Uma escuta de arquivos sonoros de Wilson das Neves

Abstract

This dissertation investigates a set of domestic sound recordings by the drummer, singer, and composer Wilson das Neves, preserved on magnetic tapes and later digitized. These recordings document his compositional process. The aim is to develop a situated reflection on my own listening to these materials, on how I construct pathways of sonic characterization and, from them, trace speculations about the artist’s gestures of musical creation. In this way, singing, whistling, tape hiss, marks of the body, of the recorder, of the house, and of the city are articulated into a sonic fabric that intertwines sound, performance, memory, document, meaning, imaginaries, moods, and so forth. The writing does not seek to decipher a hidden meaning but rather to follow the effects produced by repeated listening, treating the difficulty of naming and describing what is heard as constitutive of the critical work itself. By exploring this bridge between language and sound, the research proposes that description also creates hypotheses, brings distinct sensory regimes into proximity, and turns listening into a method. Thus, the study shifts the focus from a factual reconstruction of the compositional process to an investigation of how the act of listening can generate thought, imagination, and knowledge about music.