THE INCANDESCENT COUNTRY, THE MATRIX, & ℵ

The Matrix originated in a record shop in the old colonial center of Salvador, Bahia, inspired in (the kabbalah-inspired fiction of) Borges' El Aleph, that in the pillar in Cairo's Mosque of Amr, where the universe in its entirety throughout all time is perceivable as an infinite hum from deep within the stone...

You are connected to Quincy Jones, to Augustin Hadelich, to Ta-Nehisi Coates. This is neither mysticism nor fiction. Within a labyrinthine six or so degrees you are connected to every trumpet player in New Orleans, to every novelist in Delhi, to every DJ in Jakarta, to everybody below, and all of these to you.

The matrix is constructed upon the principle behind this unexpected proximity (the small-world phenomenon), with the profound difference that in the matrix, connections can be followed. The Brazilian Aleph doesn't hum...it sings.

Sprawled across broad equatorial latitudes
Stoked and steamed and sensual in the widest sense of the word
Limned in prosody and cadenced song
brəˈzɪl / from "brasa" / Latin for "ember"

↑ THE MATRIX BEGINS HERE, where Bahian griot Bule Bule (leather hat, Centro Histórico of Salvador, Bahia) sings "Chegou a hora dessa gente bronzeada mostrar seu valor / The time has come for these bronzed people to show their value"... Luê above sings "O Tio Sam está querendo conhecer a nossa batucada / Uncle Sam is wanting to get to know our drumming" ... Video by Betão Aguiar.

TAPPING AN ARTIST will take you into their matrixed world. TAPPING A CATEGORY will show you other artists within that category.

IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT

Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles — jungle and desert and dense urban centers — both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin. It was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil's national music — the pandeiro — see the very beginning of the clip above — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people, and mixolydian perhaps as well). Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil's culturally fecund nordeste/northeast, where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa (Lagoon of the Canoe) and raised in Olho d'Águia (Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil's aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David. Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Pandeirista on the roof. Nowhere else but here.

Oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption — elements of these are still strongly entrenched — have defined, delineated, and limited Brazil.

But strictured & bound as it has been and is, Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of — or perhaps because of — the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.

For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...

Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.

"Onde tem miséria, tem música! / Where there's misery, there's music!" - Raimundo Sodré

Reload browser for more artists (this stack is randomly generated). Welcome to the kitchen!

TWO BLACK AMERICAS

The area around the great bay over which Salvador presides like a rough-cut but radiant black diamond is where the profoundest root of Afro-Brazilian civilization gave rise to the fluorescence which continues to illuminate (and move) Brazil…after a journey closely paralleling that of the cultural genius of African-Americans in the United States…

The U.S. was scene of a world-shaking migration from the plantation country of the rural south to the cities of the north. These people... (continue...)

The matrix began with the living musicians included in the "radio" below (lauded by The Guardian as one of "10 of the Best Music Radio Stations Around the World"). A COMPLETE EXPLANATION of the matrix, its why and its ethos, follow the radio (which follows the party in the quilombo of Kaonge).

Did you know that Brazil has a pantheon? In the sense that the Greeks and the Romans did? The Greek and Roman gods were done in by Constantine (first blow) and Theodosius (final blow). The gods of Brazil were born in Africa and arrived in Brazil within the negreiros making the Middle Passage, a voyage which transported not only people, but a culture. There was a great attempt by the Brazilian poobahs to exterminate the gods of Africa in Brazil, but it didn’t work (João do Boi's music is a manifestation of the rhythms for Cabila, or Cabula, deity of the hunt in the candomblé of Brazilian Bantus).

As the Roman emperors moved to extinguish the very real belief in Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, Minerva and the rest, banning the ceremonies to these deities, the Brazilian “authorities” banned the ceremonies devoted to Oxalá, Oxossi, Iansã... (continue...)

Behold the Star of David Illuminating the Bahia Sky!

Severino felt his pockets for coins and bills to measure the day. He placed his two steel coolers next to the front door on his way into the house, and paused to thank God for his arrival home, as he always did. He scraped off the red-brown mud caked to his sandals, and hung his black felt fedora, dripping wet, on the wall.

It wasn’t good. (continue...)

"I'm not particularly crazy about just anybody's bossa nova. I like the samba!"

The Bountiful Collective Genius of the Monstrously Dispossessed