A great disc to sit down, think and dream is Yoñlu's A Society in Which No Tear is Shed is Inconceivably Mediocre
Check his bio and you'll understand why it's so brilliant.
"Music is, above all, a form of expression. A way to connect and communicate with something larger than yourself, be it some higher power, society, or even the people around you. Making music can be an expression of joy, love, faith or wonder, but often times it is a purging release of anger, sadness, frustration, pain or loneliness. Sometimes it's enough to help someone move past a difficult period of their life or to deal with constant pain. Other times, those feelings prove to be insurmountable.
Vinicius Gageiro Marques was a young renaissance man from Porto Alegre, Brazil. Impressively intelligent and mature for his age, Vinicius was versed in three languages and reading Kafka before he was 13. As a teenager he explored photography, drawing, music criticism and wrote and recorded hundreds of songs in his makeshift home studio. However, Ernest Hemingway once remarked, "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know," and indeed, Vinicius' brilliance burdened him with a particular sensitivity.
Unfortunately, Vinicius, understandably disconnected from his peers, retreated into his own mind for most of his life. He apparently found some solace on the Internet forums and online communities where he shared his criticism, art and music under the screen name Yoñlu. This became a sort of secret world (his family was mostly unaware of the music he made) where he seemed to flourish, his incredible recordings resonating with the many who took the time to listen. Yoñlu eventually developed small followings in numerous parts of the world, from Canada to North Africa. But, even with this warm reception and the catharsis of his prolific output of deeply emotional music, Vinicius still found life to be unbearable and sadly committed suicide in 2006 at the agonizingly young age of 16.
It's impossible to disentangle Yoñlu's music from the story of his short life. In fact, the totality of his compositions was directly shaped by some of its more painful realities. This is quintessential bedroom music, not recorded as such for the cool lo-fi aesthetic, but out of necessity, its method of recording also a reflection of the solitude engendered by Yoñlu's hyper-intelligence and resulting alienation. And unsurprisingly, Vinicius' intimate pain is the most perceptible element in many of his songs. On album opener "I Know What It's Like," a play on the proverbial, plaintive teenage cry of "you don't know what it's like!", Yoñlu assures us that he does with dark, biting sarcasm: "I know what it's like / to be left out when all your friends try the new hip suicide thing…I do know what it's like / to be picked last in soccer practice and in shithole prostibules / and I know what it's like / to have to trade a girlfriend for a muse." The fragile "Humiliation" walks a more serious path with its heartfelt, repeating question of "Why does it always have to end with humiliation for me?", while "Suicide," written and recorded just a month before Yoñlu took his own life, most openly grappled with the impending act. However, lyrical content was not the sole source of his emotional outpouring. Vinicius possessed that rare ability to imbue his melodies with more than just simple melancholy. These songs, without any of their words, tug at heartstrings and manage to convey what he was feeling with stunning power and directness.
And while it's easy to view Yoñlu's music through a tragic lens, not all the material on A Society in Which No Tear is Shed is Inconceivably Mediocre is so grim. Other tracks here feature Mano Negra-like melding of genres ("The Boy and the Tiger"), percussive, Deskjet printer-sampling collaborations ("Deskjet Remix"), honest-cum-playful words of encouragement ("Katie Don't Be Depressed"), and tributes to the music of his home country. Yoñlu may pull some influence from the Western folk tradition, but he pulls much more from Bossa Nova and Tropicália, his acoustic guitar stylings infused with an emotional and rhythmic depth that can be traced back through greats like Vitor Ramil, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and João Gilberto. He actually gives one of Ramil's classics, the pensive "Estrela, Estrela," the stripped-down cover treatment and handily does it justice. It's a testament to Yoñlu's original songs that it fits in perfectly with the rest of this collection.
Even through his songs Vinicius Marques was unable to overcome the pain that he felt defined his existence, although he certainly recognized and admired the expressive power of music. In the note he left for his parents he urged them to listen to music "whenever they were sad" for, as he so eloquently put it, "the right cadence and harmony at the right moments can awaken any sentiment, including happiness in the most somber moments." He may not have realized it, but he had nearly mastered that formula in his own compositions. And though we'll never get to hear any new music from Yoñlu ever again, at least we know that when we listen to these songs we will feel something. Yoñlu wouldn't have it any other way. "
" Yoñlu was the recording nom de tune of 16 year-old Vinicius Gageiro Marques. Note the use of “was” here. His story is as interesting as it is tragic. From his parents home in the Southwestern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, Marques, recording as Yoñlu, crafted lo-fi, tropicalia-soaked, pop and folk pieces reminiscent of José González and Nick Drake all in the fragmentary style of Damon Gough. Delicate and, at times, dark. A sonic example of the racing bouillabaisse that is a teenager’s mind, the songs range from the straightforward (”I Know What It’s Like“) to the schizophrenic (”A Boy And A Tiger“) mixing gentle acoustic guitars and keys with cheap Casio beats, multiple languages (Portuguese, Spanish, English) and snippets of dialog from television shows and commercials a la Michel Gondry’ film La Science Des Rêves.
