Bio:
I'm Randy Roberts. "Pardal" in Brazil, which translates to "Sparrow".
Three decades ago I worked in New York City rescuing royalties for composers and performers who hadn't been paid. That was my education in the dark side of the music industry. I did this for Mongo Santamaria, Paul Simon, Barbra Streisand, Led Zeppelin, Jim Hall, Astrud Gilberto, Ray Barretto, Robb Royer from Bread, Philip Glass and many others.
Now I work with music in a different way (among other things I run Cana Brava Records). And from where I am it's easy to see that fabulous music is often isolated. At the same time even well-known artists can be unknown to huge swathes of humanity. Music travels, but not as well, far or widely as people suppose. Propagation has always cost money. We want to change this.
Background:
Bahia's great bay ("bahia" IS the archaic spelling for "bay") was port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout the entire period of human history. These people arrived Africans and became Bahians, and among much else they ironically created some of the most body-and-soul uplifting music ever heard. They needed it.
We believe that -- the world being what it is today -- a LOT of other people could use it as well, or they should at least have a chance to hear it and decide for themselves. But there's a conundrum in that this music -- which is Brazil's equivalent to and analogue of the delta blues and early jazz (these of course known everywhere) -- is widely unknown even here in Brazil (even here in Salvador, pelo amor de Deus!). It's non-commercial, and most of the people who make it are poor...meaning that the chances of it travelling by conventional means -- publicity costs money and wide-ranging publicity costs a lot of money -- are almost nil. So for them we built the matrix. For the matrix to work for them though, it has to work for everybody!!!
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).