Henry Cole - THE MATRIX

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Who I Am & Where I Live:

Name: Henry Cole
City: New York City
Country: United States
Hometown: Mayaguez, Puerto Rico

My Life

Biographical: Henry Cole is a shape-shifting drummer whose versatile, multicultural style positions him at the forefront of a growing wave of jazz innovation and cross-cultural 21st-century rhythms.

A Grammy award winner, master drummer and skilled arranger he draws inspiration from a long line of highly skilled Boricua Pioneers who performed in local, military and jazz bands. His sonic roots – African, Indigenous and European – have been brewing for years and have come together to create a unique, mestizo sound.

A native of Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, Cole started playing the piano at the age of four and fell in love with the drums at the age of nine. The musical romance led to La Escuela de Musica de Mayaguez and the Conservatory de Musica de Puerto Rico.

Initially inspired by Latin percussionists Giovanni Hidalgo and Anthony Carrillo, Cole discovered a passion for Jazz and improvised music while attending Berklee College of Music in Boston. After moving back to Puerto Rico, Cole cultivated a reputation in Old San Juan’s diverse music scene, working with poets, rappers, bomba musicians, pleneros, rockers, and salsa ringleaders.

In the fall of 2003, Cole moved to New York City to attend the prestigious Manhattan School of Music where he received a scholarship to study with drummer, composer John Riley and quickly became one of the most in-demand sidemen.

Henry is an innovative, explosive drummer who takes Jazz to a never-before-explored dimension. Inspired by the album “Fela Ransome-Kuti and the Africa ’70 with Ginger Baker,” (1971) his debut album titled “Roots Before Branches” (2012) drew praise from National Public Radio, who selected it as “One of the Five New Directions in Jazz Evolution,” and living legend Chick Corea, applauded Henry for “beautifully expanding on the traditions he grew up with.”

In 2018 Henry released the single, “El Diablo” from the upcoming album, “Simple” with his new group Villa Locura, where he combines a wide variety of musical influences such as Puerto Rican folklore, funk, R&B, jazz, and Afro-Caribbean rhythms and creates a unique genre that bridges the traditional with the contemporary. He defines Villa Locura as “Raw, Spiritual, Interstellar Puertorican Funk!”

Literally and figuratively, Henry Cole is taking Puerto Rican “sabor” (flavor) to new, unexpected heights. His flexibility, grace and sheer power behind the drum-kit has proven indispensable to some of the world’s most acclaimed jazz groups, including the Grammy-nominated Miguel Zenón Quartet, Grammy Award winner David Sánchez, The Gary Burton Quartet, Quincy Jone’s Global Gumbo, Fabian Almazan Rhizome, The Ben Wendel Quartet, the all-star quartet “90 Miles” featuring Sánchez, Stefon Harris and Nicholas Payton, alto saxophonist Wil Vinson and the pianist Chano Domínguez, a living legend of new flamenco. Also, Henry has recorded and performed with Chambao, Calle13, Residente and Draco Rosa.

A unique musician and spiritualist, Henry takes a holistic approach to his craft. “I practice, exercise, study and try to maintain a healthy. I expose myself to many artists, from Giovanni Hidalgo to Virgil Donati, Zakir Hussein, The Wailers, Camaron, Felix Alduen and Kanye West. I also study the works of Einstein, Newton, Michelangelo, Joseph Campbell, Eric Thomas, Napoleon Hill, Taoism, Kobe Bryant, and the legendary martial artist, Bruce Lee.”

In 2011 Henry’s work with Miguel Zenon was nominated for Best Large Jazz Ensemble. Also, he was awarded the Grammy for the Best Urban Rap Album with Calle 13. In 2017 Miguel Zenon Quartet’s “Tipico” was nominated for Best Latin Jazz Album, and Residente’s self-titled album won the Grammy for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Music.

Henry Cole teaches private lessons, workshops and master classes around the world. He is an associate professor at Manhattan School Of Music, The New School, Academia Nazionale del Jazz, Sienna, Englesholm Jazz Camp in Denmark and an official Clinician for DW Drums.

Henry Cole’s primary goal is to see music as “One World,” a space beyond styles and reach a broad audience with a message of determination and unity.

This is a matrix navigable from artist to artist following recommendations-as-guideposts. It's based in the concept behind small world (so-called "six degrees of separation") networks...meaning that everybody inside the matrix is somehow findable/reachable from everybody else in a limited number of steps. And this heralds — for the first time since mankind began blowing through bone flutes some 30,000 years ago — the potential for a completely open and totally accessible artistic universe!

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

⇒ the collective human mind

IT IS 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...

Raimundo Sodré Now

Dengo

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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.