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THE INTEGRATED GLOBAL CREATIVE ECONOMY
I CURATE

This is the Universe of

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

CURATION

from this node by: Matrix+

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

294 views

Nate Chinen Curated

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 anybody 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.

"Chegou a hora dessa gente bronzeada mostrar seu valor / The time has come for these bronzed people to show their value..."

Português →

Sprawled across broad equatorial latitudes...

Stoked and steamed and sensual in the broadest sense of the word...

Limned in prosody & cadenced song...

Set in a conundrum wrapped in a smile inside an irony...

From Bahia, with love: All of this — based in short-range connections between vastly disparate people and entities in the (integrated) global creative economy — began among the sublimely moving people in the clip above. Music: Assis Valente of Santo Amaro, Bahia; Video: Betão Aguiar of Salvador, Bahia

You are now within the vast, virtual, arboreal canopy of a rainforest tree rising from Brazil ... concatenating, intertwining branches encircling the planet...manifesting writers and journalists, painters, filmmakers, choreographers, computer programmers, sound and set designers, fashion designers, mathematicians…from Brooklyn, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Mombasa, Tokyo... all inexorably tending to close-connectedness with all others.

This matrix began with a question: How is it possible to make Brazil’s most historically important musicians discoverable by people living anywhere around the Earth?

Answer: Include them in a seemingly preternaturally interaccessible curation system (the magic herein is mathematics) which would also include members of the creative economy from everywhere else.

Thus it becomes possible for anybody who knows of Quincy Jones to discover João do Boi ("John of the Ox", the vastly important Son House of Brazil) in just four (or conceivably fewer) steps (Quincy Jones > Alfredo Rodriguez > Munir Hossn > Roberto Mendes > João do Boi).

And if Herbie Hancock is inside the matrix then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.

...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers, chefs...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required (nor capable). Real intelligence, yes.

These are not isolated examples. Short pathways of few steps between widely disparate creative people are universal throughout the matrix. Such is the mathematical power of the small world phenomenon, the phenomenon responsible for “six degrees of separation”, joining most human beings to most others within some six or so steps. This is the matrix’s superpower.

Question: What's with the Hebrew letter on matrix media pages?

Answer: Web Aleph.

Question: How is this a matrix?

Answer: The original meaning of "matrix" is "source", derived from "mater", Latin for "mother" (hence our motto: We're a real mother for ya!). The Matrix Online Network is a virtual realization of Web Aleph, allowing people to actually move from members of the Global Creative Economy to other members of the GCE (thus an Integrated Global Creative Economy: IGCE) in accessible steps. The matrix opens up and unites the creative world in a way which hasn't been possible since mankind first blew through a bone flute some 40,000 years ago.

Question: Why not use Artificial Intelligence rather than human curation?

Answer: Artificial Intelligence makes personal music recommendations based upon what any given person has chosen to listen to previously (and upon what people deemed to have similarities to any given person have chosen to listen to previously). But matrix curation is general, not personal. And moreover, while AI recommendations for music can satisfy some people, such recommendations are currently impossible for the work of writers, painters, choreographers, filmmakers, actors, chefs...

The Matrix is capable of reaching deeply, per João's village of São Braz, in the Bahian Recôncavo...

Landings of Enslaved by Numbers

Endpoint of a centuries-long enforced odyssey, the region of the Bahian Recôncavo received more enslaved human beings than any other port-of-call throughout the entire history of mankind. One irony is that these people created some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever sung and danced to. Another irony — true in the United States as well — is that their music would evolve to become the national music of the country which had enslaved them. A meta-irony then is that these two gargantuan ironies are almost completely unknown.

Number of Embarked/Disembarked Enslaved at Selected Landings from 1514 to 1866:

Bahia, port unspecified *

Embarked: 1,339,627

Disembarked: 1,206,934

* “Bahia” above is the archaically used name for the city of Salvador. These are the numbers for Salvador and the Recôncavo.

