CURATION
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from this page:
by Title Holder
Network Node
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Name:
Gary Clark Jr.
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City/Place:
Austin, Texas
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Country:
United States
Life & Work
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Bio:
He owns it all on This Land, which won 3 Grammy awards and is his third studio album for Warner Records, is sure to be seen as a breakthrough in establishing just how much stylistic variation Clark has at his command. There are plenty of the guitar-hero sounds that have already established him as a headliner, with tunes that reiterate that Cream influences always rise to the top, from a guy who’s long since come to be considered by Clapton as a friend and contemporary, not just acolyte. But if a lot of fans would consider Clark the closest thing we have to a modern Hendrix, what comes through implicitly in This Land is the sense of just how much Jimi loved and borrowed from Curtis Mayfield. You can think of Clark as one of the last of the real rock gods, along with fellow master singer/guitarists like Jack White, John Mayer, or the late, great Prince and the new album certainly won’t do anything to diminish that perception. But This Land is also a great soul record — one in which it’s easy to hear the lineage that connects Muddy Waters and Childish Gambino, with distinct nods to Marvin Gaye somewhere in the middle.
You’ll hear strains of Gaye not just in Clark using his falsetto more than he ever has before. It’s in the mixture of social consciousness and sensuality that was a matter of course for records like “What’s Goin’ On”… not to mention “Sign O’ the Times.” Obviously you hear the awareness of what’s goin’ on in the song This Land itself, in which Clark finds himself “paranoid and pissed off” among well-heeled neighbors who “think I’m up to something” just because his family doesn’t fit the local demographics. The attention to the greater good also informs “What About Us,” which has Clark announces that “the young bloods are taking over” — something he says to a fictional figure who recurs in several songs, “Mr. Williams,” a guy who could be a past-his-prime neighborhood boss… or, who knows, a stand-in for some bigger political figure who also has to go. “Feed the Babies” brings in the brass to augment a call for understanding that’s a pleading, purposeful antidote to the raw nerves of the title song.
Yet Clark also uses the album to get more personal than he ever has on record before, often assessing the tough balance between career and family. “Pearl Cadillac” is a payback to a mother’s devotion. He’s the parent in “When I’m Gone,” preparing a child for yet another trip away on the road, a topic he also takes up with a significant other in “Guitar Man,” where he’s weighing the “stamps in my blue book” and the fellowship of the road against the fear of a toll taken by time apart at home.
But if it’s the ballsy tropes of rock, blues and R&B that you’d like a fresh spin on, This Land hardly foregoes the twin towers of swagger and regret. “Friday night and I just got paid/I’m out looking for some trouble,” he sings in “Feel Like a Million,” a number that starts out as Peter Tosh and ends up somewhere closer to an arena-rock anthem. He’s found that trouble and then some in “Don’t Wait Til Tomorrow,” a balladic plea to the woman at home to forgive dalliances, with the knowledge that she may exact some what’s-good-for-the-goose revenge. “Low Down Rolling Stone” is an affair-ending lament from a wayward soul who’s discovered “darkness is my comfort zone.” But there’s no sorrow — yet – in a pair of kick-ass “got to” songs. “Got to Get Up” brings on the trumpet as Clark repeats “Kill ‘em all!” like the rock mantra it is, and “Gotta Get Into Something” finds him reaching to pure Chuck Berry territory… or maybe not so pure, since there’s something positively Ramones-y in his take on furious proto-punk rock and roll.
It may sound diffuse as an album, but it all holds together as part of a singular vision from Clark and his co-producer, Jacob Sciba, a longtime Austin friend and chief engineer at Arlyn Studios where most of This Land was laid down. Clark has had interest from some of the top producers in music but has found most of them are interested in bringing out just one aspect of his multi-faceted musical persona. Sciba is the pal and sonic wizard who comprehends the scope of what Clark does, and welcomes it… and is faced with the challenge of making something sonically coherent out of all these styles.
