Bio:
With a long career as a drummer, producer, composer and arranger, Cuban Michael Olivera, a graduate of the National School of Art in Havana, recorded his first work as a bandleader, "Ashé", a word derived from the Yoruba language (Afro-Cuban) , and whose meaning is "divine blessing". After the success of ASHÈ, Olivera presented his work to us, once again captivating OASIS with a sea of contagious melodies and rhythms, now Olivera surprises us again with this new formation The Cuban Jazz Syndicate, which brings together the best artists Cubans residing in Spain, and the brand new album "Y llegó la luz".
Closely linked to the jazz scene, he is one of the most important drummers of the current music scene, with more than 50 recorded albums and hundreds of projects with which he has participated in such important festivals as Jazz a Vienne, Marciac, North Sea Jazz , Montreux Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Fest, Blue Note NY, Tokyo Blue Note, Jakarta Jazz Festival, Warsaw Jazz Festival, Madrid Jazz Festival, Barcelona Jazz Festival and many others.
Michael Olivera was born in Santa Clara (Cuba), finished his music studies at the National School of Art (ENA - Havana) and, from an early age, has developed a long and intense professional career.
He has played with renowned artists and producers such as Quincy Jones, Alfredo Rodriguez, Richard Bona, Paquito de Rivera, Jorge Pardo, Pepe Rivero, Caramelo de Cuba, Rick Wakeman, Javier Colina, Tomatico, Munir Hossn, Yonathan Avishai, Sintesis, among others.
ESPAÑOL
Con una larga carrera como baterista, productor, compositor y arreglista, cubano Michael Olivera, graduado de la Escuela Nacional de Arte de la Habana, grabó su primer trabajo como bandleader, “Ashé”, palabra que deriva del lenguaje Yoruba (Afro-Cubano), y cuyo significado es “Bendición divina”. Después de el éxito de ASHÈ, Olivera nos presentó su trabajo, OASIS cautivando una vez más a todo público con un mar de melodías y ritmos contagiosos, ahora Olivera nos vuelve a sorprender con esta nueva formación The Cuban Jazz Syndicate, que reúne los mejores artistas cubanos residentes en España en su nuevo disco "Y llegó la luz".
Estrechamente ligado ligado a la escena jazzística, es uno de los bateristas más importantes de la escena musical actual, con más de 60 discos grabados y cientos de proyectos con los que ha participado en festivales tan importantes como Jazz a Vienne, Marciac, North Sea Jazz, Montreux Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Fest, Blue Note NY, Blue Note Tokio, Jakarta Jazz Festival, Warsaw Jazz Festival, Madrid Jazz Festival, Barcelona Jazz Festival y muchos otros.
Desde muy temprana edad, ha desarrollado una larga e intensa carrera profesional. Ha tocado con reconocidos artistas y productores como son Quincy Jones, Alfredo Rodriguez TRIO, Richard Bona, Jorge Pardo, Paquito de Rivera, Pepe Rivero, Caramelo de Cuba, Rick Wakeman, Javier Colina, Tomatico, Munir Hossn, Yonathan Avishai, Sintesis, Chano Dominguez entre muchos otros grandes artístas.
Michael Olivera TRIO - " Moanin' " - Live AC Recoletos Jazz Club
Line up:
Michael Olivera - drums and voice
Javier Colina - acustic bass
Alex Conde - piano
Michael Olivera & The Cuban Jazz Syndicate
Live at Bimhuis / Amsterdam 2023 / Bimhuis Productions
Line up:
Michael Olivera : Voice and drum
Pepe Rivero: Piano
Inoidel Gonzales: Tenor sax
Miron Rafajlovic: Trumpet
Yarel Hernandez: Electric bas...
Human creativity is everywhere. From Brazil it's all being connected in a manner allowing one to move from any creator to any other creator in just a few steps. Artificial Intelligence & algorithms not necessary. Real intelligence, yes.
Raymundo Sodré Global
Via Matrix, artists like Raymundo Sodré (who was crushed under Brazil's dictatorship) can inspire around the world. Sodré's (and Jorge Portugual's) A MASSA is a Brazilian anthem exhorting the powerless to stand up to the powerful.
