Kendrick Scott ← THE MATRIX of FABULOUS DISCOVERY ←

POWERED BY THE MOST SOPHISTICATED & SUBTLE RECOMMENDATION SOFTWARE EVER DEVISED → THE COLLECTIVE HUMAN MIND

Kendrick Scott's world is channelled to by matrix vectors IN from the following artists ⇊ and explorable & reactionable categories:

The Matrix is a concatenated system of vectored pathways in which artists can curate other artists in multiple aspects. It was developed in Brazil in order to provide worldwide access to Brazilian musicians by including them in a small world (~6 degrees) network in which ALL artists are in close reach of artists (and others) everywhere.

VECTORS OUT to RECOMMENDED OTHERS ⇶ 3

☀ VECTORS OUT are by THE MATRIX

Who I Am & Where I Live:

Name: Kendrick Scott
City: New York City
Country: United States

My Life

Biographical: Drummer and composer Kendrick Scott kicked off his Blue Note contract four years ago with We Are the Drum. Expertly produced by Derrick Hodge, Scott’s creative confidant and musical brother, and featuring a stunning guest performance by vocalist Lizz Wright, it earned rave reviews and reiterated how Oracle, Scott’s long-running working group, is one of the most thoughtfully powerful jazz bands of its generation.

When it came time to follow this success up with a new effort, however, Scott felt stuck. Nothing he wrote or played seemed good enough; self-doubt had formed a blockade where inspiration once flowed. But, as Scott points out today, “Wayne Shorter says there’s always something unfolding on the other side of the negative.” Hodge, who’d signed on again as Scott’s producer, witnessed what the drummer was putting himself through and had a similar realization. For years Hodge has been dedicated to shaping Oracle’s sonic identity, even relinquishing his role as the band’s bassist to work behind the scenes. Scott calls him “the sixth member of Oracle.”

“Derrick said, ‘We need to tap into your fears and insecurities and make some art about them,’” Scott recalls. “That was amazing to me—that he got me out of my own head.” Scott gathered up the compositions he’d been working on—both finished and unfinished—and headed into the studio, where “Derrick and the band helped me unfold them, and they became the record that you hear.”

That gorgeous new Blue Note album from Scott and Oracle is called, not incidentally, A Wall Becomes A Bridge. And the implications of that title aren’t exclusive to Scott’s artistic breakthrough. “A Wall is a provocation,” Scott says, adding that he “loves to create things for conversation. So I also wanted the idea to speak about a certain president.” Many of us would argue that 45 is all wall and no bridge, but Scott sees a silver lining in this increasingly absurd political age. “With all of these different issues coming to the forefront, we can now say, ‘Things like systemic racism still exist and we need to deal with them.’ More people are paying attention to the government, and that level of intensity is what we need—as is that level of intent in how we vote and how we live and how we treat others. All of those things are a bridge.”

An even more essential part of why this 12-track song cycle is so affecting lies in its ability to be interpreted. A musical and metaphorical journey in reverse, it arrives with a bridge and voyages back toward its beginning as a wall. Along the way, a gamut of themes is explored, including innocence (“Archangel”), acceptance (“Windows”), fear and insecurity (“Voices”) and resistance (“Plēh”—or help spelled backwards). “I want listeners’ imaginations to run wild,” Scott explains. “I want them to think about, ‘What does this mean to me and my community? What does it mean to our country and the world at large?’”

These performances—these soundscapes—certainly provide an occasion for searching and reflecting. Oracle’s peerless lineup includes the pianist Taylor Eigsti who Scott calls “the engine of the band”—a virtuoso with a keen sense of time, and a natural, good-humored communicator on and off the bandstand. Bassist Joe Sanders, as Scott puts it, is the “embodiment of innovation,” at once a stalwart anchor who understands that less is more and a supremely gifted melodic voice who belongs in the frontline. Scott met his guitarist, Mike Moreno, at age 14, when both were students at Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, the venerated incubator for jazz talent like Jason Moran, Robert Glasper, Chris Dave and Eric Harland. “I kind of started the band around Mike,” Scott recalls. “He’s always been an inspiration to me.” Moreno’s playing here is equal parts expressive grace and jaw-dropping mastery. But it’s a similar sense of aesthetics that might be Moreno’s most crucial contribution to Oracle; namely, Scott and Moreno share an ongoing search for the space between Brazilian geniuses like Milton Nascimento and the icons of postbop. On tenor and soprano saxophones, bass clarinet and alto flute is John Ellis, a still-underrated musician whose staggering range of abilities extends from jazz’s deepest roots—Scott met him while on tour in New Orleans—to its state-of-the-art, 21st century harmonic and rhythmic language.

