What do Jimmy Cliff, Jimmy Page, and Dionne Warwick all have in common? For one thing, they've all lived in Bahia. And so have, and do, untold numbers of other wonderful creators whose magisterial work has never reached beyond very limited surroundings. That's why all this began. If all creators can have global reach, Bahian creators can too.
In this matrix it's not which pill you take, it's which pathways you take, pathways originating in the sprawling cultural matrix of Brazil: Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, European, Asian... Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, delineated by the Bay of All Saints, earthly center of gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings — and the sublimity they created — presided over by the ineffable Black Rome of Brazil: Salvador da Bahia.
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano Veloso, son of the Recôncavo, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
Bio:
Alex Cuadros is a journalist and author. His first book, Brazillionaires—a “compelling tale of Brazil’s superrich”—was a Financial Times best book of 2016 and a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. A former Bloomberg staff reporter, he has written articles about money, politics, and religion for Bloomberg Businessweek, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Lapham's Quarterly, Slate, The Baffler, and The Awl. He spent six years based in Brazil and another two in Colombia, and has also reported from Iraq, Mexico, and Venezuela. He has been interviewed by PBS Newshour, NPR's All Things Considered and Marketplace, the BBC, WNYC, Monocle Radio, and Bloomberg TV, among other outlets. The Alicia Patterson Foundation and the Pulitzer Center have provided grants to support his work.
Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Alex studied creative writing and Latin American literature at Sarah Lawrence College. In his free time, he likes to climb.
"[A] compelling tale of Brazil’s superrich, which deftly weaves lurid soap opera with high finance and outrageous political skulduggery." — James Hider, The Wall Street Journal
"If Piketty had been—instead of an economist—a reporter working to understand the world that extremes of inequality have made today, he … might well have chosen to focus on Brazil, as Alex Cuadros has done in his new book Brazillionaires … a propulsive and engaging portrait of modern Brazil." — Patrick Iber, The New Republic
“A wild, richly reported tale about Brazil’s recent economic rise and fall, and some of the biggest, most colorful characters in business in Brazil who now have a global reach.” — Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times
"[Brazillionaires is] extremely entertaining and compelling on its own terms, but it also potently illustrates how billionaires generally—in the U.S. and the Western world—have amassed extraordinary power with virtually no accountability … a must-read." — Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
“A clear-eyed and often funny travelogue through the operatic lives of the country’s ultra-wealthy and their baneful relationship with the state.” — John Paul Rathbone, Financial Times
“[An] enjoyable, deeply reported account of Brazil’s outsize collection of tycoons.” — Eduardo Porter, The New York Times Book Review
"An incisive and entertaining romp through the follies of Brazilian wealth, power and hubris." — Mac Margolis, Bloomberg View
“In this excellent book [Cuadros] has managed to use billionaires to illuminate the lives of both rich and poor Brazilians, and all those in between.” — The Economist
"Gripping from the first page.... [Cuadros is] just the right mix of knowledgeable insider, and arch, critical outsider." — Stephanie Nolen, Globe & Mail
“Part memoir, part exposé, and part historical narrative, this fascinating look at wealth in Brazil is a strong debut.... Readers will be eager to see what topic Cuadros tackles next.” — Publishers Weekly
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"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
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
I built the Matrix below (I'm below left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) 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. 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).