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.
"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
"Matrixado!"
✅—Founding Member Darius Mans
Economist, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
✅—Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
President of Brazil
✅—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
"Thank you"
(Banch Abegaze, manager)
✅—Kamasi Washington