Cáfila Sounds
Cáfila Sounds is a brand that scores experimental soundtracks for archive footage. Instrumental and noise recording, synths and effects, concrete and electronic music. Elements that make up an aesthetic composition, which is fundamentally committed to the inventiveness of the sound related to the images. A trip to the past through the sounds of the future.
Initially established on the @cafilasounds Instagram profile, our brand was born out of the idea of
re-editing and scoring historical films, several of which were silent in their original form. An artistic effort of giving a new voice to these images.
Sounds of the future
for images of the past
Original tracks for archival films from the 40s to the 70s (2021)
01. Past Carnivals
The narrative voice that announces Rio’s Carnival in past times transforms itself in the evening. Loops of traditional samba instruments such as tambourine and pandeiro, recorded by percussionist Gabriela Bruel, come together with synths in the makeup of a carnivalesque hallucination.
02. Colatina – 1940’s and 1950’s Brazil
The clarinet’s melody in mixolydian mode, which is the common scale of folkloric music from Northeast Brazil, is accompanied by the viola, an instrument featuring shiny metallic chords that are played by musician Daniel Perez. A lyric and nostalgic tone is evoked in the sound of 1940’s Brazil scenes.
03. Women’s Accomplishments
Foley sounds introduce the phone operators' work atmosphere, as well as that of the craft of sewing. The appearance of a man on the scene leads the soundscape to a cave where water drips, interrupting the music, which comes and goes. Punctual sound additions accompany the images: the piano, the roar of an animal reduced to its fur and forró music (zabumba and the triangle), which takes turns with the cries of children.
04. Action in the Sea
Simulation of Hollywood cliches for a war movie that has never existed. In the parallel film editing between those who would attack and those who would be attacked, dramatic orchestra timpani are in contrast with the sounds of clumsy soldiers in their fallen parachutes, as they prepare for battle in a pop vibe
05. Celebration in São João del-Rei
Synthetic textures reminiscent of pipe organs, as well as transformed singing about the liturgical text Agnus Dei, accompany a Christian religious celebration in Minas Gerais's countryside, in a location where the tradition of string orchestras inside the temples is still preserved. In the midst of that, the noise of a film camera that witnesses it is heard.
06. Sea Baths in the Brazilian Seashore
The harmonium tone evokes emotions that contrast with the musical cliches that are usually featured in images of Brazilian beaches. Even so, the sound presence of people, footsteps in the sand, bicycles and umbrellas moving in the wind come through. A narrator announces the end of vacation, and music is swallowed by the ocean waves.
07. Scientific Past
Science fiction based on documentary images of science in Brazil. In order to establish the narrative of a nuclear tragedy, the music is made of synthesizer overlays that change according to the scene transitions, which are highlighted by the low note of the piano, bringing the cuts to the forefront. The series of sound effects designed by foley artist Tulio Borges and sound editor Pedro Osinski, which recreate everything, from the surgical instruments to the explosion of the bomb, keeps the flow of the film going.
08. Urban Flooding
The musical composition is created based on a Pythagorean tuning scale, differing itself from the current Western music standard, which provokes a dissonant sound to the ears that have grown accustomed to the more temperate pattern in vogue. The mixing, carried out as a request of the project by Honduran sound designer Homer Mora, prioritizes sounds from the soundscape of the flood that powerfully erupts over the music. Noise plays a leading role in its intent.
09. Brazilian Art and Art in Brazil
The rhythmic movement's vitality in time and the spatial arrangement made possible via the left-right stereo spectrum is the basis of experimentation. The composition leads the traditional percussive timbres of the drum's hi-hat, which synchronizes with the syllables of a fragmented vocal speech given once by the voice of a man in a museum (it was a reading of The Manifesto of Futurism...). Other percussive timbres, now altered, are added to the set in between the scene variations, in addition to the electric bass.
10. Coup d'État – 1963 and 1964
Through images of rural workers whose synchronic sounds have been reconstructed, the narrator predicts a better future made possible by agrarian reform. Suddenly, they are interrupted by the arrival of the military, which brings about large-scale construction and industrialization, which is metaphorized by the heavy male voice in the lyrical choir. However, even what seems to be rock solid might crumble, just like the sound of ice breaking that heralds a downward spiral.
11. Rio de Janeiro – A City, its History
and Bohemianism
In the tram ride, the polyphonic texture of a three-voice synthesizers counterpoint gives off a Baroque kind of feel that takes us to downtown Rio de Janeiro. The music is reduced to an elongated note that slowly varies in texture and gives space for the development of the city's images and sounds. At the bar, samba is born from banging on a table, and the mundane meets the ethereal.
12. Technology, Industry and Urbanization
Electric guitar and bass set the tone for the early 1970s, where music makes use of dynamic microphones, capturing the performance through amplifiers, analog fuzzes and overdrive pedals. The guitars, recorded by Daniel Perez, are accompanied by frantic elements of the traffic soundscape and everyday life in a metropolis. Feedback sounds meet car horns and shocks. Despite the electricity, there’s still a beating heart.
Cáfila is the collective noun for camels. Through the centuries, camels have crossed deserts, assisting people with the transport
of their lives and stories. They are the only animals capable
of resisting the extreme conditions of a desert, the heat and
the lack of water. The choice of such animal as a symbol is not random. The films that come to us have also survived the crossfire of time and history, though many have lost a significant part of their soundtrack along the way, as well as their voices – what we long for is that these materials may claim their expression back
by getting a new sound. That they may be seen and, most importantly, heard again.
Luiz Lepchak