...called by The Guardian "one of the 10 best around the world". Connecting your own world to the Matrix by link per this Guardian article furthers the discovery of magisterial artists in singular Bahia, and around our entire singing, dancing planet.
Bio:
Born in Tarrafal, on the island of Santiago, Cape Verde, in 1964, Mario Lucio's phenomenal creativity was noticed at an early age. By age 12 he was already playing several instruments, composing and writing poems. At age 14 he was one of the greatest musicians of his generation, being part of a revolutionary band of young boys called Abel Djassi (in tribute to the revolutionary Amilcar Cabral), which introduced sophisticated arrangements on traditional music.
Today Mario Lucio is one of the most recognizable figures of Cape Verde's cultural and music scene, both locally and internationally. Say the name Mario Lucio and he is instantly recognizable as a musician, a singer-songwriter, and one of the country's foremost and leading composers of all time. He is the country's most internationally acclaimed writer, the poet who marked a turning point in new Cape Verdean poetry with the book "Birth of a World", one of the main thinkers of his generation, the author of "Manifesto a Criolização," and the Minister of Culture who launched the new epistemology on culture, with the book "Meu Verbo Cultura".
Performances: As Cape Verde's most sought-after performing artist, Mario Lucio has played in all the 5 Continents; North America (United States), South America (Brazil), Europe (Austria, Belgium, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia), Africa (Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal), Asia (China, Macau, South Korea) and many others.
Compositions: Composing in Cape Verde's leading music styles such as Morna, Funaná, Batuque and Coladeira, Mario Lucio's signature songs and arrangements are found in an array of albums and songs most of which were interpreted and recorded by the late Cesaria Evora and including the country's emerging and established singers as well as artists as far afield as Brazil, France and Italy.
Mario Lucio's permanent research and perfection of Cabo Verde's traditional music has given the country's sound a fresh air of modernity, poetry and originality and this is evident in the 9 albums he has released since 1995.
Founder and leader of the former musical group Simentera, an ex-libris of Cape Verdean music, he is also a multi-instrumentalist and arranger of various albums by Cape Verdean solo artists. Mario Lucio has earned his rightful place in his country's artists hall of fame and because of the high quality of his compositions, arrangements and philosophy of his albums he has become a reference about anything music and culture in Cape Verde.
Mario Lucio has a degree in Law. He was a Member of the Cape Verdean parliament from 1996 to 2001. He served as Advisor to the Minister of Culture (1992) and Cultural Advisor to the Commissioner for Expo/92 and author of Cape Verde's musical project for the 92 Seville Expo and the 98 Lisbon Expo. He is a Cultural Ambassador of Cape Verde and was Minister for Culture and Arts from 2011 to 2016.
Discography:
Albums with his former band Simentera: Raiz (1995), Barro e Voz (1997), Simentera (1999), Tr'adictional (2002); Solo: Mar e Luz (2004), Ao Vivo e aos Outros (2006), Badyo (2008), Kreol (2011), Funanight (2019).
Mario Lucio's Collaborations: Cesaria Evora, Mayra Andrade (Cape Verde), Manu Dibango (Cameroon) Touré Kunda (Senegal), Paulinho Da Viola, Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento (Brazil), Pablo Milanes (Cuba), Mario Canonge and Ralph Tamar (Martinique), Maria João, Mário Laginha, Luis Represas, Pedro Joia (Portugal) Toumani Diabate (Mali), Harry Belafonte (USA), Judith Sephuma (South Africa), Wanda Baloyi (Mozambique), Oliver Mtukudzi (Zimbabwe)
Recommend Mário Lúcio in order to appear here. Click on the grey crosses visible when logged in. Your photo will appear, with a link back to your page:
These are pathways, originating in the sprawling cultural matrix of Brazil (Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazik, Arab, European, Asian...), integrating cultural matrixes worldwide.
Matrix ground zero is the Recôncavo of Bahia...virtually unknown center of gravity circumscribing Bahia's Bay of All Saints...end of voyage for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history...birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. Many countries are happier than Brazil, but none are more joyous.
"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
The Matrix was built below 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 (that's me below left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... 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).