Bio:
Ron Wyman, founder of ZeroGravity Films, creates documentaries about politics, world culture and the arts. For the past several years he has been working extensively in Africa. Having spent over three decades as a film maker, he has worked as a DP and editor on feature films, is an award winning DP/Producer of documentaries and was freelance for the CNN political division for 16 years. He has also worked for Michael Moore's "The Awful Truth", "Candid Camera" and "Politically Incorrect" with Bill Maher.
His feature documentary, "Agadez, the Music and the Rebellion" travels with Tuareg nomads of the Sahara Desert and profiles the extraordinary Tuareg guitarist, Bombino. While shooting the film, he also produced Bombino's acclaimed CD, "Agadez" which launched Bombino onto the world stage. His second CD, "Nomad" was produced by Dan Auerbach and was released on Nonesuch Records in 2013, and his latest album, "Deran", recorded in Casablanca was nominated for a 2019 Grammy.
A new film project is in development in partnership with Tunde Jegede, titled "The River Niger Project" and will explore the music culture along the Niger River and will feature many of the legendary musicians of West Africa.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
"In Agadez, The Music And The Rebellion Ron Wyman has done an excellent job of not only depicting their life without romanticizing or sentimentalizing it, but showing what they are doing to preserve it in the face of increasingly difficult odds. Follow his camera into one of the harshest environments on earth and meet the people who not only live there, but cherish the freedom it brings them. You will also meet the remarkable musician, Omara “Bombino” Moctar, whose story of exile and return is typical for his generation, but whose talent is unique".
S.N.O.B. (Somewhat North of Boston Film Festival), Nov. 21, 2010. Director Ron Wyman makes remarks and answers audience questions following the screening of ...
S.N.O.B. (Somewhat North of Boston Film Festival), Nov. 21, 2010. Director Ron Wyman makes remarks and answers audience questions following the screening of ...
Matrix team-member Darius Mans, Economist (PhD, MIT), president of Africare (largest aid organization in Africa), presents Africare award to Lula (2012). From 2000 to 2004 Darius served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Mozambique and Angola, leading a team which generated $150 million in annual lending, including support for public private partnerships in infrastructure which catalyzed over $1 billion in private investment. Darius lives between Washington D.C. and Salvador, Bahia.
IV. LET THERE BE PATHWAYS!
"I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
— Susan Rogers, Personal recording engineer for Prince at Paisley Park Recording Studio; Director, Music Perception & Cognition Laboratory, Berklee College of Music
"Many thanks for this - I am touched!" — Julian Lloyd Webber
"I'm truly thankful... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)" — Nduduzo Makhathini, Blue Note Records
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!" — Alicia Svigals, Klezmer violin, Founder of The Klezmatics
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))" — Clarice Assad
"Thank you" — Banch Abegaze, manager, Kamasi Washington
The Matrix uncoils from the Recôncavo of Bahia, 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 evolved...
...all essentially cut off from the world at large. But after 40,000 years of artistic creation by mankind, it's finally now possible to create bridges closely interconnecting all artists everywhere (having begun with the Saturno brothers above).
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.
