David Bragger via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from David Bragger:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix via ↴
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: David Bragger
- City: Los Angeles, California
- Country: United States
My Life & Work
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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.
Contact Information
- Email: davidbragger@gmail.com
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Twitter: TikiParlour
- ▶ Instagram: davidbragger
- ▶ Website: http://oldtimetikiparlour.com
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/davidbragger
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCLmdqVzbo7adCNiD0QCFVrQ
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/5TBDE9aA8pX2aI6KyimGGA
- ▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/2Cnebc4WUDf5xENKAOSbmR
- ▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/7fUY6Q2Iha6j7GhL0q2keO
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)
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ENGLE: Portrait of Asheville Old-Time Fiddler John Engle
39 views
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Maya & Leela--Coming Through the Canebrake (Father's Day Video)
42 views
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Crooked Waltz for Dwight Lamb's Birthday--David Bragger & Susan Platz
48 views
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Yell in the Shoats--David Bragger
39 views
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David Bragger & Rafe Stefanini--Will Adams' Tune
42 views
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Christopher Berry--Snowdrop
42 views
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Gangspil - Bornholmervals
41 views
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Mississippi Hillbillies TRAILER
41 views
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David Bragger & Susan Platz - Empty Canoe - On The Farm Sessions @Pickathon 2019 S07E03
40 views
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Cripple Creek- Old-Time Fiddle Lesson
46 views
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Chinquapin Pie-Clawhammer Banjo Lesson
40 views
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
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. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging through New Orleans and Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... and Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
