א
THE INTEGRATED GLOBAL CREATIVE ECONOMY
I CURATE

This is the Universe of

Name: Tigran Hamasyan
City/Place: Yerevan
Country: Armenia
Hometown: Gyumri, Armenia

CURATION

from this node by: Matrix

Life & Work

Bio: In its ever-evolving state, jazz invites into its fold imaginative artists who freely and courageously pursue their own vision, not only built on tradition but also infused with their own personality and passion. In the case of pianist/keyboardist Tigran Hamasyan, potent jazz improvisation fuses with the rich folkloric music of his native Armenia. Turning 30 in 2017, he’s one of the most remarkable and distinctive jazz-meets-rock pianists of his generation. Tigran’s fresh sound is marked by an exploration of time signatures beyond 4/4 into 5/4 and 9/8, charged dynamics, the shifting between acoustic and electric modes of expression, all undergirded by an affinity to the grind of heavy metal.

A piano virtuoso with groove power, Tigran’s latest adventurous project is The Ancient Observer, his second solo album and his sophomore recording for Nonesuch. It’s a collection of new original compositions written over the course of the last three to four years—two of which are based on Armenian melodies. Some of the pieces are through composed and completely written out while others are through composed but with ample space for Tigran to improvise. Many include vocals layered into the mix. Like most of his recordings, the influences of the music are manifold, ranging from classical Baroque dance to J-Dilla-esque hip-hop grooves adapted to piano to a few tracks with pedals connected to a synthesizer—though the Armenian influence, which makes his music so uniquely outstanding, is prominent.

Conceptually, The Ancient Observer is a poignant album focusing on the art of observing. “It’s something that humans have been practicing for ages, sometimes even subliminally,” Tigran says. “It is especially interesting now in 2016. It’s the feeling of the ancient eternal and impermanent versus the present day eternal and the impermanent. The intertwining of this ancient with the modern world creates an existential feeling. This album is presenting the observation of the world we live in now and the weight of our history we carry on our shoulders, which is influencing us even if we don’t realize it. This album is the observation of influences and experiences I had.”

Born in Gyumri, Armenia, in 1987, Tigran grew up in a household that was full of music—his father more of a rock fan while his uncle was a huge jazz buff. When he was just a toddler, Tigran gravitated to tape players and the piano instead of regular childhood toys, and by the time he was 3, he was working his way through figuring out songs on piano by the Beatles, Louis Armstrong, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Queen. His jazz tastes early on were informed by Miles Davis’s fusion period, and then around the age of 10 when his family moved to Yerevan, he came to discover the classic jazz songbook under the aegis of his teacher Vahag Hayrapetyan, who had studied with Barry Harris. “That’s when I understood what jazz is,” Tigran says. “He taught me about bebop. He was a great teacher.”

Even so, he also began to dive into the deep music well of his country. “When I was 13, I began to understand the rich culture of Armenia,” says Tigran. “I thought, it’s in my blood. I grew up with this incredible music without realizing it. Slowly I began to listen more to the folk music, and it shocked me how much it had been completely ignored. The more tunes I learned—listening to recordings from the Armenian Folk Radio channel—the more I saw the rich potential for merging those with improvised music. That started me on a lifetime journey.”

Along the way, Tigran discovered the variety of Armenian music, including work songs, epic folk songs and war dances that were very different from region to region. “They were different genres of music,” he says. “But they all had a modal basis with two specific constructions: a melodic line and a rhythmic line treated to a very specific ornamentation which adds the spice. And the construct of the melody may have interval jumps and be played high up in the register then dropping down. It’s very specific even though it may be confused for Balkan or Iranian music styles.”

While he studied classical music at an Armenian high school geared toward music studies, Tigran continued to grow on his own as a jazz pianist. He performed at the First International Jazz Festival in Yerevan in 1998, which opened up other performance opportunities, and returned to the festival for its second edition in 2000, where he met Chick Corea, Avishai Cohen, Jeff Ballard and others. He also met promoter Stephane Kochoyan, who booked him to play several European festivals where he met such top-notch jazz stars as Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Joe Zawinul, Danilo Pérez and John Patitucci, among others. Soon after, Tigran began to win a series of piano competitions, including Montreux Jazz Festival’s in 2003 and later in 2006 both the top prize at the prestigious Thelonious Monk Jazz Piano Competition and second place in the Martial Solal International Jazz Competition in Paris.

