CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Musa Okwonga
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City/Place:
Berlin
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Country:
Germany
Current News
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What's Up?
“I’ve known Musa for many years and I’ve always found him a very honest, very poignant wordsmith. He writes from the heart with no filter, and that’s what the best lyricists do. I’m a fan.”
—Ed Sheeran
Musa is precise and all-encompassing in the same line. His poetry is intimate and erudite, passionate and beautiful.”
—Kate Tempest
“Stirring, politicallay-charged, ….uplifting and inspiring”
—TRENCH Mag
“Pulsating…deliciously multi-faceted”
—VICE, About to Blow
Life & Work
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Bio:
Musa Okwonga is an Ugandan-British author, journalist and musician (BBXO) living in Berlin.
BBXO make a style of music they call “Future Blues”, sitting comfortably between spoken word and rap, between politics and pop. Their wondrously organic music freely meanders through pop culture history from the eighties into the beyond, a libertine purely driven by heart and instinct. They formed when Krisz Kreuzer, of urban blues sensation Brixtonboogie, met up with Musa Okwonga, a lauded London-born poet who had recently moved to Berlin. “I talk about the future and Krisz talks about the blues”, Okwonga laughs. “I am more rooted in electronic music and hip hop while Krisz is coming from a rootsy blues or dub reggae and hip hop background.” From the beginning, their aim was to make songs that speak of love, struggle and friendship in a way that is moving, often rousing, and ultimately uplifting.
“We have no borders, no boundaries”, Kreuzer states, and for once, it’s not just a PR effective slogan. BBXO have crafted a bass-heavy and accessible sound that is urgent, passionate and powerful. Their tunes effortlessly travel from Soul to Dancehall, from Blues to Grime to Pop, and are suitable for the whole range of moods; the late-afternoon euphoria of a midsummer festival, the quiet evening at home, the lonely but hopeful train journey towards a new adventure. Above all, it is a music that connects people like it links Kreuzer and Okwonga. With a message that is both optimistic and altruistic, BBXO light a torch in an age of darkness. “We live in compelling and worrying times”, Okwonga states. “With BBXO, we want to put across that yes, we understand that these times are challenging, but there is a way through it, an underlying positivity. The common theme of my writing is the turning point. Each song goes through that: It usually starts very dark and ends fairly optimistic.”
Optimism. There is possibly nothing we need more these days. BBXO deliver that, clad in thick beats, warm textures and sophisticated and eloquent words that Kreuzer calls “outstanding in contemporary music”. Political without addressing it constantly, they give a voice to the voiceless, to the rejected, oppressed and sexually targeted, at the same time being extremely personal. “My background is very dominant in my lyrics”, Okwonga says. “They are about my family’s struggles back in Uganda, escaping as refugees, about adjusting to a new society, about a black person in a mostly white world and how that can be challenging.” Kreuzer underlays Okwonga’s words with a sound which is both contemporary and accessible, yet not lacking in depth and texture. A fateful match, as one cannot fail to see. “We both like a wide range of music and know exactly what the other stands for in BBXO”, Kreuzer says of this special bond.
With Kreuzer being based in Hamburg while Okwonga lives in Berlin, both of them love the respective possibilities their hometowns offer them. “Hamburg is a music city”, Kreuzer raves. “It has a great vibe to work in plus our label is based here.” Okwonga, on the other hand, praises the energy he feeds off in Berlin. “Berlin is the ideal breeding ground for creativity. The city is incredibly intense at night, delivering that huge adrenaline rush, but during the days it is very calm, making it a great place to reflect and work.” In the end, it’s the striking blend of two artists extraordinaire and the influence of two of Germany’s most vibrant cities that’s making BBXO one of a kind. Anti racist, anti hate – and pro love, pro earth, pro hope. Trust us, we need that.
Clips (more may be added)
"In a small world great things are possible." Creators in the Matrix mathematically gravitate toward all other creators in the Matrix. This mathematical gravity is called "the small world phenomenon". Step by step by step...
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.)
Caetano Veloso
THE MATRIX MISSION: What do Jimmy Cliff, Jimmy Page, and Dionne Warwick all have in common? They've all lived in Bahia and Dionne is moving back (visitors include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spike Lee, Michael Jackson, Beyoncé, David Byrne and Sting, among others). But so have lived and now live untold numbers of Bahian creators whose magisterial work has never had the major media means to reach beyond limited surroundings. In order that the creators of Bahia might have global reach, ALL creators must have global reach.
QED: 'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya! (thank you Johnny "Guitar" Watson)
Susan Rogers
"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
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze: manager, Kamasi Washington
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad: Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd-Webber: UK's premier cellist; brother of Andrew Lloyd Webber (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals: World's premier klezmer violinist
Developed here in the Historic Center of Salvador da Bahia ↓ .
Bule Bule (Assis Valente)
"♫ The time has come for these bronzed people to show their value..."
Recommend somebody and you will appear on that person's page. Somebody recommends you and they will appear on your page.
Both pulled by the inexorable mathematical gravity of the small world phenomenon to within range of everybody inside.
And by logical extension, to within range of all humanity outside as well.
8 billion human beings tend to within six degrees of connection to each other.
In a small world great things are possible.
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).
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).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian. If you create too, join them in the Matrix.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.