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damião experiença

 

Bio:

This biography is based in the book of Damião, found in this web site, and also in personal made interviews with him, however without existing registers; Damião does not let himself be recorded or filmed so far.
Born in the state of Bahia, the city of Portão, close to Salvador. Damião at 13 years old runs away from his house to escape the brutality of his parents who beat him with handle liana, and as clandestine he travels in a ship to Rio De Janeiro. Arriving, he starts to live in the night with the prostitutes, discovering the world early; as he starves, he decides to join the Brazilian navy to be able to eat. Exchanges of job n times, learns to be a man in the streets. He frequents brothels, decides to live with a prostitute in a palafita house, being expelled from the navy therefore. He repents, after 15 days he comes back toward the quarter and gets 1 year of jail, 1 month of lone confinement. He leaves transformed; there he knew the Lamma Planet (Lamma in Portuguese also means mud.) Damião entered Ferreira Da Cruz, left Damião Experyença.
He starts to paint, paints a picture called Planeta Lamma, starts to learn music in the jail with the friends, we are in the 60s, pre-dictatorship, and the hippie age is in its fullness. Damião is in middle.
When he leaves the jail he turns into a radar operator, and after one year due to an accident (or who knows for convenience maybe ?) the navy retires him. Damião is back to the streets, returns to the profession that followed him since early day - PIMP. He uses the money profit from the prostitutes to record his albums, starting with the first one in 1974, called Planeta Lamma, recorded solo, a guitar with only 1 string, 1 rattle hung in the guitar to make percussion and an harmonica attached to the neck. Magnificent record, recorded all in the dialect of the Planeta Lamma, language that the people of the infinite taught him, this record is available entire in the site for download and has 13 tracks with high level of creativity. The dialect of Planet Lamma exists, it's real and Daminhão talks to you whenever you want to, in the dialect. He can sing all the songs of all the records which were made in the dialect exactly the same way, he can talk using this dialect, he translates entire phrases to the dialect. He repeats everything again and again, the same way.
From the first one to the record of number 34, there goes 30 years of writings, and history goes on. The second record comes, two strings in the guitar, third record with three strings, the fourth with four and fifth, obviously, with five. When six strings were reached he initiated what we call the second phase. You can check the first phase going to Discography page and hearing what is labeled under - Phase 1.
Then, Daminhão retires the rattle and inserts one bongo and one marimba initiating what we call second phase, music here is more mature, has a balance between the dialect of the Lamma Planet and the conventional Portuguese (with slices of Spanish). A synchronized percussion exists, the harmonica solos, rhythm and marimba, turns, taking the universe in its sound. You can check out the second phase in the Discography page.
Third phase initiates, where Daminhão mixes his writings, his acoustics previous recordings with the sound of a rock band creating the systematic chaos. It is the more tormented part of his work, sometimes having five overlapped songs, all sung in the dialect, with unfhatomable bases, many surprising lyrics also. The matrices of records are overlapped and generate new music. Releases in this phase his self biography, available in the site, in the Book section. That is his first and only book. Third fase is available at Discography for download.
Damião initiates the fourth phase recording with a band, and launches amazing records through his label, Lamma Planet that has a band; the band Lamma Planet, according to him formed by today famous musicians of TV and media, whose names he does not disclose. The lyrics are created in the spot, and sounds like 1970's rock songs, with some songs as exceptions, working in the previous formula.
Here starts the fifth phase, where Damião writes the lyrics first, and sings on rock heavy bases (as he says it) already in the 80s, more inside the tempo, with start and end, and continues in this format until stopping in 1992 with the last record - Command Lamma Planet.
After 30 years of career, tired of the public debauch, the lack of support and the media in general ignoring his work, poor as all we are after catastrophic economic plans, he retires, forgets his records and loses the matrices of the LPs in flooding that occurs in the bathroom of his house. He is half inmate, receives few visits, sells all of his remaining records, when not, just distributes them. Sporadically writes something or records something acoustic in his guitar, thinking about one day to release a piece of his work in the CD format.
Ironically, when Daminhão believes that the world had forgotten his work, we at Portão do Daminhão initiates our activities in 2001, rescuing records of the Daminhão, divulging the artist and trying to place him in return with messages for the people of the planet Earth (calling planet earth…) and arriving now in 2004 trying to release the work of the Daminhão and creating a Portal for all of his fans and who believes in a different way to make and to hear music.
Hamalai - MESA !!!.

http://www.damiaoexperienca.net/home_a.htm
http://www.damiaoexperienca.net/downloads_a.htm