When he was 16, his parents moved to Los Angeles to give their two children (Tigran’s sister is a painter and sculptor) better artistic opportunities. Tigran stayed in high school for two months before gaining entrance to the University of Southern California, which he attended for two years. At the same time, he began to make contact with such jazz musicians as Alphonso Johnson and Alan Pasqua, and started gigging with saxophonist Ben Wendel and drummer Nate Wood. At the time Tigran also played in the funk band Pinot.

Tigran began his recording career with three albums on the French Plus Loin label as a leader: World Passion (2006), New Era (2008) and Red Hail (2009) and was heralded as a jazz revelation by critics who had been impressed by his artistry, with one scribe writing about New Era that “with more seasoning and a calming maturity not driven by merely showing off, Hamasyan is certain to elevate his art to a top tier of jazz and world music expressionism.” Tigran incorporated Armenian folk instruments into the mix on the first two albums while expanding to a quintet format to include a vocalist for the third. Red Hail opens with the tune “Shoger Jan (Dear Shogher),” which is based on a famous Armenian folk song that was treated to a fired-up romp. It’s also where Areni Agbabian introduced her singing abilities into the mix of Tigran’s fusion vision. “When I wrote all the material for Red Hail, I was hearing a female vocalist,” he said. “I knew an instrument couldn’t execute the depth and color of the melody. I met Areni, who is an Armenian born in L.A., at a show there where she sat in with me on a folk song. It was incredible. I knew I had to get her for the album. She’s not from a jazz background and would never sing a scat. But she knew the Armenian folk repertoire, which is exactly what I needed. She can sing complicated rhythms almost like an instrument versus being a lead vocalist.”

What’s also noteworthy about Red Hail is how much heavy metal influenced some of the tracks. Tigran noted, “Songs like ‘Sybilla’ and ‘Corrupt’ are connected with the same melody, but ‘Corrupt’ goes into the full metal mode while ‘Sybilla’ is really acoustic. ”

After moving to New York for a spell (before returning to Armenia where he still lives full time), Tigran went on a creative roll, getting signed by Universal Jazz in France in 2010, which released A Fable, his first solo album in 2011.

“The title of the album came to me because all of the compositions are telling a story,” said Tigran. “I think people relate to fables because they are simple, yet deep.” As for recording a solo album after three recordings that featured a full band, he said, “A lot of people heard me perform solo concerts and wanted to hear me in this setting.”

Recorded in Paris, A Fable contains compositions that Tigran wrote and inventively arranged over the previous six years. The repertoire consists of mostly personal compositions as well as pieces by other composers that he had arranged. The title track, a Tigran original, was written in Armenia six years ago. “Since then I have been meaning to have it recorded,” he said. “This song was inspired by Armenian folk tales as well as fables written by medieval Armenian fabulists such as Vardan Aygektsi and Mkhitar Gosh.” There’s also music inspired by the poetry of Hovhannes Tumanyan and Gegham Sayyan as well as a mystical rendition of the jazz standard, “Someday My Prince Will Come.” The recording won the Victoires du Jazz (the French equivalent to the Grammy) award for best international production.

Two years later, Tigran returned with Shadow Theater featuring an extended loops-oriented band including a choral section, strings and saxes. With its indie rock energy and electro-acoustic jazz improvisations steeped in Armenian music influences, the recording garnered the 2013 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Contemporary Music. Joining the band on a couple tracks was Jan Bang on live sampling (which set the groundwork for the 2016 ECM Atmosphères project with Norwegian musicians Arve Henriksen on trumpet and Eivind Aarset on guitar).

All About Jazz raved about Shadow Theater, saying, “Hamasyan’s distinctive musicality blends jazz, European classical music and an array of influences like progressive-rock and DJ mixing. Yet the common thread is the inventive way the music balances ethnicity with a modernist verve.”

The year 2015 marked Tigran’s signing with Nonesuch for the critics’ breakthrough album Mockroot, which he describes as: “It’s more like an electro-acoustic Armenian rock trio than a regular jazz trio. Sometimes we sound like a heavy metal band or a dubstep DJ, or like some late 19th century Armenian composers such as Nikoghayos Tigranyan and Komitas, with newer harmonic and rhythmic approaches. It’s all underlined by something that’s very simple, melodic and romantic.”

The recording garnered the 2016 Echo Award (the German Grammy) for best international piano album if the year. Tigran comments, “Mockroot is a sort of longing and nostalgia for a human nature that’s more spiritual, more loving, more together with its roots. There is a sacrifice in it—sacrifice to try to elevate spiritually.”

