I RECOMMEND

You are in a matrix navigable from artist to artist to artist...following artists' recommendations as guideposts. This matrix is based in the concept behind small world ("six degrees of separation") networks...meaning that all within are somehow findable/reachable from all others in a limited number of steps. And THIS means that we can all now see beyond  the smoke, mirrors and hype to the REAL world of mankind's music & the arts. Prepare to swallow the red pill!

THE MATRIX IS MUSICIAN / ARTIST-IN-GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS BY THE MOST POWERFUL, SOPHISTICATED & SUBTLE SOFTWARE YET DEVISED:

⇒ the collective human mind

IT'S BASED IN BAHIA, GROUND ZERO FOR BRAZIL'S SUN-CARONA VIBRANT AFRO-BRAZILIAN CULTURE

⇒ ...rooted in a region called the Recôncavo, analogous in Brazil to the Mississippi Delta in the United States.

THE MATRIX REACHES FROM BRAZIL TO CUBA TO BROOKLYN TO BERLIN TO TOKYO TO TIMBUKTU

⇒ To wherever people want to take it...

IT IS THE NEXT-STEP EVOLUTION OF A SPECIALTY RECORD SHOP

⇒ ...opened in Salvador to showcase magisterial musicians almost completely unknown to the world...many of them living in poverty or close to it and unable to avail themselves of traditional (and costly) means of publicizing.

PRE-BRAZIL — IN NEW YORK CITY — WE "RESCUED" UNPAID ROYALTIES FOR PERFORMERS & COMPOSERS INCLUDING:

⇒ Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Led Zeppelin, Philip Glass, Mongo Santamaria, Airto Moreira, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Jim Hall, Taj Mahal, Robb Royer of Bread, Speedo & the Cadillacs, and many more! With Speedo's (Earl Carroll) amazing story (kid singing on the streetcorners of Harlem to doo-wop fame to working as a beloved school janitor) I learned — as Quincy Jones figured out decades before me — that greatness and fame are completely independent. I'd see that the wave had been repeated here in Brazil with a man by the name of Raimundo Sodré, who'd gone from zero to national fame and back to zero.

IN LIGHT OF ALL THE ABOVE I BUILT A (THE WORLD'S FIRST EVER!) SMALL WORLD CURATION NETWORK...

⇒ A wave of a cyberwand opening pathways allowing ANY ARTIST — FAMOUS OR NOT — in ANY FIELD — in ANY PLACE in the world — to potentially  be reached by ANYBODY from ANYWHERE.

BY WHAT WIZARDRY?

⇒ We've all heard of six degrees of separation, more properly called a small world network. Within six or so steps we can move through a chain of people knowing other people to just about anybody on the planet.

SIMPLY CHANGE "KNOW" TO "RECOMMEND"

⇒ In exactly the same way, step by step we can move through chains of ARTISTS CURATING ARTISTS to to just about any artist on the planet.

LIKE THIS...

⇒ From Quincy Jones we access one of his protégés, stellar young Cuban pianist Alfredo Rodriguez. From Alfredo Rodriguez we access a fabulous multinstrumentalist Alfredo plays with, Munir Hossn. Two more steps and we've reached the above-mentioned Raimundo Sodré, formerly virtually unreachable in Bahia...

DICTATED SILENCE

⇒ Sodré's meteoric major-label career was crushed by the Brazilian dictatorship years ago and he was forced to flee Brazil under threat of death...into a 19 year exile. He became almost impossible to find and hear, even after returning to Brazil.

MUSIC FALLS LIKE RAIN

⇒ But now lines of everbranching interlinked recommendations rise from Bahia to form a (small world) network rounding the planet like the arboreal canopy of a vast Amazonian rainforest. When the dictatorship ground Sodré into the dust, they unwittingly planted a seed.

FROM SODRÉ, A WORLDLINE TO SPLENDID BULE BULE (LEATHER HAT) ABOVE... AND TO OTHERS IN THE CLIP...

⇒ "The time has arrived for these people of color to show their worth ... I want to see Uncle Sam play tambourine so the whole world can samba!"

AND FROM BULE ON...

⇒ ...tendrils twining through urban centers and beautiful backwaters... through New York boroughs, Burkina Faso... County Clare... Cape Town...

THROUGH ARTISTS ACROSS THE BOARD

⇒ ...writers, journalists, photographers, painters, illustrators, architects, choreographers, filmmakers...

IS THE MATRIX AN ALTERNATE REALITY?

⇒ Only if your reality has been defined by corporate mass media. The original meaning of "matrix" is "source", from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!

DOES THE MATRIX WATCH YOU?

⇒ Zero surreptitious tracking, data mining and data brokerage per Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, et al.