Nate Chinen via MATRIX ONLINE NETWORK

From Brazil with love →

If You Can't Stand the Heat

Image above is from the base of the cross in front of the church of São Francisco do Paraguaçu in the Bahian Recôncavo

Sprawled across broad equatorial latitudes, stoked and steamed and sensual in the widest sense of the word, limned in cadenced song, Brazil is a conundrum wrapped in a smile inside an irony...

It is not a European nation. It is not a North American nation. It is 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. It 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 — 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. Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Pandeirista on the roof. Nowhere else but here.

Oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption — elements of these are still strongly entrenched — have defined, delineated, and limited Brazil.

But strictured & bound as it has been and is, Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of — or perhaps because of — the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.

For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...

Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.

"Onde tem miséria, tem música!"* - Raymundo Sodré

And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.

Welcome to the kitchen!

* "Where there is misery, there is music!" Remarked during a conversation arcing from Bahia to Haiti and Cuba to New Orleans and the south side of Chicago and Harlem to the villages of Ireland and the gypsy camps and shtetls of Eastern Europe...

Why a "Matrix"?

I was explaining the ideas behind this nascent network to (João) Teoria (trumpet player above) over cervejas at Xique Xique (a bar named for a town in Bahia) in the Salvador neighborhood of Barris...

Like this (but in Portuguese): "It's kind of like Facebook if it didn't spy on you, but reversed... more about who you don't know than who you do know. And who doesn't know you but would be glad if they did. It's kind of like old Myspace Music but instead of having "friends" it has a list on your page of people you recommend. Not just musicians but writers, painters, filmmakers, dancers, chefs... anybody in the creative economy. It has a list of people who recommend you, or through whom you are recommended. It deals with arts which aren't recommendable by algorithm but need human intelligence behind recommendations. And the people who are recommended can recommend, creating a network of recommendations wherein by the small world phenomenon most people in the creative economy are within several steps of everybody else in the creative economy, no matter where they are in the world..."

And João said (in Portuguese): "A matrix where you can move from one artist to another..."

A matrix! That was it! The ORIGINAL meaning of matrix is "source", from "mater", Latin for "mother". So the term would help congeal the concept in the minds of people the network was being introduced to, while giving us a motto: "We're a real mother for ya!" (you know, Johnny "Guitar" Watson?)

The original idea was that musicians would recommend musicians, the network thus formed being "small world" (commonly called "six degrees of separation"). In the real world, the number of degrees of separation in such a network can vary, but while a given network might have billions of nodes (people, for example), the average number of steps between any two nodes will usually be minuscule.

Thus somebody unaware of the magnificent music of Bahia, Brazil will be able to conceivably move from almost any musician in this matrix to Bahia in just a few steps...

By the same logic that might move one from Bahia or anywhere else to any musician anywhere.

And there's no reason to limit this system to musicians. To the contrary, while there are algorithms written to recommend music (which, although they are limited, can be useful), there are no algorithms capable of recommending journalism, novels & short stories, painting, dance, film, chefery...

...a vast chasm that this network — or as Teoria put it, "matrix" — is capable of filling.

Nate Chinen I RECOMMEND

CURATION

from this node by: Matrix+

This is the Universe of

Name: Nate Chinen
City/Place: Beacon, New York
Country: United States

Life & Work

Bio: NATE CHINEN has been writing about jazz for more than twenty years.

He spent a dozen of them working as a critic for The New York Times, and helmed a long-running column for JazzTimes. As the director of editorial content at WBGO, he works with the multiplatform program Jazz Night in America and contributes a range of coverage to NPR Music.

A twelve-time winner of the Helen Dance–Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Writing, presented by the Jazz Journalists Association, he is also coauthor of Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, the 2003 autobiography of festival impresario and producer George Wein.

His work appears in Best Music Writing 2011, Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt (Duke University Press, 2012), and Miles Davis: The Complete Illustrated History (Voyageur Press, 2012).

Chinen was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He started his career as a music critic in 1996, at the Philadelphia City Paper. There he covered one of the great jazz cities at ground level, writing a steady stream of reviews and features, along with a biweekly column, The Gig.

