Lynn Goldsmith, Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series

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Lynn Goldsmith speaking at Michigan Theater as a part of the University of Michigan Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series, November 16th, 2023. This talk focuses on the portrait work made in her recent book, "Music in the '80s", as well as the message she puts into all her work: "break limiting thought patterns, bust through fear, take risks, and persistently work hard toward your goal."
Posted April 24, 2024
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Integration is a superpower...

 

This technological matrix originating in Bahia, Brazil closely integrates creators around the world with each other and the entire planet. It is able to do so because it is small-world (see Wolfram):

Wolfram Mathematics

 

Bahia itself, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place on earth throughout all of human history, refuge for Lusitanian Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition, Indigenous both apart and subsumed into a brilliant sociocultural matrix comprised of these three peoples and more, is small-world.

 

America is small-world. Mozambique is small-world. Central Asia is small-world. Ukraine is small world...

 

Human society, the billions of us in all the complexity of our relationships, is small-world. Neural structures for human memory are small-world. Neural structures in artificial intelligence are small-world...

 

 

In a small world great things are possible. In a small-world matrix they are universal.

  Alicia Svigals

"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"

—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists

  Nduduzo Makhathini

"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"

—Nduduzo Makhathini (JOHANNESBURG): piano, Blue Note recording artist

  Susan Rogers

"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"

  Julian Lloyd Webber

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

—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)

  Clarice Assad

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

—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world

  Kamasi Washington

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

—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington

  Randy Brecker

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

  Matt Garrison

"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.

 

* I renegotiated sync rates for Earl and for The Flamingos. Now when I hear "Speedo" in a movie soundtrack (Goodfellows and others), or "I Only Have Eyes for You" (a million films), I remind myself that the artists (and now their heirs) were/are getting double what they were getting before.

 


Raymundo Sodré

RÁDIO MATRIX / The Guardian

Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.

Recent Visitors Map

Recent access to this matrix and Bahia are from these places (a single marker can denote multiple accesses).

 

Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:

 

Português: https://salvadorbahiabrazil.com/bahia-brasil-universal

 

English: https://salvadorbahiabrazil.com

 

 

Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.

This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.

 

For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:

  TOTAL