THE MATRIX IS THE MOTHER SHIP (it carries people to culture; per above, it carries culture too)
THE MATRIX IS CULTURAL DIFFUSION ON A PLANETARY SCALE (Bahia is Ground Zero)
THE MATRIX IS THE INTEGRATED GLOBAL CREATIVE ECONOMY (matrixed economist, Dr. Darius Mans, presents the Africare Award to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — Brazil's current president — in 2012)
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; recorded "Purple Rain", "Around the World in a Day", "Parade", and "Sign o' the Times"; now director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory)
Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched! — Julian Lloyd Webber (most highly renowned cellist in the United Kingdom; brother of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats...)
This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :))) — Clarice Assad (pianist, composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world)
This Matrix was built by an ex-royalty "rescuer" (Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley and many others) so that deep Brazilian culture, much of it otherwise impossible to find if one is not right there where it is made, might also (via an alternative to major media) be discoverable from all around the world. To do this it integrates this immensity into a system whereby ALL CULTURE EVERYWHERE — from small villages in Africa to Grammy-winning artists in Los Angeles — writers, filmmakers, painters... — can be found from anywhere on the planet.
The Matrix uncoils from the Recôncavo of Bahia, Brazil, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history and from where some of the most physically and spiritually uplifting music ever made (samba and its precursor chula, per the Saturno Brothers above) evolved...
WHAT IS THE RECÔNCAVO? The peninsula upon which Salvador is situated is like the thumb of an open and grasping hand, what is normally thought of as the Recôncavo then being defined by the curved index finger. This way of definition developed when agricultural products were brought to Salvador by boat, sometimes making their way first down the Paraguaçu river after having been carried overland from the sertão (backlands) to Cachoeira, the river debouching into the Bay of All Saints at Maragogipe. The city of Bahia (as it was usually called then) was crouched on the bay, comprised of a commercial district much smaller in area than today (landfill has increased it greatly), the area around the upper section of the elevator, and what is now called Pelourinho.
Much of the remainder of the peninsula was given to sugarcane plantations, and dotted within the Atlantic rainforest were countless quilombos (Afro-Brazilian villages founded during the age of slavery); both are attested to today in commonly used city names. The neighborhood of Garcia was once Fazenda Garcia (fazenda being a farm or plantation), and this denomination is still used today to distinguish one end of Garcia (fim-de-linha) from the other (the Campo Grande end). Neighborhoods Engenho Velho de Federação and Engenho Velho de Brotas are so called for the old mills (engenhos velhos) which pressed the caldo (juice, so to speak) from the cane so laboriously hacked out of the fields. The neighborhood of Cabula is named for an nkisi (deity) of candomblé angola (the first candomblé -- a West African religious belief system -- to arrive in Bahia)...whose rhythms comprise the basis for samba, meaning that the rhythms to which so many in the world inexpertly swayed as Stan Getz's saxophone soared and João and Astrud Gilberto sensuously intoned -- this paragon of suave Brazilian sophistication -- was born in the rough senzalas (slavequarters) of Bahia. Ironically enough, the barefoot senzala version was/is far more sophisticated than the sophisticated version.
But times have changed, and Cabula is now a crowded, non-descript middle-to-working class Salvador city neighborhood (plenty of candomblé around though), and Engenhos Velhos de Federação and Brotas are swarming working class neighborhoods (ditto the candomblé); the senzala samba, the samba chula and samba-de-roda have disappeared. A simplified version -- Bahian pagode -- is heard everywhere in Salvador, but the real-deal stuff has died out here in the big city. It remains, however, a potent force on the remainder of its native ground, the Recôncavo proper, where it is danced to upon pounded earth, under moonlight broken by banana, palm and mango leaves, lifting the souls of its participants almost like something religious, which it was, and gods aside, is (again, per the Saturno brothers in the clip above).
By the same mathematics positioning some 8 billion human beings within some 6 or so steps of each other, people in the Matrix tend to within close, accessible steps of everybody else inside the Matrix.
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.
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil's national music — the pandeiro — the hand drum in the opening scene above — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil's culturally fecund nordeste/northeast, where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa (Lagoon of the Canoe) and raised in Olho d'Águia (Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil's aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.