Elomar Figueira de Mello is a Brazilian Northeastern composer from the rura… Read Full Bio ↴Elomar Figueira de Mello is a Brazilian Northeastern composer from the rural area of Vitória da Conquista, in the state of Bahia. The son of a prosperous farmer and his Methodist wife, he has grown up under the influence of both the Christian, Protestant faith and of violeiros, the troubadours that range all Brazilian hinterland singing their own and others’s compositions, with themes related to the cordel literature.

He tried to study Music with a Swiss professor living in Brazil, but their ideas about roots music were incompatible, Elomar having a vision both more dynamic and more linked to the mentality of the people, while still fully committed to the sophistication and quality of Classical music; while his teacher wanted, and produced, a fully Contemporary music with influences from the region. Elomar’s music, while keeping the Classical forms of operas, cantatas, oratorios and other sacred music, has a distinctive Mediæval flavour, Elomar maintaining in his characteristic, idiosyncratic speech that ‘Brazilian Northeast is the last time of the Middle Ages’ (‘O Nordeste é o último tempo da Idade Média’).

He was Secretary of Urbanism for Vitória da Conquista for a while. Now he keeps a home at the city but spends most of his time in his goat-raising farm, where he shares in the work of the farm and direct it, besides writing down his music. He says he has most of it ready in his mind, and he only asks God time enough to live to be able to write it all down.

Elomar has a passion for European culture with a strong preference for the French, while totally rejecting the Anglo-Saxon one. He is nearly a Luddite, thinking all technology misused. He is deeply religious and thinks all modern European culture dead and sick.

His music, while not too difficult to hear, is quite sophisticated and manages to successfully combine both modern and Mediæval elements. It carries expressions of deep faith both by the author himself and the poetical egos. It has some striking themes to it, some universal – like Incelença ad Moribundum Solem, a requiem thanking God for all the services the Sun has performed us, to be sung when it finally dies somewhere in the future – and some parochial, like the fate of specific, if fictional violeiros and migrants from the dry, feudalised lands of the Northeast to the rich, industrial lands of the Southeast.

Some connoisseurs consider him the greatest living musician, because he manages to do Classical music that is modern and relevant to today's time while still being deeply stepped in his region’s mentality and beliefs, totally avoiding the Nihilism seen as dominating modern art in general and Contemporary music specifically.

From 2000 to 2004 he lived at Lagoa Real, trying to form a ‘sertaneza’ (country) opera project.

Incelença do Amor Retirante
Elomar Lyrics

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Vem amiga visitar
A terra, o lugar
Que você abandonou
Inda ouço murmurar
Nunca vou te deixar
Por Deus nosso Senhor

Pena cumpanheira agora

Que você foi embora
A vida fulorô

Ouço em toda noite escura
Como eu a sua procura
Um grilo a cantar
Lá no fundo do terreiro
Um grilo violeiro
Inhambado a procurar

Mas já pela madrugada
Ouço o canto da amada
Do grilo cantador

Geme os rebanhos na aurora
Mugindo cadê a senhora
Que nunca mais voltou

Faz um ano em janeiro
Que aqui pousou um tropeiro
O cujo prometeu

De na derradeira lua
Trazer notícia sua
Se vive ou se morreu
Derna aquela madrugada
Tenho os olhos na estrada
E a tropa não voltou

Ao senhor peço clemência

Num canto de incelença
Do amor que retirou

Overall Meaning

Elomar's song "Incelença do amor retirante" is a melancholic and poetic reflection on love and loss, inspired by the rural life and customs of the Brazilian Northeast. The lyrics describe the longing of a man for his beloved friend who left the region and never came back, and the nostalgic memories of their shared experiences in the land that she abandoned. The man listens to the sounds of nature around him, trying to find solace and hope in the songs of a cricket and a herd of cattle, while waiting for news from a traveler who promised to bring some information about the friend's fate. The song is a tribute to the enduring power of love and friendship, and the spiritual connection that exists between people and their homeland, even when they are separated by distance and time.

Line by Line Meaning

Vem amiga visitar
Come visit, my friend

A terra, o lugar
This land, this place

Que você abandonou
You left behind

Inda ouço murmurar
I still hear whispered

Nunca vou te deixar
I'll never leave you

Por Deus nosso Senhor
By God our Lord

Pena cumpanheira agora
Companion, now I lament

Que você foi embora
That you left

A vida fulorô
Life faded away

Ouço em toda noite escura
I hear in every dark night

Como eu a sua procura
As I search for you