Bio:
The son of musicians and music educators, New Jersey native Otis Brown grew up to the sounds of jazz, gospel, funk and rhythm and blues. His father, a jazz band instructor, played with James Brown and Al Green. His mother, an educator who also served as principal at Newark’s Arts High School (alma mater to jazz greats Sarah Vaughan and Wayne Shorter), was also a choir director and classically trained pianist. One could surmise that Brown had no choice in the matter when it came to his profession, yet he felt no pressure by his musically-immersed childhood. “I think they understood that it has to, in a way, choose you; you can’t really force it on somebody,” says Brown of a career in music. “My parents were great about that.”
After playing saxophone and drums in school and church, and attending Delaware State University as music major, Brown crossed paths with jazz icon Donald Byrd and his course was dramatically altered. Byrd, who was Artist in Residence at DSU, convinced Brown to think beyond a career in music education and go to New York City to be in the thick of things. “It was life changing,” says Brown, who after studying at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and the Thelonious Monk Institute, caught the attention of Joe Lovano. Initially subbing for Lewis Nash and Idris Muhammad in Lovano’s bands, Brown became a founding member of Lovano’s Us Five quintet, recording three albums, including the GRAMMY-nominated Bird Songs.
Esperanza Spalding holds Us Five’s bass chair, and the musical camaraderie shared with Brown resulted in his joining her band and recording on her debut album. “He always gave and gives one hundred and ten percent of himself musically on the bandstand,” says Spalding, which is a sentiment inspired by most every musician who encounters Brown. “You always get the feeling playing with him, about the humility in his spirit and his willingness to do whatever it takes to take the music to its highest level,” says Ben Williams. That humility is rooted in Brown’s faith which is his personal and professional foundation. “It’s critically important for me; it’s the reason I play,” says Brown. “Without sounding contrived, I think it’s super important for how we try to raise our children, and just for every aspect of life, and music is one of those aspects and avenues for me. Without it, it would be pointless to me. It’s the reason for everything I do.”
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"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
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 MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).