Nelson Latif via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from Nelson Latif:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Nelson Latif
- City: São Paulo
- Country: Brazil
My Life & Work
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Bio:
ENGLISH:
Cavaquinho and acoustic guitar player Nelson Latif formed his musical identity in the legendary jazz scene of 1980's São Paulo. With roots in choro and jazz, Latif merges Brazilian styles and a classical guitar technique with diverse musical influences. In his melodic phrasing one hears bebop and Brazilian syncopations, and in his virtuosity the energy of flamenco.
Latif started his studies at age fourteen. At seventeen he was already accompanying singers in the São Paulo nightlife. At this time he won a music school competition and was awarded a scholarship to study conducting and composition at the Faculdade Santa Marcelina. Upon completing this course, he continued his classical guitar studies at the Faculdade Paulista de Música.
In the early 80´s Latif joined several groups in his native São Paulo. Two of these strongly influenced his musical development: the Quarteto Paulista, a choro group formed by some of the best São Paulo musicians, and a flamenco duo with guitarist Julio Ramires. Also during this period, Latif studied electric guitar with Mozart Mello and improvisation with Paulo Belinatti.
In 1988, after a tour in Europe with the choro trio Remelexo, Latif moved to Lisbon, where he gave workshops at the Juventude Musical Portuguesa and taught classical guitar at the well-known Escola de Guitarra de Duarte Costa.
In 1989 Latif moved to Amsterdam, where he lived for twelve years. During this time he was a member of Uit de Kunst, an organization designed to promote foreign culture in Holland. Latif also continued his musical career by playing with several important musicians on the Dutch jazz scene. Latif also toured many countries with Brazilian musicians, playing jazz and world music festivals, and made several recordings.
During the 90's Latif started performing on the cavaquinho, an instrument that has since become his trademark.
Between 1997 and 2000 he led the group Raiz Latina, touring throughout the Asian continent. They recorded their debut album in Seoul with the well-known Korean singer Kim Jun.
In 2001 he formed Trio Baru with the musicians Fernando Corbal and Bosco Oliveira.
He recorded the CD Brazilian Portrait together with the saxophonist Flávio Sandoval in 2003, and promoted this album in Brazil and Europe. In this same year he went to Suriname several times to play concerts and give workshops and lectures. Together with the guitarists Stanley Noordpool and Robby Faverey he played at the Carifesta and the Groen Festival.
In 2004 Latif formed a duo with the multi-instrumentalist Carlinhos Antunes. In 2005 he joined forces with Ustad Zamir Khan, sitar and tabla player and member of the legendary family of Indian musicians. Latif and Khan merged the traditional music of their countries, discovering a whole new world of musical possibilities. Also in 2005, Latif recorded the CD Choro, Samba e Afins with Dutch guitarist Joeri de Graaf. This recording started off the Choramundo Project, uniting musicians from Holland, Suriname and Brazil.
Since 2002 Nelson Latif has been ahead of the Alma Brasileira Project, designed for universities and cultural institutions all around the world. The project consists of workshops, concerts and lectures, addressing the history and diversity of traditional Brazilian music.
Nelson Latif is also a sociologist, graduated from the University of São Paulo.
PORTUGUÊS:
Violonista e cavaquinista, Nelson Latif é fruto da boa safra de músicos paulistanos da década de 80. Com formação musical em jazz e choro, atua nos principais palcos brasileiros e europeus.
Nelson Latif une os fundamentos da música clássica às diversas tendências musicais assimiladas ao longo da carreira. No fraseado melódico, linhas de forte influência jazzística executadas ora no ritmo sincopado e alegre do choro, ora com a precisão e o vigor do flamenco produzem um estilo singular, marca inconfundível do artista.
Latif iniciou seus estudos de violão clássico aos 14 anos e aos 17 já acompanhava cantores nos bares da intensa noite paulistana. Um ano mais tarde, venceu o festival de música secundarista promovido pela Faculdade Santa Marcelina, onde passou a estudar composição e regência. Continuou seus estudos de música na Faculdade Paulista de Arte, como aluno do curso de Bacharelado em Violão.
No início dos anos 80, integrou diversos grupos musicais na cidade de São Paulo com o violonista e guitarrista, entre os quais se destacam o Quarteto Paulista e o duo de música flamenca que formou com o violonista Julio Ramires. Nesse período, foi aluno do guitarrista Mozart Mello e do violonista Paulo Bellinati, com quem estudou harmonia e improvisação.
Em 1988, com Trio Remelexo, mudou-se para Portugal, onde ministrou workshops de música brasileira para a Juventude Musical Portuguesa. Em Lisboa, foi professor da renomada Escola de Guitarra de Duarte Costa. Apresentou-se com o Trio Remelexo (Nelson Latif, João Arruda e Eduardo Miranda) durante um ano nos principais teatros portugueses.
Em 1989, Nelson Latif radicou-se em Amsterdã. Durante os 12 anos em que morou na Holanda, foi membro do time de professores da Uit de Kunst, instituição divulgadora da cultura estrangeira no país, e trabalhou com diversos artistas. Também acompanhou nesse período os músicos brasileiros, tais como Mestre Marçal, Alcir da Mangueira, Ceumar e Lílian Vieira e os grupos Raíces de América, Quinteto Violado e Fuzuê. Participou de diversos festivais de jazz e world music, tais como o holandês North Sea Jazz Festival, o belga Sfinks Festival, o austríaco Sun Splash Festival e os Festivais de Jazz de Istambul, Lisboa e Jacarta.
Na década de 90, começou a se apresentar também com o cavaquinho, instrumento que o caracteriza desde então.
De 1997 a 2000, Latif dirigiu o grupo Raiz Latina, que o acompanhou em inúmeras turnês pela Ásia, das quais resultou o CD Love, gravado na Coréia.
Nelson Latif voltou a residir no Brasil em 2001, onde forma com os violonistas brasilienses Fernando Corbal e Bosco Oliveira o Trio Baru.
Em 2003, lançou com o saxofonista paulistano Flávio Sandoval o CD Brazilian Portrait, divulgado em turnês no Brasil e na Europa. No mesmo ano, foi acolhido pelo país vizinho Suriname, onde se apresentou diversas vezes, entre elas no Groen Festival, ao lado dos renomados violonistas surinameses Stanley Noordpool e Robby Faverey, e no Carifesta.
Em 2004, formou parceria musical com o também multiinstrumentista de cordas paulistano Carlinhos Antunes.
Em 2005, em duo com o músico indiano Ustad Zamir Khan, sitarista e tablista da legendaria família Khan, trafega pela pouco explorada união entre a música tradicional da Índia e do Brasil.
De 2006 até o presente, Latif tem se apresentado com o Trio Baru ou em concertos solo em palcos nacionais e internacionais.
Como promotor cultural, Nelson Latif coordena o Projeto Alma Brasileira, composto de oficinas musicais, palestras sobre a história da música brasileira e concertos. O projeto visa à difusão da nossa música no exterior e já foi apresentado em diversas universidades e centros de cultura brasileira, em mais de 30 paises.
Nelson Latif é também sociólogo, formado pela Universidade de São Paulo.
Contact Information
- Email: fakhouri@uol.com.br
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Management/Booking:
Brasília +55 61 9264-0911
Amsterdam +31 (0 ) 623675176
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Instagram: latif_nelson
- ▶ Website: http://www.nelsonlatif.com
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwIxHZrPdW28uoTRM6AdsTA
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UC0bQ4imgAXzuF9uCZMSX4ug
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/artist/76mdfz2j4FmB9CIVqsxMtQ
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
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.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging through New Orleans and Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... and Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
