Bio:
A fascination with samba and language and music in general wrought Ronaldo Bastos into one of the foremost lyricists in Brazil. Sr. Bastos has composed with Milton Nascimento, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Edu Lobo, João Donato, Toninho Horta, Caetano Veloso and many others. He produces, and founded label Dubas Música in 1994.
A somewhat recent project is "Liebe Paradiso", with Nana Caymmi, João Donato, Milton Nascimento, Robertinho Silva, Armando Marçal, Marcos Valle, Eduardo Souto Neto, Duda Mello, Sacha Amback, Marcelo Costa, Celso Fonseca, Luiz Melodia, Paulo Miklos, Leo Pereda, Antonio Dias, Antonio Cícero, Lin Lima, Cafi, Domenico Lancellotti, Bob Wolfenson, Nivaldo Ornelas, Dado Villa-lobos, Jota Moraes, Pedro Sá, Kassin, Donatinho, Adriana Calconhotto, Sandra de Sá, among others.
Leitura da canção "Milagre dos Peixes", de Milton Nascimento e Fernando Brant, por Ronaldo Bastos. Homenagem aos 70 anos do compositor Fernando Brant, um dos criadores do Clube da Esquina e um dos maiores poetas da MPB.
Todos os dias travo o bom combate. Procuro ser fiel a meus mestres e generoso com meus pares. Luto por um mundo mais justo e mais belo. Sem desprezar a imensa atração que a escuridão exerce sobre a sensibilidade dos poetas, eu escolhi andar pelo lado enso...
The canopy rises from Bahia to encircle the planet, but but the roots of the Matrix go back decades to Kingston, Jamaica...
I'm Sparrow. I used the contract above, Bob Marley's first (co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21, and this is a copy I made of Clement Dodd's original) to retrieve unpaid royalties from CBS Records. I retrieved money for Aretha Franklin, Gilberto Gil, Led Zeppelin, Barbra Streisand, Mongo Santamaria and many others. But what if Bob hadn't got out of Kingston, or Aretha out of Chicago? They would have been just as great but there would have been no way for the wider world to know. The world brims with brilliant artists without reach, including writers, filmmakers, painters... So in the Matrix, everybody can potentially be experienced from everywhere in the world. And the famous? Very few people (Bob and Michael Jackson aside) are famous everywhere, plus the famous like to recommend (connect to) too. The pathways are open. As they say in Bahia, "Laroyê!"
Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix. — Susan Rogers (Susan was personal recording engineer for Prince; she recorded "Purple Rain", "Around the World in a Day", "Parade", and "Sign o' the Times" and she is now director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory)
Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched! — Julian Lloyd Webber (Julian is the most highly renowned cellist in the United Kingdom; he is brother of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats...)
This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :))) — Clarice Assad (Clarice is a pianist and composer, with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world)
The Matrix uncoils from the Recôncavo of Bahia, Brazil, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history and from where some of the most physically and spiritually uplifting music ever made (samba and its precursor chula, per the Saturno Brothers below) evolved...
By the same mathematics positioning some 8 billion human beings within some 6 or so steps of each other, people in the Matrix tend to within close, accessible steps of everybody else inside the Matrix.
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.
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 — the hand drum in the opening scene above — 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.
SPARROW/PARDAL ROBERTS
SUSAN ROGERS
JULIAN LLOYD WEBBER
CLARICE ASSAD
ALICIA SVIGALS
KAMASI WASHINGTON