Nduduzo Makhathini
Matrix Page
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CURATION
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from this page:
by Augmented Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Nduduzo Makhathini
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City/Place:
Johannesburg
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Country:
South Africa
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Hometown:
Umgungundlovu, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
Current News
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What's Up?
"a truly singular pianist, an astonishingly gifted composer, and a deeply nuanced thinker on the music...one of [South Africa's] most remarkable talents."
- Seton Hawkins for All About Jazz
The visionary South African pianist and composer Nduduzo Makhathini released his Blue Note Records debut Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworlds in 2020. Makhathini has released the album’s lead track.
The song represents a search for the light of the ancestral realms and an acknowledgement of a parallel existence between a world we see and those unseen.
“Yehlisan’uMoya” features impassioned vocals by Nduduzo’s wife Omagugu Makhathini and a band that includes alto saxophonist Logan Richardson, tenor saxophonist Linda Sikhakhane, trumpeter Ndabo Zulu, bassist Zwelakhe-Duma Bell Le Pere, drummer Ayanda Sikade, and percussionist Gontse Makhene.
Life & Work
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Bio:
Nduduzo Makhathini grew up in the lush and rugged hillscapes of umGungundlovu in South Africa, a peri-urban landscape in which music and ritual practices were symbiotically linked. The area is significant historically as the site of the Zulu king Dingane kingdom between 1828 and 1840. It’s important to note that the Zulu, in fact the African warrior code, is deeply reliant on music for motivation and healing. This deeply embedded symbiosis is key to understanding Makhathini’s vision.
The church also played a role in Makhathini’s musical understanding, as he hopped from church to church in his younger days in search of only the music. The legends of South African jazz are deep influences as well, in particular Bheki Mseleku, Moses Molelekwa, and Abdullah Ibrahim. “The earlier musicians put a lot of emotions in the music they played,” he says. “I think it may also be linked to the political climate of those days. I also feel there is a uniqueness about South African jazz that created an interest all around the world and we are slowly losing that too in our music today. I personally feel that our generation has to be very conscious about retaining these nuances in the music we play today.”
Through his mentor Mseleku, Makhathini was also introduced to the music of John Coltrane’s classic quartet with McCoy Tyner. “I came to understand my voice as a pianist through John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme,” he says. “As someone who started playing jazz very late, I had always been looking for a kind of playing that could mirror or evoke the way my people danced, sung, and spoke. Tyner provided that and still does in meaningful ways.” Makhathini also cites American jazz pianists including Andrew Hill, Randy Weston, and Don Pullen as significant influences.
Active as an educator and researcher, Makhathini is the head of the music department at Fort Hare University in the Eastern Cape. He has performed at renowned festivals including the Cape Town International Jazz Festival and the Essence Festival (in both New Orleans and South Africa), and in 2019 made his debut appearances the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City, as well as Jazz at Lincoln Center where he was a featured guest with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on their 3-night musical celebration The South African Songbook in Rose Theater. He is a member of Shabaka Hutchings’ band Shabaka and the Ancestors appearing on their 2016 album Wisdom of Elders, and has also collaborated with artists including Logan Richardson, Nasheet Waits, Tarus Mateen, Stefon Harris, Billy Harper, Azar Lawrence, and Ernest Dawkins.
In addition to producing albums for his peers (such as Thandiswa Mazwai’s Belede and Tumi Mogorosi’s Project Elo), Makhathini has released eight albums of his own since 2014 when he founded the label Gundu Entertainment in partnership with his wife and vocalist Omagugu Makhathini. Those albums earned him multiple awards and include Sketches of Tomorrow (2014), Mother Tongue (2014), Listening to the Ground (2015), Matunda Ya Kwanza (2015); Icilongo: The African Peace Suite (2016), Inner Dimensions (2016), and Reflections (2016). His 2017 album Ikhambi was the first to be released on Universal Music South Africa and won Best Jazz Album at the South African Music Awards (SAMA) in 2018. His Blue Note debut Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworlds will be released in 2020.
- Biography from Blue Note Records
Clips (more may be added)
Antonio Caballero & Samuel Minski's Barranquijazz Festival, September, 2024 in Barranquilla, on Colombia's Caribbean coast... Viva!!!
Kamasi Washington
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze: manager, Kamasi Washington
🔗connections from Kamasi include ↓
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
🔗connections from Susan include ↓
Randy Brecker
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
🔗connections from Randy include ↓
Herbie Hancock
🔗connections from Herbie include ↓
Alfredo Rodrigues
🔗connections from Alfredo include ↓
Munir Hossn
🔗connections from Munir include ↓
Roberto Mendes
🔗connections from Roberto include ↓
Maria Bethânia
🔗connections from Maria include ↓
J. Velloso
🔗connections from J. include ↓
João do Boi ↓
🔗You've been taken from LA, Grammys and success, into profoundly unknown cultural genius in a place you never would have gotten to otherwise. There are millions of pathways like this...
Laroyê!
"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...)
"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
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals: World's premier klezmer violinist
...uncoiling from the sprawling cultural matrix of Terra Brasilis: Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian... step-by-step-by-step...
...conceived in a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the slums of Kingston to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...
...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré (whose career was destroyed and who was threatened with death under Brazil's dictatorship, forcing him into exile), and who, in consideration of the sequence above, proffered for the ages: "Where there's misery there's music!" Thus this matrix.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome: Salvador da Bahia (seat of the Integrated Global Creative Economy* and where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
Assis Valente's (of Santo Amaro, Bahia) "Brasil Pandeiro" filmed by Betão Aguiar
Betão Aguiar
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano Veloso, son of the Recôncavo, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
A place suffused with Brazilian greatness, with David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR/WXPN
*Darius Mans became President of Africare on January 4, 2010. Prior to joining Africare, he served as Acting Chief Executive Officer of Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). Previously, he was Vice President in the Department of Compact Development, where he oversaw the strategic and operational approaches of MCC in its compact implementation portfolio and collaborated with government agencies and donors to develop operations that reduce poverty through economic growth.
Before joining MCC he was Director with the World Bank Institute in Washington D.C.. From 2000 to 2004, he served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Mozambique and Angola. In that capacity, he led a team which generated $150 million in annual lending to Mozambique, including support for public private partnerships in infrastructure that catalyzed over $1 billion in private investment.
Prior to the World Bank, he was an economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where he worked closely with the U.S. Treasury and the IMF to establish a framework to avoid debt repudiation and restructure private commercial debt in Brazil and Chile.
He also taught Economics at the University of Maryland and was a consultant to KPMG on infrastructure projects in Latin America.
He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT, and lives between Washington D.C. and Salvador da Bahia.
The Matrix is a small world network in which creators may connect to (recommend) other creators and be connected to by other creators. And where, like stars coalescing into a galaxy, creators in the Matrix mathematically gravitate to proximity to all other creators in the Matrix, no matter how far apart in location, fame or society. This gravity is called "the small world phenomenon".
Wolfram MathWorld on the Small World Phenomenon
Matemática Wolfram sobre o Fenômeno do Mundo Pequeno
While the Matrix's utilization of small world gravity is unprecedented (position everybody in the creative universe within discoverable range of everybody else in the creative universe), small world networks are all around us, even inside us: our brains contain small world networks. Humanity itself is a small world network, wherein over 8 billion human beings average 6 or fewer steps between any two given people, anywhere. Those steps are seldom all transitable though. In the Matrix they are. In a small world great things are possible.
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.
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 founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.