In that vein, also in 2015, Tigran took on his most ambitious project focused on Armenian Apostolic Church sacred music, stretching stylistically from the 5th century (sharakans by Mesrop Mashtots) to the 20th century (melodies composed by Komitas). On Luys i Luso (translated as “Light From Light”), released on ECM Records, there are the pianist’s arrangements of music from the Armenian Orthodox holy mass, liturgies, hymns, cantos, chants and vespers written for trio and the Yerevan State Chamber Choir conducted by Harutyun Topikyan. “For me it has been a challenge to explore the history of Armenian sacred music and to create polyphonic arrangements for melodies by the modal tradition,” Tigran says. “In these arrangements the piano parts are never written out. There are ideas for the structure of the piano parts, but these are subject to change, bringing freedom and improvisation to notated classical composition and the sacred music tradition. But I understood that with this sacred music that you can’t touch the surface. You have to go deep into it. You have to be careful and have responsibility to the beauty.”

Tigran took the Luys i Luso project on the road for 50 concerts across Europe and the U.S. and videos of some songs also showed up on YouTube. “It was interesting to see people’s reactions to the music,” Tigran says. “Some people may not have understood what was going on or were maybe turned off by religion. But I did gain a classical audience that is used to hearing church music. Sometimes I even had heavy metal fans come to the choir concerts and loved it.” He adds: “Throughout my career, my music has been progressive which has made for interest in hardcore metal bands that recognize I was influenced by heavy rock and metal music. They’ve even asked me to open shows for them. But when I compose I don’t think of metal or classical. I just write music for my longtime trio of Sam Minaie and Arthur Hnatek who play a huge part on how much the sound and the energy of the trio develops.”

Both 2015 recordings garnered Tigran the prestigious 2015 Paul Acket Award at the North Sea Jazz Festival where he accepted the honor and then played a standing-room only trio show that earned the group a standing ovation and rightfully a call for an encore.

While Tegran is a jazz genius on the piano, he’s also become increasingly well regarded as a composer in his eight albums recorded as the sole leader. “I have been composing since I was 9 and composing is a huge part of my daily life and all the records I did from World Passion to An Ancient Observer,” he says. Some of his songs like “Samsara, “The Court Jester,” “Vardavar,” “The Poet,” “Road Song” and “Nairian Odyssey” (the latter from the upcoming album) are prime examples of his compositional prowess. “I think the composing aspect is the reason why people are also covering a lot of my songs on YouTube,” Tigran says. “For me creating a beautiful melody is very important and is the basis, but what you will do with that melody, considering the age of folk music creation is over, is the most important task.”

For his scintillating improvisation, Tigran uses the melodic content based on the Armenian music and creates the harmonic content that instead of being the minor/major classical harmonies is based on Armenian modes applied to the piano. “When I improvise I use the musical vocabulary that comes from Armenia,” he says, “but I learned the art of improvisation through bebop. I think the ability to improvise comes from whether the part of your brain has been activated to this state where you require a huge amount of knowledge and can carry this information in your brain to be executed when needed. It is the balance among knowledge, control and the unexpected new creation.”

In regards to his latest endeavor, 2017’s An Ancient Observer, Tigran took advantage of living in Armenia to compose a beauty—looking at his surroundings and reflecting on the bigger picture. “When I gaze out of my window and see the biblical mountain Ararat with the perpetual snow on its peak with foregrounds of electrical towers with wires cutting the picture, and the satellite dishes melted onto old and modern houses, ancestral smoke coming out of the chimneys and the birds hovering above the trees with occasional airplane trails in the vastness of the sky is the dialogue, the interaction of the God-given ancient nature and our modern human achievements,” he says. “For me it is an awakening and a beautiful feeling to be able to observe the magnificence of this sleeping volcanic giant which has existed for millions of years and was observed by from the Ararat Valley Koura-Arax culture to the present day citizens of the Armenian republic.”

He adds: “I can see and observe the same birds, animals, rivers and mountains that the 4,000-year-old craftsman painted on a clay vessel. The craftsman was observing the same thing I can observe now, and what remains is his or her beautiful work of art.”

