CURATION
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from this page:
by Augmented Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Kurt Andersen
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City/Place:
Brooklyn, NY
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Country:
United States
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Hometown:
Omaha, Nebraska
Life & Work
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Bio:
Kurt Andersen is a writer. He spent his first 20 years in Nebraska, and most of the rest in New York City. His latest book is Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History, a companion volume to Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History, both of which were New York Times bestsellers. He’s also the author of the critically acclaimed, bestselling novels True Believers, Heyday, and Turn of the Century.
Evil Geniuses is "a work of towering importance," according to Anand Giridharadas, who in the New York Times Book Review also called it an "essential, absorbing book" in which Andersen "carefully, meticulously, overwhelmingly, argues through facts" but "never loses the texture of actual human beings. He is a graceful, authoritative guide, and he has a Writer-with-a-capital-W’s ability to defamiliarize the known." Fantasyland, according to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell in 2017, was “most important book that I have read this year," and Stephen Dubner (Freakonomics) said it “presents the very best kind of idea—one that, in retrospect, seems obvious, but that took a seer like Kurt Andersen to piece together,” with “thinking and writing [that] are dazzling, an absolute joy to read and will leave your brain dancing with excitement.” True Believers appeared on the best-novels-of-the-year lists of the San Francisco Chronicle and Washington Post, and Booklist called it “an ambitious and remarkable novel” of “spellbinding suspense.”
True Believers appeared on the best-novels-of-the- year lists of the San Francisco Chronicle and Washington Post. Booklist called it “an ambitious and remarkable novel” of “spellbinding suspense.” According to other reviewers it is “the best reverie on the 1960s and their legacy” (Fortune), “emotionally accurate” and “profound” (USA Today), and “a great American novel” (Vanity Fair).
Heyday was a New York Times bestseller that the Los Angeles Times called “a major work.” The New York Times Book Review said there is “something moving in the energy of its amazement.” And the Houston Chronicle (and nine other papers) said it “deserves instant acceptance into the ranks [of] Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man, E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, [and] Gore Vidal’s Lincoln.” It was included on several best-books-of-the-year lists, and won the Langum Prize as the best American historical novel of the year.
The New York Times called Turn of the Century “wickedly satirical” and “outrageously funny” and named it a Notable Book of the year, while The Wall Street Journal called it a “smart, funny and excruciatingly deft portrait of our age.” It was a national bestseller, and Publishers Weekly called it one of the ten best long novels ever
He has also written for film, television and the stage. He was executive producer and head writer of two prime-time specials for NBC, How to Be Famous and Hit List, starring Jerry Seinfeld and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. He has written screenplays for Walt Disney and Village Roadshow Pictures, and pilots for ABC, NBC, HBO and Amazon. He was co-author of Loose Lips, a satirical off-Broadway revue that had long runs in New York and Los Angeles starring Bebe Neuwirth, Harry Shearer and Andy Richter.
He regularly appears as a commentator on MSNBC, and has delivered TED talks. He served as a summer guest Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, and still contributes regularly to the Times. He has also been also a regular columnist and critic for New York, The New Yorker and TIME.
He was the host and co-creator of Studio 360, the cultural magazine show produced by Public Radio International from 2000 to 2020. It was broadcast on 250 stations and distributed by podcast to almost 1 million listeners each week. The show won Peabody Awards for broadcast excellence in both 2005 and 2013.
As an editor, Kurt co-founded the transformative satirical magazine Spy and served as editor-in-chief of New York. He also co-founded Inside, a digital and print publication covering the media and entertainment industries, oversaw a relaunch of Colors magazine, co-founded the online newsletter Very Short List, and served as editor-at- large for Random House.
He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Rhode Island School of Design, taught at the School of Visual Arts, and serves on the boards of Film Streams and the Pratt Institute. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Anne Kreamer.
My Writing
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Publications:
Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History
During the twentieth century, America managed to make its economic and social systems both more and more fair and more and more prosperous. A huge, secure, and contented middle class emerged. All boats rose together. But then the New Deal gave way to the Raw Deal. Beginning in the early 1970s, by means of a long war conceived of and executed by a confederacy of big business CEOs, the superrich, and right-wing zealots, the rules and norms that made the American middle class possible were undermined and dismantled. The clock was turned back on a century of economic progress, making greed good, workers powerless, and the market all-powerful while weaponizing nostalgia, lifting up an oligarchy that served only its own interests, and leaving the huge majority of Americans with dwindling economic prospects and hope.
Why and how did America take such a wrong turn? In this deeply researched and brilliantly woven cultural, economic, and political chronicle, Kurt offers a fresh, provocative, and eye-opening history of America’s undoing, naming names, showing receipts, and unsparingly assigning blame—to the radical right in economics and the law, the high priests of high finance, a complacent and complicit Establishment, and liberal “useful idiots,” among whom he includes himself.
Clips (more may be added)
For all roads here lead to Black Rome, and everywhere, but all pathways lead to Bahia.
I created this matrix so the world might discover elemental cultural genius here in Bahia, Brazil: João do Boi (rest in power) and magisterial others... But following the dictates of logic, in order to make these artists discoverable worldwide, the matrix must, to the greatest extent possible, do likewise for all creators across the planet.
Pardal/Sparrow
The Integrated Global Creative Economy: uncoiling from this sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix...
The mathematics of the small world phenomenon transforming the creative universe into a creative village wherein all are connected by short pathways to all...
Tap the grey crosses on somebody's Matrix Page to recommend that person for the categories next to those crosses.
(Crosses visible when you are logged in)
The crosses will turn green.
That person/category will appear in your My Curation & Recommendations.
You will appear in that person's Incoming Curation and Recommendations.
You and the person you are recommending will be pulled by mathematical gravity to within discoverable distance of all other creators inside the Matrix.
In a small world great things are possible.
"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"
This 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.
Ex Terra Brasilis
Wolfram MathWorld
UNIVERSAL
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