The numbers below are for Bahia including Taipu and Porto Seguro:

Bahia

Embarked: 1,347,121

Disembarked: 1,213,691

Rio de Janeiro

Embarked: 1,216,113

Disembarked: 1,099,908

Brazil

Embarked: 3,515,638

Disembarked: 3,165,307

Mainland North America

Embarked: 359,628

Disembarked: 301,740

Our source is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database centered at Emory University and available online at http://slavevoyages.org/

Dear friend, wherever (and whomsoever) you may be—

Have you ever noticed how different places scattered across the face of the globe seem almost to exist in different universes? As if they were permeated throughout with something akin to 19th century luminiferous aether, unique, determined by that place's history? It's like a trick of the mind's light (I suppose), but standing on beach or escarpment in Salvador and looking out across the Baía de Todos os Santos to the great Recôncavo, and mindful of what happened there (the Recôncavo was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place throughout the entirety of mankind's existence on this planet), one must be led to the inevitable conclusion that one is in a place unique to history, and to the present...

Brazil is not a European nation. It is not a North American nation. It is not an East Asian nation. Brazil 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.

"Onde tem miséria, tem música!"* - Raymundo Sodré (↓)

* "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...

The network was built in an obscure record shop evincing this cauldron (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar found it) in a shimmering Brazilian port city...

...it was inspired in (the kabbalah-inspired fiction of) Borges' (phenomenal short story) El Aleph, that in the pillar in Cairo's Mosque of Amr, where the universe in its entirety throughout all time is perceivable as an infinite hum from deep within the stone.

It "works" by virtue of the "small-world" phenomenon...the same responsible for the fact that most of 7 billion or so beings are within 6 or fewer degrees of each other.

It was described (to some degree) and can be accessed via this article in British journal The Guardian (which named our radio of matrixed artists as one of ten best in the world):

www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/apr/17/10-best-music-radio-station-around-world

(0ur radio — built below — is here)

With David Dye for U.S. National Public Radio: www.npr.org/2013/07/16/202634814/roots-of-samba-exploring-historic-pelourinho-in-salvador-brazil

Per the "spirit" above, our logo is a cortador de cana, a cane-cutter. It was designed by Walter Mariano, professor of design at the Federal University of Bahia to reflect the origins of the music the shop specialized in, music which remains a potent force on the remainder of its native ground, the Recôncavo proper, where it is danced to on 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.

The Brazilian "aleph" doesn't hum... it dances and sings. And all is more connected than we imagine.

Welcome to the kitchen!

From Salvador with love,

- Pardal "Sparrow" Roberts

Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for over 30 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).

But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great. In a certain sense, this rainforest tree sprouted from a streetcorner in Harlem.

Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.

Imagine João do Boi!

Espalhados por amplas latitudes equatoriais...

Empolgante e fumegante e sensual no sentido mais amplo da palavra...

Delineado em prosódia e canção cadenciada...

Situado num enigma envolto de um sorriso dentro de uma ironia...

Da Bahia, com afeto: Tudo isso – baseado em conexões de curto alcance entre pessoas e entidades muito díspares na economia criativa global (integrada) – começou entre as pessoas sublimemente comoventes no clipe acima. Música: Assis Valente de Santo Amaro, Bahia; Vídeo: Betão Aguiar de Salvador, Bahia

Você está agora dentro do vasto, virtual, dossel arbóreo de uma árvore da floresta tropical que se ergue do Brasil... concatenando, entrelaçando galhos que circundam o planeta... manifestando escritores e jornalistas, pintores, cineastas, coreógrafos, programadores de computador, designers de som e cenografia, designers de moda, matemáticos... do Brooklyn, Berlim, Buenos Aires, Cidade do Cabo, Mombasa, Tóquio...

Este matrix começou com uma pergunta: Como é possível fazer com que os músicos historicamente mais importantes do Brasil sejam descobertos por pessoas que vivem em qualquer lugar da Terra?

Resposta: Inclua-os em um sistema de curadoria aparentemente sobrenaturalmente interacessível (a magia aqui é matemática) que também incluiria membros da economia criativa de todos os outros lugares.

Assim, torna-se possível para quem conhece Quincy Jones descobrir João do Boi (o imensamente importante músico de raizes profundíssimas) em apenas quatro (ou concebivelmente menos) passos (Quincy Jones > Alfredo Rodriguez > Munir Hossn > Roberto Mendes > João do Boi).