Marques took his own life in 2006. He left his family a note with a CD-R of his music urging them to play it ‘whenever they felt sad.’ On his computer his parents found a seemingly endless trove of recorded material that their son had been sharing around the world, via the Internet, under the guise of Yoñlu. Cryptically, one of the songs is titled “Suicide.” Awash in multiple genres the songs have been distilled and compiled on A Society In Which No Tear is Shed Is Inconceivably Mediocre released on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label.
"Original Bio from his homepage/tribitute page
Adapted from an article in the March 2008 issue of Rolling Stone Brazil:
The story of Yonlu has many angles. Yes, it is a story about music – of the continuing heart-spilling tradition of lo-fi troubadours, of post-rock's melodic imprints, of an ancient sadness lurking in the new-century and manifesting itself as modern Bossa Nova. But it's more than that. It is a story about how such music comes to be in a world where technology and communication hide feelings and emotion, but songs can't. It is about how the Internet can change an idea of what music means, of whom its creators are, and of what its creators can and can not do. More than anything, it is a story of a single young man, who lived all those angles and found it increasingly hard to do so -- but whose music transcended mere angles.
16 year-old Vinicius Gageiro Marques lived in the Southwestern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, the only son of university professor and psychoanalyst Ana Maria Gageiro and second child of Luiz Marques, doctor of Political Science and Secretary of Culture of the state of Rio Grande do Sul between 1999 and 2002. He was a bright inquisitive young man, a polyglot adolescent who spoke French (he lived with his family in Paris from 3 until 7 years old), and wrote and spoke English without ever taking classes (he learned by watching TV). He began reading Kafka at 12, and at 13 dedicated himself to recording daily life using a photo camera. Vinicius also had an impressive musical aptitude. He demonstrated a knowledge and a critical sense in his analysis of pop music, always written in English and available on various websites. And he recorded hundreds of songs, playing guitars, bass, drums and sound effects in one of the rooms in his house he transformed into a studio.
But his focus had a dark side. "He was serious, maybe too serious," remembers his mother Ana Maria. "Very early on, I understood that his sensitivity to the world was also his weakness."
On the afternoon of July 26th of 2006, 36 days before turning 17, Vinicius locked himself inside the bathroom of his apartment, and took his own life via carbon monoxide intoxication. An avid Internet user with the screen-name Yoñlu, Vinicius stayed on-line until the very last moments, and members of the suicide forum he frequented accompanied his every last step. Before locking himself in the bathroom, Vinicius wrote a letter freeing his family members from any guilt, explaining that his suicide could not have been stopped or imagined. He asked that his wishes be respected because his life was unbearable, he indicated the web address for his blog, thanked his parents for their support and recommended they listen to his music whenever they were sad, exactly as he would do. Even though he didn't suggest they listen to the music he composed, he left them a CD with some of his songs.
On Vinicius'computer (which was being searched by Police investigators), his father discovered some of the precious sounds he had stored away -- the majority were his own songs. The music came with enthusiastic commentary made by Internet fans from around the world. Yoñlu, the Brazilian from Gay Harbour (that's how he would refer to Porto Alegre), almost without any real friends in real life, was a popular virtual artist with fans from England, Scotland, Belgium, Canada and North Africa.
His recordings revealed just a fraction of his potential, his talent for experimentalism, and a capacity to create delicate melancholy melodies, something between Badly Drawn Boy, Radiohead, Tortoise and Nick Drake.
The music of "gringo" artists weren't the influences on a kid contaminated by the universal conscience promoted through the Internet. Yonlu's sound was enriched by his passion for bossa nova, his attention to the ruptures in Tropicalia (he considered Gilberto Gil the genius of the movement) and the influences of gaucho artists such as Vitor Ramil, his favorite, whose song "Estrela" he covers here.
Between a poetic lyricism and general nonsense, the lyrics, written in English, help uncover who Viñicius really was. Topics like depression, inadequacy and suicide are scattered among the tracks selected for the disc. "Katie Don't Be Depressed," a musical pearl with steamy guitars and popular lyrics, is somber: "Katie don't get depressed/it's serious, I want to say, what the hell is that? / a thought across your mind/ and I see you twist and scream/ even though you have a hand to hold onto/ even though you were cast aside."
In "Humiliation," vocals, guitar and the incapacity to declare a passion, is pungent: "Why does this always end in humiliation for me? / I'm going to say why/ I'm going to die"; the sad ballad of carefully chosen lyrics "Suicide Song," written one month before the fatal date, is haunting: "Now she has gone like everyone else I knew/ now my suicide is illuminated by the sunset/ if you want to know my opinion, it's very sad/ I don't think I will be/ present to see your face."
Yoñlu is a disc that should have been a post card, but transformed itself into a testament. It's the celebration of a life with the talent for a banquet that stopped at the appetizer. It's a showcase of sound and poetry of the kisses that Vinicius never gave, the dreams he never realized, the anguishes he couldn't get over, his passion for art and especially for music, like he expressed in the letter he wrote to his parents: "I believe that the right cadence and harmony at the right moments can awaken any sentiment, including happiness in the most somber moments."
