Lavoisier is Patricia Relvas and Roberto Afonso, a Portuguese couple influenced by each other and the whole world of sensations that music can bring along, and while sharing the same spirit of the Tropicalistas, Michel Giacometti and Fernando Lopes Graça, they head towards their own musical expression, with no fears and no preconceptions about anything. [ ENTRADA LIVRE ] “In Nature, there are no losses; there is no creation, only transformations…” - Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier Lead by the spirit of ”tropicalismo”, we try to see music not only as a matter of individuality, but as a full sense of awareness and presence in the world we’re living in right now. A world that already existed before. Antropofagia (act of cannibalism practiced between ancient tribes all over the globe, act of eating someone of their own species), was one of the arguments that represented the modernist movement in Brazil. Oswald de Andrade, a Brazilian poet, wrote in the early 1920’s the manifest of Antropofagia, trying to idealize an identity for such a multicultural and multiethnic people Brazilians were. In the beginning of the 1970’s, a movement started growing in Brazil, with Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil as its most enthusiastic supporters. They both used antropofagia as a way to what they came to call “Tropicalismo”, since they, too, felt they were “eating” European, American and African music, and with this digestion, instead of very pure musical identity, they were mixing their own music’s “melting pot”. Also in the late 60′s, early 70′s, a series called “O Povo que Canta” was being recorded and produced in Portugal. This series had the purpose of recollecting old portuguese folk songs, that were left untouched by the industrialization processes. This project was lead by Michel Giacometti, with the remarkable help of Fernando Lopes Graça. The two had an important role not only in reuniting such precious assets of portuguese culture, but also in the fundamental study of portuguese popular music they developed. The project Lavoisier, was built on the inner need of making music. Whether it is sung in Portuguese or in English it doesn’t matter since the principal purpose is to fulfill our very first instinct that was Music.