Este não é um exemplo isolado. Caminhos curtos de poucos passos entre pessoas criativas amplamente díspares são universais em toda a matriz. Tal é o poder matemático do fenômeno do mundo pequeno, o fenômeno responsável pelos “seis graus de separação”, unindo a maioria dos seres humanos à maioria dos outros em cerca de seis passos. Esta é a superpotência da matriz.

Pergunta: O que há com a letra hebraica nas páginas da mídia matrix?

Resposta: Web Alef.

Pergunta: Como isso é uma matrix?

Resposta: O significado original de "matrix" é "fonte". A Matrix Online Network é uma realização virtual da Web Alef, permitindo que as pessoas realmente passem de membros da Economia Criativa Global para outros membros da ECG (portanto, uma Economia Criativa Global Integrada: ECGI) em etapas acessíveis. O matrix abre e une o mundo criativo de uma forma que não era possível desde que a humanidade tocou pela primeira vez uma flauta de osso há cerca de 40.000 anos.

Pergunta: Por que não usar Inteligência Artificial em vez de curadoria humana?

Resposta: A Inteligência Artificial faz recomendações pessoais de música com base no que uma pessoa escolheu ouvir anteriormente (e no que as pessoas consideradas semelhantes a alguém escolheram ouvir anteriormente). Mas a curadoria matricial é geral, não pessoal. Além disso, embora as recomendações de IA para música possam satisfazer algumas pessoas, essas recomendações são atualmente impossíveis para o trabalho de escritores, pintores, coreógrafos, cineastas, atores, chefs...

O Matrix é capaz de atingir profundamente...

Desembarques de Escravizados por Números

Ponto final de uma odisséia forçada de séculos, a região do Recôncavo baiano recebeu mais seres humanos escravizados do que qualquer outro porto de escala em toda a história da humanidade. Uma ironia é que essas pessoas criaram algumas das músicas mais edificantes fisicamente e espiritualmente já cantadas e dançadas. Outra ironia - verdadeira também nos Estados Unidos - é que sua música evoluiria para se tornar a música nacional do país que os escravizou. Uma meta-ironia, então, é que essas duas ironias gigantescas são quase completamente desconhecidas.

Número de Escravizados Embarcados/Desembarcados em Desembarques Selecionados de 1514 a 1866:Bahia, porto não especificado *

Embarcados: 1.339.627

Desembarcados: 1.206.934

* “Bahia” acima é o nome arcaico usado para a cidade de Salvador. Esses são os números de Salvador e do Recôncavo.Os números abaixo são para a Bahia incluindo Taipu e Porto Seguro:

Bahia

Embarcados: 1.347.121

Desembarcados: 1.213.691

Rio de Janeiro

Embarcados: 1.216.113

Desembarcados: 1.099.908

Brasil

Embarcados: 3.515.638

Desembarcados: 3.165.307

América do Norte continental

Embarcados: 359.628

Desembarcado: 301.740

Nossa fonte é o Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database centrado na Emory University e disponível online em http://slavevoyages.org/

Caro amigo, onde (e quem quer que) você esteja—

Você já reparou como lugares diferentes espalhados pela face do globo parecem quase existir em universos diferentes? Como se estivessem permeados por algo semelhante ao éter luminífero do século XIX, único, determinado pela história daquele lugar? É como um truque de luz da mente (suponho), mas de pé na praia ou escarpa em Salvador e olhando para a Baía de Todos os Santos para o grande Recôncavo, e atento ao que aconteceu lá (o Recôncavo foi o último porto de - clamar por mais seres humanos escravizados do que qualquer outro lugar ao longo de toda a existência da humanidade neste planeta), deve-se ser levado à inevitável conclusão de que estamos em um lugar único para a história e para o presente...

