MATRIX ONLINE NETWORK

IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT

The Matrix Mission was Born in Brazil, but It Embraces the Entire World

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 (Bahia's Bay of All Saints received more enslaved human beings than any other final port-of-call throughout all of human history).

Brazil 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 — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).

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 a scintillatingly unprecedented fourth. Pandeirista on the roof. Nowhere else but here.

The matrix is the ultimate evolution of a pathway which began in New York City decades ago per the "rescue" of unpaid royalties, performance & mechanicals, for artists burned by major labels: Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Led Zeppelin, Philip Glass, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd of Kingston's Studio One (Bob Marley's producer; I made a copy of his original contract with Bob to take to CBS Records to argue; Bob was 17 when he signed and his aunt co-signed)...

...Funk Brother Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin) and others. A long and winding road that led inexorably to the necessity of a truly open arts universe, for there is more in Heaven and Earth...

"I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
✅—Susan Rogers
Personal recording engineer: Prince, Paisley Park
Director: Music Perception & Cognition Laboratory, Berklee College of Music
Author: This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You

If you're arriving from the Guardian article 10 best music radio stations around the world, →Matrix Radio is here←

The matrix was created above in Salvador's Centro Histórico (interview is with David Dye for U.S. National Public Radio), where Bule Bule around the corner in the clip below, among magisterial colleagues for whom this matrix was originally built (it's now open to all in the Global Creative Economy) sings, "Chegou a hora dessa gente bronzeada mostrar seu valor... The time has come for these bronzed people to show their worth..."

...the endeavor motivated in the first instance by the fact that in common with most cultures around our planet, the preponderance of Brazil's vast cultural treasure has been impossible to find from outside of circumscribed regions, including Brazil itself...

Music & lyrics (Brasil Pandeiro) by Assis Valente of Santo Amaro, Bahia, Brazil. Video by Betão Aguiar of Salvador.

Thus something new under the tropical sun: A means by which those above, those below, and EVERYBODY ELSE in the creative economy can be divulged EVERYWHERE.

Quincy Jones can curate Gilberto Gil, for example. Gil can curate, writers, dancers, filmmakers, painters, record producers, set designers... He can curate Luê Soares of Belém do Pará, behind the mic above. Quincy doesn't have to know Luê exists to help make her discoverable, or anybody else ... it's in the matrix DNA.

For by the seemingly magical mathematics of the small world phenomenon, all in the matrix will tend to proximity to all others, in the same way that most human beings are within some six or so steps of most others.

The difference being that in the matrix, these steps are along pathways that can be travelled. The creative world becomes a neighborhood. Quincy Jones is right up the street and Branford Marsalis around the corner. And the most far-flung genius you've never heard of is just a few doors down. Maybe even in Brazil. Laroyê!

"Matrixado!"
✅—Founding Member Darius Mans
Economist, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
✅—Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
President of Brazil

"Many thanks for this - I am touched!"

✅—Julian Lloyd Webber
That most fabled cellist in the United Kingdom (and Brazilian music fan)

"I'm truly thankful... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
✅—Nduduzo Makhathini
Blue Note recording artist)

"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
✅—Alicia Svigals
Founder of The Klezmatics

"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
✅—Clarice Assad
Compositions recorded by Yo Yo Ma and played by orchestras around the world