How to position Clark has been a cheerful problem from the start, since he was a blues aficionado who loved hanging with the hip-hop kids just as much as he relished going to local Pinetop Perkins shows. He grew up watching music television, but not so much MTV. “I kind of got introduced to everything by watching ‘Austin City Limits,’ which had Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Jimmie Vaughan, Robert Cray,” he’s said. “It all kind of hit me at once, and I just loved anything that sounded bluesy or rock & roll that felt dangerous and had loud guitar solos up front. Ultimately I figured out where it all came from, and I think the thing that really resonated with me was guys like Albert King and Freddie King — the three Kings,” along with B.B. Soon, as a barely-teen prodigy, he was making his way out in to the real world, being mentored by Austin club owner Clifford Antone as he hooked up with every available local legend.
Local legend Doyle Bramhall brought him to meet Eric Clapton at a Crossroads Festival in 2010, where they jammed with Sheryl Crow. A year later, his Warner Bros. debut release Bright Lights EP became the first EP ever to get the lead review in Rolling Stone, which wrote, “A genuine 21st-century bluesman, raised on the form in all its roughneck roadhouse glory but marked by the present day? That’s been as hard to find as a 21st century clockmaker.”
But Rolling Stone may have really been on to something when the magazine got past his prodigious licks and added, “Suddenly you can envision him dueting with Adele, swapping tunes with Jack Johnson or singing hooks for Nas.” Not all those collaborations came to be, but soon enough he was asked by Alicia Keys to co-write and play guitar on “Fire We Make,” a song from her Girl on Fire album, not long before he released his Warner Bros. Records debut album, Blak And Blu, in 2012. Not long after, "Ain't Messin Round", from Blak And Blu was also nominated for Grammy in 2013 and in 2014, Clark had won his first Grammy for Best Traditional R&B Performance for the track "Please Come Home", from that album. Before long he was benefitting from the advocacy of the Rolling Stones, who’ve repeatedly enlisted him as an opening act and on-stage guest. He played for the Obamas at the White House alongside not just Mick Jagger but B.B. King, Jeff Beck, and Buddy Guy. On a prime-time tribute to the Beatles, he performed alongside Dave Grohl and Joe Walsh. On a similar TV tribute to Stevie Wonder, he teamed up with Beyoncé and Ed Sheeran. On record, he co-wrote and played guitar on Childish Gambino’s “The Night Me and Your Mama Met.” In 2017 he was widely praised as a standout among standouts at the MusiCares benefit honoring Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, making two appearances that night, one by himself and once in collaboration with the Foo Fighters, huge fans who had recorded with and taken Clark out as their opening act before he graduated to major headliner status.
When the (then-) president of the United States has not only included you on his famous Spotify playlists but called you “the future,” is there anywhere to go from there? This Land proves there is — and it’s a genre-free future that encompasses virtually the entirety of electric roots music and African-American forms and moves forward from there. It’s a landscape that’s his eminent domain.
Clips (more may be added)
We use the mathematics of the small world phenomenon to transform the creative universe into a creative village wherein all are connected by short pathways to all... (Wolfram explains how above)
This Integrated Global Creative Economy uncoils from a sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix...
Great culture is great power.
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"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"
Our Matrix was conceived under a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to Havana and the provinces of Cuba to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...*
Sodré
*...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré, who summed up the irony in this sequence by opining for the ages: "Where there's misery, there's music!" Hence A Massa, anthem for the trod-upon folk of Brazil, which blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south until...
And hence a platform whereupon all creators tend to accessible proximity to all other creators, irrespective of degree of fame, location, or the censor.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome (where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
Assis Valente's (of Santo Amaro, Bahia) "Brasil Pandeiro" filmed by Betão Aguiar
Betão Aguiar
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
Replete with Brazilian greatness, but we listened to Miles Davis and Jimmy Cliff in there too; visitors are David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR/WXPN
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar found us (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 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, 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.
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 founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.comAcross the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
Wolfram MathWorld
Ex Terra Brasilis
Alicia Svigals
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Roberto Mendes
Luciano Calazans
Gustavo Caribé
J Velloso
Lázaro Ramos
Fernando Guerreiro
Maria Marighella
Russell Okung
Bule Bule
Caetano Veloso
RÁDIO MATRIX