O Brasil não é uma nação europeia. Não é uma nação norte-americana. Não é uma nação do leste asiático. O Brasil atravessa - selva e deserto e centros urbanos densos - tanto o equador quanto o Trópico de Capricórnio. O Brasil absorveu mais de dez vezes o número de africanos escravizados levados para os Estados Unidos da América e é um repositório de divindades africanas (e sua música) hoje amplamente esquecidas em suas terras de origem. Era uma espécie de refúgio para os sefarditas que fugiam de uma Inquisição que os seguiu através do Atlântico (aquele símbolo não oficial da música nacional do Brasil – o pandeiro – quase certamente foi trazido para o Brasil por essas pessoas).

Pelas savanas ressequidas do interior do nordeste/nordeste culturalmente fecundo do Brasil, onde o feiticeiro Hermeto Pascoal nasceu na Lagoa da Canoa e foi criado em Olho d'Águia, grande parte da população aborígene do Brasil foi absorvida por uma cultura caboclo/quilombola pontuada pela Estrela de Davi. Três culturas - de três continentes - correndo por suas vidas, sua confluência formando uma quarta sem precedentes. Pandeirista no telhado. Em nenhum outro lugar, mas aqui.

"Onde tem miséria, tem música!"* - Raymundo Sodré (↓)

* Observado durante uma conversa que ia da Bahia ao Haiti e Cuba a Nova Orleans e o lado sul de Chicago e Harlem às aldeias da Irlanda e aos acampamentos ciganos e shtetls da Europa Oriental...

A rede foi construída em uma obscura loja de discos evidenciando este caldeirão (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar o encontrou) em uma cintilante cidade portuária brasileira...

...foi inspirada na (ficção inspirada na cabala) de Borges (conto fenomenal) El Aleph, aquele no pilar da Mesquita de Amr, no Cairo, onde o universo em sua totalidade ao longo de todos os tempos é perceptível como um zumbido infinito das profundezas da pedra.

Ela "funciona" em virtude do fenômeno do "mundo pequeno"... o mesmo responsável pelo fato de que a maioria dos 7 bilhões ou mais de seres estão dentro de 6 graus ou menos uns dos outros.

Ela foi descrita (até certo ponto) e pode ser acessada através deste artigo do jornal britânico The Guardian (que elegeu nossa rádio de artistas matrix como uma das dez melhores do mundo):

www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/apr/17/10-best-music-radio-station-around-world

(O nosso rádio — construído abaixo — está aqui)

Com David Dye para o Rádio Nacional dos EUA, National Public Radio: www.npr.org/2013/07/16/202634814/roots-of-samba-exploring-historic-pelourinho-in-salvador-brazil

De acordo com o "espírito" acima, nosso logotipo é um cortador de cana. Foi projetado por Walter Mariano, professor de design da Universidade Federal da Bahia para refletir as origens da música em que a loja se especializou, música que continua sendo uma força potente no restante de sua terra natal, o Recôncavo propriamente dito, onde é dançada à terra batida, sob o luar quebrado por folhas de bananeira, palmeira e manga, erguendo as almas de seus participantes quase como algo religioso, o que era, e deuses à parte, é.

O "alef" brasileiro não cantarola... dança e canta. E tudo está mais conectado do que imaginamos.

Bem-vindo à cozinha!

De Salvador com amor,
- Pardal "Sparrow" Roberts

Anos atrás em NYC (vivo aqui no Brasil há mais de 30 anos) eu "resgatei" royalties não pagos (performance e mecânica) para artistas/compositores incluindo Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass e muitos outros. Aretha me ligou do nada em relação ao dinheiro devido pela Atlantic Records. Allen Klein ligou sobre o dinheiro devido ao espólio de Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) ligou apenas para ver se ele tinha algum dinheiro não pago circulando por aí (o mundo da realeza era uma selva cheia de tubarões, para destruir metáforas, e duvido que tenha mudado).

Mas o cliente (e amigo) pertinente no presente contexto é Earl "Speedo" Carroll, dos Cadillacs. Earl passou de doo-wopping nas esquinas do Harlem para o sucesso no topo das paradas para trabalhar como zelador na escola primária PS 87 no lado oeste de Manhattan. Com tudo isso, ele nunca perdeu o que o fez grande. De certa forma, esta árvore de floresta tropical brotou de uma esquina no Harlem.

A grandeza e a fama são muitas vezes confundidas. O primeiro deve ser acessível independentemente do segundo.