What do Jimmy Cliff, Jimmy Page, and Dionne Warwick all have in common? For one thing, they've all lived in Bahia. And so have, and do, untold numbers of other wonderful creators whose magisterial work has never reached beyond very limited surroundings. That's why all this began. If all creators can potentially have global reach, Bahian creators can too.
In this matrix it's not which pill you take, it's which pathways you take, pathways originating in the sprawling cultural matrix of Brazil: Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, European, Asian... Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, delineated by the Bay of All Saints, earthly center of gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings — and the sublimity they created — presided over by the ineffable Black Rome of Brazil: Salvador da Bahia.
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano Veloso, son of the Recôncavo, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
What's Up?
Dawn: Composition for Cello and Orchestra
“Dawn” was composed by Meena Karimi and orchestrated by Arson Fahim. This is her first piece for cello and orchestra and it was premiered in 2021. The piece portrays the pains, dreams, hopes, and struggles faced by women and girls in Afghanistan today—and ends on an unresolved chord, to symbolize the many challenges still faced by Meena’s generation.
During her speech at an event honoring International Women’s Day, Ms. Karimi stated: "The reason why I left my song incomplete is that I wanted to tell the truth. The truth is the unfinished struggle of women. I will complete this song when all Afghan women have achieved their dreams and rights."
“Dawn” has been performed by the National Symphony Orchestra of Afghanistan and the international premiere was performed by the Chineke! Orchestra at the Southbank Centre in London, UK.
Life & Work
Bio:
Meena Karimi is a cellist and composer from Afghanistan. She started her musical studies at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music and is currently majoring in cello at Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, U.S.A.
As a young female musician in Afghanistan, Meena has had to overcome many challenges including societal pressures, gender inequality, and social intolerance related to music and her musical practice. As a cultural ambassador, she's inspired a global audience through her performances with the Zohra Orchestra, Afghanistan's first all-female orchestra, and has been featured in interviews with financial times, NBC News, SBS News Australia, and BBC World. She continues to build upon the important values and the many ways music can help others as well as represent her story to connect with the world.
Meena’s first composition, Dawn, is for cello and orchestra and it was premiered in 2021 by the National Symphony Orchestra of Afghanistan in Kabul and the international premiere was performed by the Chineke! Orchestra at the Southbank Centre in London, UK. The piece portrays the pains, dreams, hopes, and struggles faced by women and girls in Afghanistan today—and ends on an unresolved chord, to symbolize the many challenges still faced by Meena’s generation.
Meena has gained experience on a large international platform with performances in a dozen countries and in venues such as the Sydney Opera House, the British Museum in London, and the World Economic Forum in Davos, and has also enjoyed collaborations and partnerships with youth groups from Northern Ireland’s Beyond Skin and Portugal’s Orquestra Divino Sospiro.
Alongside her study of the cello repertoire and chamber music, Meena has learned the Dilruba (the traditional Afghan bowed instrument) and holds a large repertoire of Afghan traditional and folk songs. Meena is an avid reader, writer, loves to draw, and speaks three languages.
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"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
I built the Matrix below (I'm below left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) 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. 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).