Of These Loveless Mornings - 2020

​

Three years after the album "Rei Nobody" (2017), singer and composer Arthur Nogueira returns to presenting new songs. The works are the result of collaborations that were also unprecedented in his career. "Dessas Manhãs Sem Amor", his first partnership with Zélia Duncan, arrived on all digital platforms on April 3rd. Recorded with musical production by STRR (a young producer from Pará) and incidental participation by Zélia (who reads an excerpt from a poem by Safo), the track continues the artist's new authorial project, which consists of five singles released with the Production and Broadcast Award Artistic 2019, from the Fundação Cultural do Pará (FCP).

"Dessas Manhãs Sem Amor" is the third of five songs programmed by Arthur Nogueira for the first half of 2020. The first was "Pontal", his song with lyrics by Fernanda Takai, written after a boat trip in Belém, his city Christmas. The second, "Salvador", has lyrics and music by the artist from Pará and consists of a tribute to carnival and street music in the capital of Bahia. Now, in "Dessas Manhãs Sem Amor", Zélia also wrote the lyrics to a melody by Arthur, but in a different process than what happened with Takai. The authors say that they never met in person and that the song was composed over the internet, in exchanges of messages between the two.

"When Arthur Nogueira, a young and serious artist, sent me this melody, we didn't even know each other. It had a simplicity, some steel strings played gently and an emotional voice. I already had a pencil and paper in front of me and I started thinking which sad words matched that melody, which had a tear and a beautiful chorus in the middle of it", says Zélia, who sent the lyrics two days after hearing the melody. According to Arthur, the aforementioned sadness is due to the current political situation, marked, according to the author, by the lack of love. "The chorus that Zélia wrote is beautiful and says that "passion will save us from these mornings without love." Even though many philosophers, like Epicurus, are suspicious of passion, I understand that the lyrics praise it from an artistic perspective: that of transformation of impotence into power", he explains.

To better develop the subject, Arthur Nogueira uses an excerpt from the book he organized for the series "Encontros" (Azougue Editorial, 2012), bringing together interviews with the poet and philosopher Antonio Cicero. "As we know, Sappho was a lyric poet. Unlike the tragic poets, the lyricists did not sing the great deeds of the heroes and the gods. They sang, on the contrary, small fragments of everyday life, with its loves, desires, sufferings, etc. However, Cicero observes, in one of the interviews, that a monumental lyrical work, like that of Sappho, attributes to these supposedly minor themes the same dignity as tragedy. And it is in this sense that I believe that passion can save us: by awakening in us the strength to transform human impotence into power, that is, into great artistic feats", says the composer, whose work includes melodies for verses by Antonio Cicero, Adonis, Rose Ausländer, among other poets.

Arthur Nogueira's partner on songs such as "Sem Medo Nem Esperança", recorded by Gal Costa, Antonio Cicero collaborated indirectly with "Dessas Manhãs Sem Amor". An excerpt from her translation of Sappho's famous ode to Aphrodite is said by Zélia at the beginning of the single. "In the 6th century BC, Sappho — or the work attributed to her — dealt with female homoeroticism with beauty and naturalness. The translator, poet and professor Guilherme Gontijo Flores even considers her the "founder of homosexual love song in the West" Zélia has just released an album called "I am a woman, I am happy". For all reasons, I liked the idea of bringing them together, based on Cicero's translation, at the beginning of our partnership", celebrates Arthur.

Like "Salvador", the single "Dessas Manhãs Sem Amor" was recorded in Belém, under the musical production of STRR, pseudonym of Mateus Estrela, electronic music producer and fellow countryman of Arthur Nogueira. STRR recorded synthesizers, drums and programming, Jacinto Kahwage recorded electric piano and the two members of the Pará band Joana Marte, Leo Chaves and Rubens Guilhon, collaborated on bass and guitar, respectively.

​

Press release

2020

​