Contact Information

Management/Booking: Management:
Pascal Pilorget, GiantSteps
+33 (0) 180 488 320
+33 (0) 618 424 476
[email protected]
[email protected]
www.g-steps.com

Booking U.S.:
Chadwick Mitchell
Footprints Music
713-548-6778
[email protected]

Booking Russia:
ESSE jazz agency
+7 495 150 28 48
[email protected]
http://www.essemusic.ru/tigranhamasyan

Media | Markets

▶ Twitter: tigranmusic
▶ Instagram: tigranhamasyanmusic
▶ Website: http://www.tigranhamasyan.com
▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TigranHamasyan
▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCLtymjek_M-si5zDxK77Veg
▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/59AeaIeAx6S2igYJFjltRE
▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/4BEcvKnTOi20mm1foxleMQ
▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/3cH2LQH41G3PO5XxmLVxJo
▶ Spotify 4: http://open.spotify.com/album/21tuABlTWrvuM4qLc6ntIm
▶ Spotify 5: http://open.spotify.com/album/6bWRFvvfLzVFw7vZZHMHaK
▶ Spotify 6: http://open.spotify.com/album/57AzZ8kM0jFnvMNmeYeW7x

Clips (more may be added)

Tigran Hamasyan - Love Song (Berklee Middle Eastern Fusion Ensemble)
By Tigran Hamasyan

335 views
Tigran Hamasyan - An Ancient Observer: In the Studio
By Tigran Hamasyan

337 views

Tigran Hamasyan Curated

Imagine the world's creative economy at your fingertips. Imagine 10 doors side-by-side. Beyond each, 10 more, each opening to a "creative" somewhere around the planet. After passing through 8 such doorways you will have followed 1 pathway out of 100 million possible (2 sets of doorways yield 10 x 10 = 100 pathways). This is a simplified version of the metamathematics that makes it possible to reach anybody in the global creative economy in just a few steps. It doesn't mean that everybody will be reached by everybody. It does mean that everybody can be reached by everybody.

"Chegou a hora dessa gente bronzeada mostrar seu valor / The time has come for these bronzed people to show their value..."

Português →

Sprawled across broad equatorial latitudes...

Stoked and steamed and sensual in the broadest sense of the word...

Limned in prosody & cadenced song...

Set in a conundrum wrapped in a smile inside an irony...

From Bahia, with love: All of this — based in short-range connections between vastly disparate people and entities in the (integrated) global creative economy — began among the sublimely moving people in the clip above. Music: Assis Valente of Santo Amaro, Bahia; Video: Betão Aguiar of Salvador, Bahia

You are now within the vast, virtual, arboreal canopy of a rainforest tree rising from Brazil ... concatenating, intertwining branches encircling the planet...manifesting writers and journalists, painters, filmmakers, choreographers, computer programmers, sound and set designers, fashion designers, mathematicians…from Brooklyn, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Mombasa, Tokyo... all inexorably tending to close-connectedness with all others.

This matrix began with a question: How is it possible to make Brazil’s most historically important musicians discoverable by people living anywhere around the Earth?

Answer: Include them in a seemingly preternaturally interaccessible curation system (the magic herein is mathematics) which would also include members of the creative economy from everywhere else.

Thus it becomes possible for anybody who knows of Quincy Jones to discover João do Boi ("John of the Ox", the vastly important Son House of Brazil) in just four (or conceivably fewer) steps (Quincy Jones > Alfredo Rodriguez > Munir Hossn > Roberto Mendes > João do Boi).

And if Herbie Hancock is inside the matrix then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.

...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers, chefs...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required (nor capable). Real intelligence, yes.

These are not isolated examples. Short pathways of few steps between widely disparate creative people are universal throughout the matrix. Such is the mathematical power of the small world phenomenon, the phenomenon responsible for “six degrees of separation”, joining most human beings to most others within some six or so steps. This is the matrix’s superpower.

Question: What's with the Hebrew letter on matrix media pages?

Answer: Web Aleph.

Question: How is this a matrix?

Answer: The original meaning of "matrix" is "source", derived from "mater", Latin for "mother" (hence our motto: We're a real mother for ya!). The Matrix Online Network is a virtual realization of Web Aleph, allowing people to actually move from members of the Global Creative Economy to other members of the GCE (thus an Integrated Global Creative Economy: IGCE) in accessible steps. The matrix opens up and unites the creative world in a way which hasn't been possible since mankind first blew through a bone flute some 40,000 years ago.

Question: Why not use Artificial Intelligence rather than human curation?

