to poetry and language arts. People give him credit because the singer "is one of them"; is his witness while his poet, his lyrical and dreamlike consciousness, his voice of protest or complaint or even your mood. When listening, men are thoughtful and women cry. The Deraldo blind lived and died poor, as its people. While the peasants had to share with him only his misery and dreams, the singer shared with their peers lyrical and dreamlike.
......
POSTFÁCIO
Since 1945, then aged 67, Blind Aderaldo stopped accepting challenges. But I had already turned the hinterland many times. He could be recognized everywhere sang for many people, simple and important; had strife with the greatest singers of the time. And in that serenity, that only time behind the man, began to hinder the war disputes, he decided to stop singing just to entertain the soul.
As told by writer Rachel de Queiroz, way back in 1950, so 60 years ago, the Blind Aderaldo sings of self and others, tells the childhood, youth and blindness. He lost the light of the eyes to eighteen years old, while working on a machine that suddenly shot him in the face a steaming hot breath. (according to research I did, he was engineer of train, Baturité Railway). This accident resulted in his blindness. After blind, refusing to beg, as the blind do, remembered carrying a poet in his chest, got a viola and became singer. And singing continued until his death, from those fatal eighteen years until the eighty-something who lived. Lived walking, like Homer (Iliad and Odyssey of), also blind as he, poet and singer. He had no wife (fixed) - said that women and blind are not good combination. Created over twenty other people's children, making the old man's relations with his guide in adoptive parenthood that you will filling the empty heart. After the guides became his "grandchildren"; children of the first guides. In his old age, a politician gave him a little machine of cinema, which the singer took the interior villages, completing the display of movies explaining and songs. Traveling with a donkey - but over time the donkeys were dying and some journalist friends remembered initiate a subscription to buy him a jeep van. Here, however tragedy struck: a small house where the Aderaldo lived in Quixadá (CE), "covered jitirana, full of flower bud", caught fire; It went away!
And the fire also ate the movie projector, movies, everything. Desolate and homeless, the poet gave up the subscription, which had no meaning. The little tales of kings obtained, left them on the bench where they were - "are for my funeral ..." he said.
A deputy, her admirer, hurt that bad luck, the singer got to a house of the People's House Foundation in Fortaleza. But then there appeared a "tormentor" - and denounced the blind as owner in Quixadá "a house and a cinema" - what the fire had taken ...
All that he said and sang, laughed more than cried because they had the joyful sadness. When he left the house´s woman writer- the Jeep off borrowed by a friend, needed to get to Quixadá before the night as Rachel - let us moved and dizzy, as if we had been able to glimpse in its natural depth, the hidden and simple mystery of the world. And if the body, the sad body of flesh, in continued heavy and rooted to the spot, his heart lightened, happy, singing, was he rather mild and innocent - "cool like a bee" ...
......
The battle of Blind Aderaldo And ZÉ PRETINHO
Last Post
Who paca expensive purchase, paca face pay!
(Peleja with Ze Pretinho of Tucuns)
Blind Aderaldo
(Aderaldo Ferreira de Araujo)
Enjoy, my readers,
A heated argument,
I had with Joe Pretinho,
A singer of the hinterland,
Which, in the Tanger verse,
Won any question.
One day, I determined
Exiting Quixadá
- One of the beautiful towns
The state of Ceará.
I went to the Piauí,
See the singers there.
I stayed in Pimenteira
Then Alagoinha;
I sang in Campo Maior,
In Angico and Shorty.
From there I had an invitation
To sing in Varzinha.
When I arrived at Varzinha,
It was in the morning, very early;
So the home owner
I asked without affection:
- Blind, have no fear
Fame Ze Pretinho?
I said: - No, sir,
But the truth I do not laugh!
Send for this black,
I want to give you a tumble
- It arriving, one of us
Today's burning loins!
The owner of the house said:
- Joe Black, the common,
Gives in ten or twenty blind
- The more being only one!
Mando has to Tucumanzeiro
Call Joe the Tucumán.
He called one of the children said
My son, you go already
Tell José Pretinho
Sorry that I did not go there
- And that he, as without fail,
Tonight come here.
Home from such Pretinho,
It was reaching the carrier
And saying - Back home
It has a blind singer
And my father said to tell you
Go get you the warmth!
Ze Pretinho replied:
- Good Friend is who warns!
Boy, say to the blind
Go taking off his shirt,
Send logo bless the loin,
Because I will give you a step!
All mocked me
And I still did not know
If such Ze Pretinho
Came to the singing.
Five o'clock in the afternoon,
He came the cavalry.
Black came in front,
All dressed in white,
Cloaked his horse,
With very frank step.
They scratched at once,
All in the first hitch
Welcomed the home owner
All with great joy,
And the old man, satisfied,
He rejoiced cheerful and smiling.
I will give the name of the people
Who came to singing:
They came the captain Duda Tonheiro,
Pedro Galvao, Antônio Augusto Feitosa,
Francisco Manoel Simon
Mr. José Campineiro,
Thaddeus and Pedro Aragon.
Jose of Cabaceiras
And Mr. Manuel Casado,
Chico Lopes, Pedro Rosa
And Manoel Tan,
Antonio Lopes de Aquino
And such a foot-Stuck.
Amadeu, Fabio Fernandes,
Samuel and Jeremiah,
Mr. Manoel Thomas
Gonçalo, John Ananias
Then came the old vicar,
Healing Three Parishes.
Was owner Merandolina,
The guild of teachers,
Taking his two daughters,
Beautiful, lovely
- These two were church
The most exímias singers.
It was also Pedro Martins,
Alfredo and Jose Segundo,
Mr. Francisco Palm,
João Sampaio and Facundo
And a group of guys
Bum battalion.
They took the black to the living room
And then into the kitchen;
They offered a dinner
Sweet, cheese and chicken
- For me, came a cafe
And a thin cracker.
Then they brought the black.
They placed in the hall,
Seated on a couch,
With the viola in hand,
Together of a spittoon,
Not to spit on the ground.
He took the viola
A new bag of calico,
And whose viola was
All decked tape.
I heard the girls saying,
- Oh, what a beautiful viola!
So for me to sit,
They put a poor coffin,
Old, dismantled,
Those that come with soap.
I sat down, I bowed
And he gave me a pinch.
I took the my little fiddle
A poor half bag,
A little suspicious
Being in a strange land.
Then some girls said:
- My God, what ugly fiddle!
One told Ze Pretinho:
- The man's clothes are dirty!
Put three guards at the door,
So you do not run away
Ugly blind, so glasses,
It just seems an owl!
And the captain said Duda,
As a very wise man:
- Let's take a purse!