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 potentially 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:
Dee Spencer is a Professor of Jazz and Musical Theater in the School of Theater & Dance at San Francisco State University (SFSU).
She received her B.S. from Florida A&M; M.M. at Washington University in St. Louis; and EdD., University of San Francisco. Dee founded the Jazz Studies degree program in the School of Music at SFSU and served as director for five years.
Dee Spencer’s musical director/sound designer credits include “Androcles and the Lion”, “Raisin” award-winning Theatreworks production with legendary directors Danny Duncan and Tony Haney, “Purlie Victorious”, “The Me Nobody Knows”, “No Place To Be Somebody”, “Ain’t Misbehavin’”, “Sassy Divas”, “One Mo Time”, “Twelfth Night”, “Spring Awakening”, “Lysistrata”, “Chicago”, “Hair” and "Dreamgirls in Concert".
She has performed/recorded/toured/judged with Wynton Marsalis for Jazz at Lincoln Center; GRAMMY Award winning vocalist “Ledisi”, TOWER OF POWER’s Lenny Williams and legends John Handy, Jimmy Scott, Louis Bellson, Clark Terry, Regina Carter, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Bernard Purdie and X-Factor star Jason Brock and the legendary GLIDE ensemble. Her latest recording “Tranquility” was released in 2018. She is an Annual Screener for the GRAMMYs Music Awards.
Her former students include recording artists/producers, Braxton Brothers, BEYONCE’S music director, saxophonist Tia Fuller, and LAUREN HILL’S music director, saxophonist Howard Wiley.
As an active contributor to the San Francisco community, she founded the San Francisco Jazz Organization (SFJAZZ) education program and performed for a US Senator Kamala Harris’ fundraiser at the African American Cultural Center formerly headed by San Francisco Mayor London Breed. She also served as program director for the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts.
She has served on the following boards: International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE), National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), San Francisco Jazz Organization (SFJAZZ), Stanford Jazz Workshop, Community Music Center and the Women’s Audio Mission. Dee is currently serving on the People in Plaza and The Amateur Musicians Network boards.
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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).