What do Jimmy Cliff, Jimmy Page, and Dionne Warwick all have in common? They've all lived in Bahia (visitors include David Byrne, Sting, Spike Lee, Michael Jackson and Beyoncé, among illustrious others). But so have, and do, untold numbers of Bahian creators whose magisterial work has never had the means to reach beyond very limited surroundings. Ergo: If all creators can have global reach, the creators of Bahia can too. Thus the Matrix.
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.)
Bio:
Harvey G. Cohen, a cultural and political historian specialising in writing and teaching about the history, business and art of the music and film industries, is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King's College London.
Before joining King's College London in September 2006, Harvey Cohen was a Fellow and Resident Scholar at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., where he completed the research for his book "Duke Ellington's America," which examines Ellington's historical as well as musical significance, and was named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post.
His 2018 book, "Who's In The Money: The Great Depression Musicals and Hollywood's New Deal" mixes culture, politics and business, focusing on the connections between the Warner Bros Great Depression Musicals and President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs in 1933. Harry and Jack Warner were important advocates and fundraisers of Roosevelt during his 1932 campaign, supporting his New Deal legislation in successful musicals like 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, and Footlight Parade. But while the Warner brothers posed as exemplars of the New Deal in real life and in their movies, they were attempting to reverse Roosevelt's policies within their studio and their industry. Through the manipulation of New Deal legislation, they, along with other studio moguls, sought to curtail workers' rights and salaries instead of bolstering both sides of the labour/management divide as they were supposed to do under NRA regulations, attempting to ensure the economic pain of the Depression fell as much as possible onto artists and craftsmen, not owners or management. With its tales of Hollywood stars and employees fighting to win a fair share of the proceeds of their labor, "Who's In The Money?" makes for an intriguing story of financial survival, political intrigue and backstabbing during the worst of the Great Depression.
Cohen's work has appeared in the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, the Independent (UK), Metro International (Sweden and Denmark), at Jazz At Lincoln Center, The American Film Institute, Film Forum NYC, London Jazz Festival, the British Film Institute, the Barbican, the Southbank Centre, the Bologna Film Festival, at numerous universities and on many BBC and NPR TV and radio stations and on SkyNews. He is also a musician and songwriter.
Harvey G Cohen's latest book, which has been in the works for years, focuses on a unique, highly researched perspective on a genre and period of African American music, and also will feature a documentary film with 25 new interviews taped throughout the United States. This project has already won funding from the Leverhulme Trust in the UK.
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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).