The Bahia-based network interconnecting creators, creative entities, and creative academics & professionals worldwide.
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:
Drummer and percussionist of Moroccan and Senegalese origin, Mokhtar has played alongside the most prestigious of musicians, including Joe Zawinul, Jaco Pastorius, Youssou N’Dour, Mariah Carey, Patti Smith, Carlos Santana, ONG National French Jazz Orchestra, Carlinhos Brown, Eddy Louis, Jean Luc Ponty, Manu Dibango, etc. to name but a few.
From his debut with Hamsa Music to the legendary Ultramarine (featuring Etienne M’Bappé, Mario Canonge and N’Guyen Lê, among others), Mokhtar has proven to be a diligent, vigorous yet inventive explorer. From innovative sonorities to imaginative mixing, Mokhtar has conveyed a multifaceted talent for western harmonies, as well as African rhythms and Bedouin tunes. His rigorous and consistent quest is a search for "Musical Grail": music with no frontiers. Such is his capacity to revive cultural heritage to a universal dimension that speaks to all souls.
Distinct Mandinka inspiration is patent in Mokhtar’s work, stemming from musical experience with Salif Keita, Kante Manfila, Ousmane Kouyaté and Cheikh Tidiane Seck. Here, the enlightening arpeggios of the Kora, the enchanting melodies of the desert nomads unite with jazz improvisations, all contributing to the songbook of this outstanding drummer.
The sensational solo album, Dounia, which translates as World from Arabic, Mokhtar performs live with extraordinary singer Woz Kaly (Xalam, Touré Kunda), bassist N’Doumbé Djengué (Fémi Kuti) and the eternally inspired Jean-Philippe Rykiel (Youssou N'Dour) to name a small handful of the acclaimed collaborators. The result is a joyful, generous music, where sophisticated musical architecture leads to sheer emotion.
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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).