Within that singular meld of talent on A Wall Becomes A Bridge is a secret weapon: the turntablist Jahi Sundance, whose credits include high-profile hip-hop production as well as tour-DJ duties for Glasper, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Meshell Ndegeocello. On both interlude-esque cuts (like “BeLoved,” a near-psychedelic probe into trust and vulnerability) and longer explorations like the meditative opener, “New Eyes,” Sundance immerses his own artful craft into the musicianship that surrounds him. (In many band-plus-DJ situations, Scott argues, “the band plays on top of what the DJ’s playing. Jahi was inside of Oracle.”) What’s more, Sundance was able to internalize the concepts and purpose behind Scott’s new work, as well as the genre-bending mission that has defined Oracle from the start. With brilliant oversight from Hodge as producer, the sessions became unprecedented aural experiences. “What he added really makes you contemplate what the record means,” Scott says. “The sound of it and the sonics. [Jahi is] like a bridge.”

As far back as he can recall, Scott, who was born in Houston in 1980, has imbued his music with deeper meaning. “Coming up in church,” he says, “you played music for a message; you played music for a purpose. Oracle lives in that space, no matter what we’re playing.” Like his fellow Houston drum greats Harland and Jamire Williams, Scott grew up with a mother who was an acclaimed gospel choir director. On top of that bedrock, he developed his technique through private mentorship and public jazz education, spurred on by an environment of fierce but brotherly competition. He moved to New York in 2003, and raised his profile performing and recording for Blue Note in trumpeter Terence Blanchard’s band (with future Blue Note artists Hodge, pianist Aaron Parks and guitarist Lionel Loueke).

“I was receiving so much information from Terence on bandleading and writing,” Scott recalls. “He was saying, ‘Take that opportunity and try to lead your own band.’ I credit him with giving me that kick in the butt.” He debuted as a bandleader with 2006’s The Source, released through his own World Culture Music label, and in 2009, the New York Times featured him in a piece entitled “Five Drummers Whose Time Is Now.” In the ensuing years, his reputation as one of the premier drummer-composers currently in jazz has only grown.

Throughout his time at the helm of his own group, Scott has employed the lessons he’s learned as a sideman working with jazz’s great bandleaders. Like Blanchard, Scott encourages his players to exercise their personalities and to contribute music. (A Wall Becomes A Bridge features tunes by Eigsti, Moreno, Hodge, and Parks alongside the drummer’s writing.) He has also performed regularly as part of Charles Lloyd’s band, and has adapted the tenor legend’s sense of trust and intuition to define Oracle. “The main thing I learned from Charles is that everybody needs to take ownership,” he says. “I feel like what makes Oracle Oracle is that each member has ownership of the band. They have ownership of the music and ownership of the intent.”

The Matrix is 100% algorithm free. It is built on H.I. (human intelligence) rather than A.I. Absolutely zero FB/Cambridge Analytical-style espionage.

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.

THE MATRIX BEGAN IN BAHIA, GROUND ZERO FOR BRAZIL'S SUN-CARONA-VIBRANT CULTURE

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

IT 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. With David Dye of World Café below, for broadcast on U.S. National Public Radio.

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 had figured out decades before) that greatness and fame are completely independent. The wave repeated here in Brazil with Raimundo Sodré, who went from zero to national fame and back to zero.

HENCE THE (so far world's only) SMALL WORLD CURATION NETWORK...

⇒ A wave of Exu's 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 (Exu -- eh-SHOO -- is the Afro-Brazilian deity responsible for opening pathways).

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 — although the number of steps might vary — 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 & His Music from Northeastern Brazil

Dengo

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Sina de Cantador - Raimundo Sodré (6,551 plays)
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Magnetismo - Raimundo Sodré (6,234 plays)
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Sacando a Cana - Raimundo Sodré (5,881 plays)
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Mêrêrê - Raimundo Sodré (5,404 plays)
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A Massa - Raimundo Sodré (4,959 plays)
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Jardim do Amor - Raimundo Sodré (4,632 plays)
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Debaixo do Céu - Raimundo Sodré (4,113 plays)
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Desejo de Amar - Raimundo Sodré (3,824 plays)
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Oração pra Yá Oxum - Raimundo Sodré (3,703 plays)
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Yá África - Raimundo Sodré (3,474 plays)
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Meu Rio, Cadê o Papel - Raimundo Sodré (3,149 plays)
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Casa de Trois - Raimundo Sodré (2,869 plays)
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Mulher é Laço que Prende o Coração do Va... (2,532 plays)

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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.

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.