Bio:
Duane Benjamin is an accomplished musician, orchestrator and arranger who plays trombone and electric bass. Ben-jamin as he is affectionately known, has performed and recorded with the top industry legends.
In jazz, Ben-jamin has performed with the Count Basie Orchestra, The Gerald Wilson Orchestra and The Clayton – Hamilton Orchestra, and The Paul McDonald Big Band. He is currently featured on the Heart and Soul of Mel Carter record. In the contemporary field Ben-jamin has performed and recorded with Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Barry White, Earth Wind and Fire, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, The OJays, Smokey Robinson, Aretha Franklin, and Gladys Knight to name a few legends of the past. Justin Timberlake, Joss Stone, Mary J. Blige, Christina Aguilera, Steve Vai, Jamiroquai, Vanessa Williams, Stanley Clark, Weird Al Yankovic and Kirk Franklin are some of the current artists Ben-jamin has performed with.
As an orchestrator Ben-jamin has worked for several artist and television shows. He's done arrangements for Aretha Franklin's live show, and his orchestrations are featured regularly on the hit television show American Idol and The Voice.
He has also arranged and orchestrated for television shows like NBC's The Singing Bee, BETS Gospel Celebration where he orchestrated for artists like Keyshia Cole, Jill Scott, Alexander Hamilton, and Al Green.
Ben-jamin, along with singer extraordinaire Meloney Collins, were the headline act for the Mammoth Lakes Jazz Festival for several years running. They have also collaborated on 2 CDs, A Little Jazz Now & Then and Mel Collins Live In La Guna.
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⤷ A technological matrix uncoiling from the vast African, Indigenous, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, European and Asian cultural matrix of Bahia and Brazil...
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
Dear friends & colleagues,
Having arrived in Salvador 13 years earlier, I opened a record shop in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for Bahian musicians, many of them magisterial but unknown.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Bahians and other Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix (people who have passed are not removed), then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
—Sparrow
Years ago in NYC I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Wolfram Mathematics
Alicia Svigals
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX
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