MATRIX UNIVERSAL

Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arab, European, Asian...

Brazil's sprawling cultural matrix is a wellspring of pathways integrating artists and creators around the planet...

...beginning in the Recôncavo of Bahia.

 

The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow

 

  Susan Rogers

"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."

—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory

 

"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"

 

"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."

—Banch Abegaze: manager, Kamasi Washington

 

"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"

—Clarice Assad: Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world

 

"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"

—Julian Lloyd-Webber: UK's premier cellist; brother of Andrew Lloyd Webber (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)

 

"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"

—Alicia Svigals: World's premier klezmer violinist

 

Developed here in the Historic Center of Salvador da Bahia ↓ .

 

 

  Bule Bule (Assis Valente)

"♫ The time has come for these bronzed people to show their value..."

 

Production: Betão Aguiar

 

 

MATRIX MODUS OPERANDI

Recommend somebody and you will appear on that person's page. Somebody recommends you and they will appear on your page.

 

Both pulled by the inexorable mathematical gravity of the small world phenomenon to within range of everybody inside.

 

And by logical extension, to within range of all humanity outside as well.

 

8 billion human beings tend to within six degrees of connection to each other ↑

 

In a small world great things are possible.

 

 

MATRIX (PARDAL)

I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...

 

...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...

 

...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.

 

Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.

 

 

MATRIX MUSICAL

 

The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).

A Massa (do povo carente) / The Masses (of people in need)

A Massa (do povo carente) / The Masses (of people in need)
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MATRIX PRIMORDIAL

Matrix founding members are behind this radio...

 

...called by The Guardian "one of the 10 best around the world".

 

 

 

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