CURATION
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from this page:
by Title Holder
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
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Name:
Nêgah Santos
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City/Place:
New York City
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Country:
United States
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Hometown:
São Paulo, Brazil
Life
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Bio:
An incredible hand percussionist born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Nêgah Santos, has been influenced by several artists and music genres, such as Afro-Cuban, Fusion, R&B, Jazz, Pop, African, Indian, World and Brazilian music.
Most recently Nêgah has become an Emmy (Tv Academy) and Peabody awarded percussionist, as part of Stay Human Band at The Late Show With Stephen Colbert lead by the Oscar winner and eleven (11) times nominates Grammy Awards Jon Batiste. Her role at the Late Night tv show involves performance and contributions to the arrangements of the diverse genres Stay Human performs with Jon Batiste.
Nêgah Santos music journey starts in her teens when she joins a ONG in Sao Paulo, which offered music, sports, technology and art classes to children from poor neighborhoods. There, Nêgah Santos first experiences performance and music theory and in a short period of time, she is accepted at Tom Jobim Music School (ULM - Universidade Livre de Musica). After three years at Tom Jobim School, Nêgah Santos receives a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she graduated in 2015.
Nêgah Santos has toured the world with many artists as Grammy Award Winners, Esperanza Spalding, Alejandro Sanz, A.R Rahman, Terri Lyne Carrington, Diane Reeves, Me’shell Ndegeocello, as well as prolific artists such as Cory Wong, Ledisi, Clinton Cerejo, Nona Hendrix, Lizz Wright, Tia Fuller, Valerie Simpson, Sheila E., Al Jarreau, Huntertones and others. Nêgah has also become the first female percussionist for the Riverdance show, as part of the 21st anniversary Euro Tour in 2016.
In Brazil Nêgah has also performed in the musical theater scene with Mulheres Alteradas and O Primo Basilio. And also with well know artists such as Joyce, Marcos Valle, Jorge Aragao, Alcione, Falamansa, Sandra de Sa,Toni Tornado, among others.
Today besides being part of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and work with Jon Batiste and many other artists , Nêgah is preparing her new album called Forró Da Nêgah, which brings her compositions in the northeast Brazilian style Forró. The Album is set to be released in July 2022!
My Recordings
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For Audio, Visual:
Nêgah Santos - O Pandeiro (2021)
Jon Batiste - Chronology of a Dream (2019)
Terri Lyne Carrington & Social Science - Waiting Game (2019)
Jaron Lamar Davis - My Views Through The Lens of Music (2018)
Zamb'Up - Zamb'Up (2017)
Clemens Grassmann - Labyrinths & Tales (2017)
Alain Mallet - Mutt Slang (2016)
Riverdance - Sueños (2016)
Irma Seleman - My World (2016)
Terri Lyne Carrington - Mosaic Love and Soul (2015)
Fernando Brandão - SemTradução (2015)
Shea Rose - Time (2014)
Wendy Wolf - Images of Eve (2014)
Don Ngatia - Venus and Mars (2014)
Gabrielle Walter Clay feat. Common Tread - That Groove (2013)
Clips (more may be added)
The small-world phenomenon connecting everybody in here (see Wolfram below) is a miracle...
Wolfram MathWorld
Even God is in the Matrix.
There are certain countries the names of which fire the imagination. Brazil is one of them, an amalgam of primitive and sophisticated, jungle and elegance, luscious jazz harmonics and complex rhythms... The Integrated Global Creative Economy (we invented the concept) uncoils from this sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix — concatenating branches of a virtual rainforest tree rooted in Bahia, canopy spreading to embrace the entire planet...
Ex Terra Brasilis
Ground Zero for the project was the culture born in Brazil's quilombos (in Angola a kilombo is a village; in Brazil it is a village either founded by Africans or Afro-Brazilians who had escaped slavery, or — as in the case of São Francisco do Paraguaçu below — occupied by such after abandonment by the ruling class):
...theme music for a Brazilian Matrix, from an Afro-Brazilian Mass by
Milton Nascimento
Celebration of this Mass was prohibited by the Vatican and four songs on the recording were forbidden by Brazil's censors (the dictatorship was still in force).
Like a trick of the mind’s light, different places scattered across the face of the globe seem at times to almost 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. Standing on beach or escarpment in Salvador and looking out across the Baía de Todos os Santos to the great Recôncavo...the sertão — backlands — ranging beyond...and mindful of what happened in both, one must be led to the inevitable conclusion that one is in a place unique to history, and to the present:
The Bahian 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.
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 — 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. Great culture is great power. And in a small world great things are possible.
—built in Bahia
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
The Brazilian Matrix has been accessed from these places over the past month (a marker can represent multiple accesses):
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones 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...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for 32 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), 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 (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) 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.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
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.
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Hermeto Pascoal
Pardal/Sparrow Roberts
Alicia Svigals
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX