Henry Cole 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 Henry Cole:
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
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Henry Cole
- City: New York City
- Country: United States
- Hometown: Mayaguez, Puerto Rico
My Life & Work
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Bio:
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.
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Buy My Music (downloads/CDs/DVDs): http://www.henrycolemusic.com/music-store/
- ▶ Buy My Merch: http://www.henrycolemusic.com/music-store/
- ▶ Twitter: HenryColeDrums
- ▶ Instagram: villalocura
- ▶ Website: http://www.henrycolemusic.com
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/HenryColeOnDrums
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/3Ky9UYo3Sx9qxgiOCRmraD
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
"Henry Cole is one of my favorite musicians. Check him out every chance you get."
– John Riley
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 from New Orleans to Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... through 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.
