Registration for the 1st Francisco Mário Popular Guitar Award is open until the 16th of this month, which can be disputed by musicians from all over the Americas, including Brazil. The contest will distribute US$ 9,000 in cash to the ten best musicians and trophies made by the artist Mauricio Manzo. The award had its first national edition in 2018, celebrating the 70 years that the composer from Minas would have completed on August 22 of that year. Now, the award gains an international dimension.
The award is carried out by the Chico Mário Cultural Institute (ICCM), in partnership with the Guimarães Rosa Institute (IGR), of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the Embassy of Brazil in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The initiative has the support of Espacio Tucumán, the venue that will host the awards ceremony, in the Argentine capital. The initiative is by pianist Marcos Souza, son of the composer from Minas Gerais and one of those responsible for the Chico Mário Cultural Institute (ICCM).
Entries are available in Portuguese, Spanish and English and can be made by guitarists of any nationality, as long as they reside in countries in the Americas, at site of Institute.
The contest aims to value the talents of the popular guitar and promote the work and memory of the Minas Gerais composer Francisco Mário, one of the pioneers of independent music in Brazil. Younger brother of sociologist Betinho and cartoonist Henfil, Chico Mário, as he is known, lived only 39 years, a victim of HIV contracted in a transfusion of contaminated blood. Despite this, he left a work consisting of eight discs that are available on the platforms of streamingplus three books.
Expansion
A Brazil Agency, the composer’s son revealed that the 2018 national edition had a better-than-expected return, receiving more than 100 entries. “All the guitarists said that Dad’s work is wonderful to play on the guitar and should be publicized”. with that feedback The positive impact of Chico Mário’s music and the fact that there were no more popular guitar awards with high values led Marcos Souza to recognize that the award was occupying an important space in the field of Brazilian popular guitar. In conversation with the Guimarães Rosa Institute, it was decided that Chico Mário’s work would be taken outside Brazil, “so that guitarists play his music”.
To compete, each instrumentalist must record a video playing one of Chico Mário’s works on the guitar. “It is an effort to increasingly internationalize Francisco Mário’s work and keep his music being played, as he wished”, said Marcos Souza. The video must be uploaded to YouTube, in public mode, with the link entered on the award form. Ten finalists will be selected to compete for the best placements at Espacio Tucumán, in Buenos Aires.
The first place will receive US$ 7 thousand, the second, US$ 800, and, from the third to the tenth place, US$ 200 will be distributed to each one, as an allowance for the return trip to the country where the musician resides. The amounts will be paid up to 30 days after the award, scheduled for March 14, the date on which the 35th anniversary of the death of the composer from Minas Gerais is remembered. Marcos informed that since Brazilian guitarists will be able to participate in the awards in the Americas, the national award will no longer be held.
In Europe
Later this year, the 1st Francisco Mário Prize for Popular Guitar European version should be held in Amsterdam, Holland, with a live finale and jury, at Teatro Munganga, on August 22, when the composer would have turned 75 years old. This version is intended for European guitarists who will also have to approach the work of Chico Mário. “Every guitarist has to choose one of the 89 songs he left”. Chico Mário was the forerunner of the independent record, in the 1970s. “he was a visionary who recorded his own records, he left a vast body of work”.
