When the drummer joined Gismonti’s Academia de Danças, in 1977, Grupo Um was put on hold until its return in 1979, which resulted in the Marcha Sobre a Cidade album. “We sought to make music that combined the rhythmic richness of more elaborate popular tunes with the contemporary classical style”. In the basement of Nazário’s house, on Rua Teodoro Sampaio, the trio gradually developed the characteristic style which would become Grupo Um’s signature. The time spent working with Hermeto helped Nazário develop the skills to make the kind of music he’d always dreamed of – an aspiration which had been somewhat stymied while playing with cozinha paulista, but which began to flourish during “the wizard’s” (as Hermeto is also known) absences – together with his brother Lelo and bass player Zeca Assumpção. He also played on the legendary Taiguara album, Imyra, Tayra, Ypy, as well as Marlui Miranda’s Olho D’água, among others. The short-lived group played only sporadically, but to Nazário, it signaled the beginning of a journey which led him further away from the more traditional aspects of jazz and bossa nova, in search of new musical horizons: first with the cult psychedelic band Mandala, then with Hermeto, in the so-called cozinha paulista (São Paulo kitchen), with which Zé’s younger brother, pianist Lelo Nazário, made his debut (a 1976 recording, recorded at the Vice-Versa Studio, was recently reissued by Far Out Recordings) and with another Brazilian master, Egberto Gismonti, he performed on the 1978 album Nó Caipira. In the late 1960s, Totem would also become the birthplace of Grupo Experimental de Percussão, formed by Guilherme Franco, Oswaldo D’Alessandro, and Nazário himself, who recounts: “It was a ‘cutting-edge’ project for the times, like so many others I would be part of, and it focused on the various types of percussion – classic, Brazilian, jazz, and elements of folk all rolled into one”. at the Totem nightclub, one of his teenage haunts. He performed frequently in Rio de Janeiro and was a habitué of the São Paulo nightlife, where he partnered with pianist Tenório Jr. Only 21 at the time, Nazário, who has been playing professionally since 13, boasted an impressive musical résumé for his age.
In 1973, Zé would have gone to the US if it wasn’t for an invitation to join the new band of Hermeto Pascoal, “one of the most important musicians on the planet”, as Miles Davis once said. Nazário is one of Brazil’s most talented drummers and percussionists, although he does not share the international renown of some of his peers, such as Airto Moreira and Naná Vasconcelos, that, among other Brazilian musicians in late 60s and 70s, left their homeland in search of greater possibilities. Released in 1982, original copies of the album are very rarely seen, but it is now finally being reissued, on vinyl, by São Paulo’s Lugar Alto. Poema Da Gota Serena, the only recording ever released by Zé Eduardo Nazário as a bandleader, is an odd album in the Brazilian jazz canon.
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