CURATION
-
from this page:
by Augmented Matrix
Network Node
-
Name:
David Bragger
-
City/Place:
Los Angeles, California
-
Country:
United States
Life
-
Bio:
In only the last few years, traditional fiddler and banjoist David Bragger has become an ubiquitous figure in traditional American folk music.
He is a musician, documentarian, UCLA ensemble director, 78rpm record collector, musical festival director and folk label founder. He has also nearly finished recording and filming musicians for the largest scale American Folk music project ever to be made. It has been dubbed the “secret project,” as only those who recorded for it know anything about it.
Having learned the “old-time” art of fiddling from traditional masters Tom Sauber and Mel Durham, Bragger has been passing down these archaic musical secrets and sounds to students and fans worldwide. His 2016 debut CD Big Fancy put him on the traditional music map overnight and he was immediately recruited to perform fiddle, banjo, mandolin and guitar on the 70’s Laurel Canyon-esque solo album “Millport” from Bad Religion’s Greg Graffin. He was also tapped to play fiddle with Social Distortion. In 2018, Bragger and fiddler Susan Platz released the very first American old-time fiddle duet CD King’s Lament–Old-time Fiddle Duets which is currently going into its second printing. Bragger was also the featured soloist on fiddle and banjo for last year’s Lion’s Gate western film Gone are the Days. Bragger has also been tapped to curate and write liner notes for 78rpm record compilations put out by the mega-UK label JSP. He just completed the Texas Hillbillies 4-CD set and is currently working on the Mississippi String Band compilation set. Most recently Bragger has been seen fiddling with Grammy-winner Dom Flemons.
These “appearances” and “cameos” are squeezed into Bragger’s free time when he’s not performing, teaching old-time music at UCLA and running his label “Tiki Parlour Recordings.”
Five years ago, Bragger spearheaded the idea to bring the greatest living traditional masters to Los Angeles for concerts, workshops and recording. He founded the space known as The Old-Time Tiki Parlour and flew out the great, eccentric traditional musician Dan Gellert. When Ry Cooder caught wind of this, he showed up to the Parlour as Gellert’s transportation! Bragger and his partner Rick Hocutt recorded and filmed Gellert for a week. The result was the Dan Gellert CD & DVD release, which is now a modern classic of the old-time music genre. In the last few years, Bragger’s vision has come true. He created an independent label devoted solely to hardcore traditional music where every release is 100% produced by traditional musicians (recording, mastering, filming, editing, artwork, design, etc.) All releases showcase raw traditional American music by today’s masters, folk art by traditional musicians and extensive liner notes.
Currently the Tiki Parlour has sixteen releases, with more more scheduled. Among the latest are Holy Smoke! and The Old Texas Fiddle Vol. 3. Holy Smoke! features Bragger with one of his mentors, the great Italian old-time fiddler Rafe Stefanini. Novelist and American music writer Tom Piazza calls it “one of the best banjo-fiddle duet records I’ve heard.” The oldest banjo publication in existence, The Banjo Newsletter, considers it “one of the most important recordings of 2019, or any other year for that matter.”
Tiki Parlour is releasing CD & DVD Sets featuring Bluegrass banjo master Bill Evans, reclusive old-time fiddler Scott Prouty, North Carolina master Kirk Sutphin and old-time fiddle legend Brad Leftwich. Tiki Parlour is also releasing a book of fiddle duet transcriptions that correspond to double fiddle release by David Bragger and Susan Platz.
This is all just the beginning.
My Instruction
-
Lessons/Workshops:
David Bragger is a full-time instructor of old-time music on fiddle, banjo, mandolin and guitar. He teaches private lessons in-person and online, as well as workshops at music festivals and camps, including the Los Angeles Old-Time Social, the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, the Rocky Mountain Old-Time Music Festival, the Portland Old-Time Music Gathering, the Berkeley Old-Time Music Convention, the Santa Barbara Old-Time Fiddlers’ Convention and the Topanga Banjo & Fiddle Contest.
-
Instruction:
http://oldtimetikiparlour.com/category/lessons-workshops/
Clips (more may be added)
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
Wolfram Mathematics
This technological matrix originating in Bahia, Brazil and positioning creators around the world within reach of each other and the entire planet is able to do so because it is small-world (see Wolfram).
Bahia itself, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place on earth throughout all of human history, refuge for Lusitanian Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition, Indigenous both apart and subsumed into a sociocultural matrix comprised of these three peoples and more, is small-world.
Human society, the billions of us, is small-world. Neural structures for human memory are small-world...
In small worlds great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
—Nduduzo Makhathini (JOHANNESBURG): piano, Blue Note recording artist
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
Dear friends & colleagues,
Having arrived in Salvador 13 years earlier, I opened a record shop in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for Bahian musicians, many of them magisterial but unknown.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Bahians and other Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix (people who have passed are not removed), then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Recent access to this matrix and Bahia are from these places (a single marker can denote multiple accesses).
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Nduduzo Makhathini
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX