Primals No. 3 “Takuapu”, for contrabass flute and flute ensemble

Primals draws its inspiration from what I perceive as the primal sonorities of the flute family and from my own understanding of the instrument as a connection between the immaterial and the material. Through breath — spirit, pneuma, ruach — the invisible becomes audible, acquiring a physical presence in sound. I draw inspiration from Amerindian flute traditions of my native Brazil, from the symbolic significance of the instrument, and from ways of playing that embrace all its sounds as expressions of its nature. This understanding is fundamental to the cycle: tone, noise, the sound distortions produced by using the voice while playing, and percussive sounds all belong to the same instrument. From this perspective, the distinction between “conventional” and “extended” techniques loses its meaning. Every sonority belongs. Primals explores this sense of wholeness through the possibilities of collective flute playing, returning to the elemental encounter between breath and matter from which the flute’s voice emerges.

Written in 2025, Primals No. 3 “Takuapu”, for contrabass flute and flute ensemble, was premiered at the 40th edition of the Festivales Internacionales de Flautistas in Lima, Peru. Its title refers to the Guarani bamboo percussion instrument traditionally played by women during ritual singing and dance. In Guarani Mbya accounts, the gesture of striking it against the ground connects the women who play it with cultivation, care, healing, and Nhandesy, “our mother.” This connection is echoed in the sequence of the Primals cycle, where Takuapu precedes Nhandesy. Alongside the breath that animates the flute, the takuapu evokes the pulse of a body meeting the ground, joining the act of making sound to the experience of being alive.

Victor Somma