He moved to New York City in 1998, and began writing for a range of publications, including DownBeat, Blender and Vibe. For several years he was the jazz critic for Weekend America, a syndicated radio program. He covered jazz for the Village Voice from 2003 through 2005, when he became a regular contributor to The New York Times.

Chinen's closest affiliation with a music periodical has been with JazzTimes, since the turn of the century. In 2004 he revived The Gig as a column for the magazine, where it ran in 125 consecutive installments.

At the beginning of 2017, Chinen became director of editorial content at WBGO, the global leader in jazz radio, broadcasting from Newark. He manages the full spectrum of jazz coverage at wbgo.org; works closely with Jazz Night in America, a multimedia program hosted by Christian McBride; and writes regularly for NPR Music, about jazz and other genres.

He lives in Beacon, New York, with his wife and two daughters.

Contact Information

Email: [email protected]

Media | Markets

▶ Book Purchases: http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/248047/playing-changes-by-nate-chinen/9781101873496/
▶ Website: http://www.playingchangesbook.com
▶ Website 2: http://bandcamp.com/natechinen

Quotes, Notes & Etc. “Nate Chinen has written a terrific book about the shape of contemporary jazz, and right now is a terrific time to read it.” —The Washington Post

“Essential. . . . Fascinating and vital. . . . A perfectly timed, well-tuned chronicle of the past, present, and future of jazz.” —Slate

“Chinen has excellent taste in unruly new sounds and big, bent ears.” —The New York Times

“Brilliant. Incisive. Jazz lives on and on and on, folks.” —Sonny Rollins

“Daring and illuminating. . . . No writer has confronted the of-this-moment character of contemporary jazz with the clarity and authority that Nate Chinen has brought to it. . . . He is a listener of true brilliance.” —David Hajdu, The Nation

“Graceful and comprehensive.” —Rolling Stone

“Chinen’s passion for the art form and deep understanding and knowledge of jazz make for a fascinating read. His firm support of the music and belief that the changes taking place within it will continue to serve it well—solidifying jazz as a global mode of communication without bounds—are truly uplifting.”—Herbie Hancock

“A sturdy, finely crafted and open-ended framework for consideration of where jazz is headed, and why.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Sharp in style and warm in feeling, Nate Chinen’s virtuoso survey dispenses with the familiar agendas and polemics that have too often boxed in writing on contemporary jazz. He follows the music where it goes and exults in its plurality of voices.”—Alex Ross, author of The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century

“A thorough and thoughtful examination. . . . [Chinen] looks at the work of a generation of artists that includes Kamasi Washington, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Jason Moran and finds a level of imagination and expression that has stretched the genre beyond the ‘jazz wars’ of years ago into an ever-expanding sound of endless possibility.” —Los Angeles Times

“Exciting reading. . . . The book builds impressively. . . . Should delight musicians and readers of all kinds.” —DownBeat

“Dazzling. . . . A stunning and wondrous journey. . . . Chinen improvises brilliantly across the progressions of jazz so that every page of his book brims with insight.” —No Depression

“Elegant, evocative writing. . . . Mesmerizing. . . . Essential. . . . Like the best nonfiction, Playing Changes will motivate jazz diehards and neophytes alike to discover what’s out there and what’s on the horizon.” —PopMatters

“A brilliant and wide-ranging new history of jazz. . . . Chinen’s virtuoso jazz history will drive
readers to listen to the music anew, or for the first time.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Chinen is setting a new standard. . . . [Playing Changes] brings jazz criticism not only to a new period of history but also to a fascinating era of musical exploration and discovery.” —Booklist

Clips (more may be added)

"Playing Changes": In Conversation w/ Nate Chinen
By Nate Chinen

267 views

YOU RECOMMEND

Imagine the world's creative economy at your fingertips. Imagine 10 doors side-by-side. Beyond each, 10 more, each opening to a "creative" somewhere around the planet. After passing through 8 such doorways you will have followed 1 pathway out of 100 million possible (2 sets of doorways yield 10 x 10 = 100 pathways). This is a simplified version of the metamathematics that makes it possible to reach everybody in the global creative economy in just a few steps It doesn't mean that everybody will be reached by everybody. It does mean that everybody can be reached by everybody.

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