What do Jimmy Cliff, Jimmy Page, and Dionne Warwick all have in common? For one thing, they've all lived in Bahia. And so have, and do, untold numbers of other wonderful creators whose magisterial work has never reached beyond very limited surroundings. That's why all this began. If all creators can potentially have global reach, Bahian creators can too.
In this matrix it's not which pill you take, it's which pathways you take, pathways originating in the sprawling cultural matrix of Brazil: Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, European, Asian... Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, delineated by the Bay of All Saints, earthly center of gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings — and the sublimity they created — presided over by the ineffable Black Rome of Brazil: Salvador da Bahia.
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano Veloso, son of the Recôncavo, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
I want to share sounds, thoughts about sounds, and thoughts about how we share sounds. Also vegetables.
I’ll be writing about new music, old music, my own music, my friends’ music, music I’ve found while traveling on tour, music that’s found me at the flea market, record store, or on my favorite AM radio station (there is still one where I live, in Cambridge MA, although at night it’s only audible within a mile or so of the transmitting tower).
I’ll be writing about sounds I hear at art exhibitions, in books, in my garden, and in my head (no drummer doesn’t have at least a touch of tinnitus).
I’ll be writing about drums.
I’ll be sharing thoughts that may or may not lead to my next non-fiction book about sound, and/or my next book of prose poetry.
I’ll be serializing a novel that takes place in a self-storage facility. One with a radio station in it. (I did not make this up. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but ecstatic truth beats both.)
Subscriptions are free or paid. Paid subscribers will have access to occasional bonuses - like downloads of my podcast Ways of Hearing in ad-free, CD-quality audio. To all subscribers: thank you for your support. I hope you will make use of the comments sections to let me know what you’re hearing, what you want to be hearing, and how you want to be hearing it.
Life & Work
Bio:
Damon Krukowski is a musician (Damon & Naomi, Galaxie 500) and writer (Ways of Hearing, The New Analog).
He contributes frequently to journals including Art in America, Artforum, Pitchfork, and the New Yorker.
Contact Information
Email:
dk (at) exactchange (dot) com
Address:
c/o Exact Change
5 Brewster Street
Cambridge MA 02138
USA
Management/Booking:
Literary Representation:
Dara Hyde
Hill Nadell Literary Agency
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"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
I built the Matrix below (I'm below left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) 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. 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).