Bio:
Armandinho Macêdo é filho de Osmar Macêdo, um dos dois inventores do trio elétrico, os enormes caminhões de som/palcos móveis que percorrem as ruas de Salvador da Bahia, Brasil, durante o Carnaval.
Osmar também inventou um instrumento que ele tocava em suas primeiras versões do trio elétrico, o pau elétrico, um braço de cavaquinho (ukulele) afinado como um bandolim, montado com captadores caseiros. Ao longo dos anos, esse instrumento foi desenvolvido para o que é agora chamado de "guitarra baiana", e Armandinho é seu mestre.
Armandinho também é versado nos clássicos do choro: Pixinguinha, Jacob do Bandolim, Waldir Azevedo, entre outros.
English:
Armandinho Macêdo is the son of Osmar Macêdo, one of the two inventors of the trio elétrico, the giant soundtrucks/moving stages that ply the streets of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil during Carnival.
Osmar also invented an instrument which he played in his early versions of the trio elétrico, the pau elétrico (electric stick), a cavaquinho (ukelele) neck tuned like a mandolin, mounted with homemade pickups. Over the years this instrument has been developed into what is now called the "guitarra baiana" (Bahian guitar), and Armandinho is its master.
Armandinho is also schooled in the classics of choro: Pixinguinha, Jacob do Bandolim, Waldir Azevedo, et al.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).