This is a matrix in the original sense of "source". It is a "small-world" network, meaning that the nodes (people) inside it are — mirroring human society — within a few steps of everybody else inside it. The matrix was built to allow regional Brazilian musicians to be discoverable steps away from everybody else in the arts world, and by logical necessity this m.o. requires not only that the great Brazilians be matrixed, but so far as possible, all working artists in our time. Ergo:
THIS MATRIX, THOUGH BRAZIL-BORN, IS UNIVERSAL
This Andy Kershaw matrix node is steps away from the entire planet by the well-known small-world ("6 degrees") phenomenon dictating that in human society you yourself are within several degrees of Andy Kershaw.
1 DEGREE FORWARD: Andy Kershaw (node) ROUTES TO THESE ARTIST NODES
Are these Andy Kershaw's personal recommendations?
CURATION STATUS
- → Routes by The Matrix
Who & Where
- Name: Andy Kershaw
- City/Place: London
- Country: United Kingdom
Current News
- What's Up? To book Andy for voice-overs, commercials or narrations, please call 0207 434 2040
Life & Work
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Bio:
Gonzo broadcaster...
Rochdale, where he was born in 1959, triggered in Andy a curiosity he has never lost. Musically, his horizons were opened up by an early obsession with Bob Dylan. Tracing Dylan’s influences led Andy towards folk, blues, country, soul and gospel.
He went to Leeds University, partly to study politics in the half-hope of becoming a journalist, but chiefly because the student union at Leeds put on the biggest college concerts in the country.
In his second year he seized power of the job of Entertainments Secretary in a bloodless coup and ran the concerts for two and a half years. His line-ups were a who’s-who of early 80s music – concerts by The Clash, Elvis Costello and Black Uhuru, among others, were regular occurences. Naturally, he failed his degree.
Andy came to London in 1984 to work as Billy Bragg’s driver and roadie. It was while he was chaperoning Billy to BBC2′s “Whistle Test” that he was spotted by a producer as a potential new presenter. He began his broadcasting career in September 1984 with a baptism by fire – a report for Whistle Test from the Monsters of Rock heavy metal festival.
In 1985, Andy was invited by Radio 1 to present his own show with a free choice of music. As his own tastes evolved so did the content of the radio show. Meeting the musicologist and Radio 3 presenter Lucy Duran – now an old friend – and the first appearance of Zimbabwe’s Bhundu Boys in the UK tipped Andy heavily into African music.
Andy presented his Radio 1 show for 15 years until he was sacked in May 2000 to be replaced by another dance music programme. He realised Radio 3 was his spiritual new home when Controller Roger Wright told him that what he liked about Andy’s Radio 1 programme was that he never knew what was coming next. He joined Radio 3 in April 2001 and continued to ignore categories and mix it all up.
In his spare time Andy enjoys motorcyles (particularly racing) and travels to extreme countries. He has thrice holidayed in North Korea and, for Channel 4, made the very first film inside the secretive country.
A journalist at heart, he has often reinvented himself as a foreign correspondent for BBC radio news and occasionally made travel documentaries for Channel 4. He reported for the BBC from the midst of a volcanic eruption in Montserrat, where he had taken his partner for “a quiet Caribbean holiday” (the island blew up the day after they arrived) and, most memorably, from Rwanda during the horrors of 1994.
Contact Information
- Contact by Webpage: http://www.andykershaw.co.uk/contact/
Media & Markets
- ▶ Book Purchases: http://www.amazon.co.uk/No-off-Switch-Andy-Kershaw/dp/0992769604/
- ▶ Twitter: THEAndyKershaw
- ▶ Website: http://www.andykershaw.co.uk
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLaUcIQqgEzMya4aewo3JEg
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
"Andy Kershaw's No Off Switch is sensational. Wildly hilarious. An amazing read. An amazing man."
- Stephen Fry
"A real rock & roll war correspondent"
- Keith Altham
Clips (more may be added)
THE MATRIX WAS BUILT HERE, 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... 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"
w/ David Dye for U.S. National Public Radio
Given the immense untapped power of the small-world phenomenon, from Brazilians the matrix was expanded to include nodes per jazz artists, given jazz's common roots with Brazilian music (nodes based in publicly available information; some artists we informed — Bob Mintzer, Kamasi Washington, David "Fuse" Fiuczynski, Vijay Iyer, Greg Osby — and got thumbs up, others we'll get to), and moved on from there. Artists/academics/"creative people" are welcome to create their own nodes and curate (connect to other artist nodes, so that others may follow). BTW, our logo is a cortador de cana, cane cutter. It was designed by Walter Mariano, professor of design at the Federal University of Bahia to reflect the origins of the music the shop specializes in.
MUCH MORE on all of this in the window below (which, if you are logged in, will instead contain instructions on recommending), and in the window within that window (which includes a "radio" called by The Guardian one of "10 of the best music radio stations around the world"):