Answer: Artificial Intelligence makes personal music recommendations based upon what any given person has chosen to listen to previously (and upon what people deemed to have similarities to any given person have chosen to listen to previously). But matrix curation is general, not personal. And moreover, while AI recommendations for music can satisfy some people, such recommendations are currently impossible for the work of writers, painters, choreographers, filmmakers, actors, chefs...

The Matrix is capable of reaching deeply, per João's village of São Braz, in the Bahian Recôncavo...

Landings of Enslaved by Numbers

Endpoint of a centuries-long enforced odyssey, the region of the Bahian Recôncavo received more enslaved human beings than any other port-of-call throughout the entire history of mankind. One irony is that these people created some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever sung and danced to. Another irony — true in the United States as well — is that their music would evolve to become the national music of the country which had enslaved them. A meta-irony then is that these two gargantuan ironies are almost completely unknown.

Number of Embarked/Disembarked Enslaved at Selected Landings from 1514 to 1866:

Bahia, port unspecified *

Embarked: 1,339,627

Disembarked: 1,206,934

* “Bahia” above is the archaically used name for the city of Salvador. These are the numbers for Salvador and the Recôncavo.

The numbers below are for Bahia including Taipu and Porto Seguro:

Bahia

Embarked: 1,347,121

Disembarked: 1,213,691

Rio de Janeiro

Embarked: 1,216,113

Disembarked: 1,099,908

Brazil

Embarked: 3,515,638

Disembarked: 3,165,307

Mainland North America

Embarked: 359,628

Disembarked: 301,740

Our source is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database centered at Emory University and available online at http://slavevoyages.org/

Dear friend, wherever (and whomsoever) you may be—

Have you ever noticed how different places scattered across the face of the globe seem almost to exist in different universes? As if they were permeated throughout with something akin to 19th century luminiferous aether, unique, determined by that place's history? It's like a trick of the mind's light (I suppose), but standing on beach or escarpment in Salvador and looking out across the Baía de Todos os Santos to the great Recôncavo, and mindful of what happened there (the Recôncavo was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place throughout the entirety of mankind's existence on this planet), one must be led to the inevitable conclusion that one is in a place unique to history, and to the present...

Brazil is not a European nation. It is not a North American nation. It is not an East Asian nation. Brazil 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. It 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 — 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. Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Pandeirista on the roof. Nowhere else but here.

"Onde tem miséria, tem música!"* - Raymundo Sodré (↓)

* "Where there is misery, there is music!" Remarked during a conversation arcing from Bahia to Haiti and Cuba to New Orleans and the south side of Chicago and Harlem to the villages of Ireland and the gypsy camps and shtetls of Eastern Europe...

The network was built in an obscure record shop evincing this cauldron (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar found it) in a shimmering Brazilian port city...

...it was inspired in (the kabbalah-inspired fiction of) Borges' (phenomenal short story) El Aleph, that in the pillar in Cairo's Mosque of Amr, where the universe in its entirety throughout all time is perceivable as an infinite hum from deep within the stone.

It "works" by virtue of the "small-world" phenomenon...the same responsible for the fact that most of 7 billion or so beings are within 6 or fewer degrees of each other.

It was described (to some degree) and can be accessed via this article in British journal The Guardian (which named our radio of matrixed artists as one of ten best in the world):

www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/apr/17/10-best-music-radio-station-around-world

(0ur radio — built below — is here)

With David Dye for U.S. National Public Radio: www.npr.org/2013/07/16/202634814/roots-of-samba-exploring-historic-pelourinho-in-salvador-brazil

Per the "spirit" above, our logo is a cortador de cana, a cane-cutter. It was designed by Walter Mariano, professor of design at the Federal University of Bahia to reflect the origins of the music the shop specialized in, music which remains a potent force on the remainder of its native ground, the Recôncavo proper, where it is danced to on pounded earth, under moonlight broken by banana, palm and mango leaves, lifting the souls of its participants almost like something religious, which it was, and gods aside, is.

The Brazilian "aleph" doesn't hum... it dances and sings. And all is more connected than we imagine.

Welcome to the kitchen!

From Salvador with love,

- Pardal "Sparrow" Roberts

Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for over 30 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).

But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great. In a certain sense, this rainforest tree sprouted from a streetcorner in Harlem.

Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.

Imagine João do Boi!

Espalhados por amplas latitudes equatoriais...

Empolgante e fumegante e sensual no sentido mais amplo da palavra...

Delineado em prosódia e canção cadenciada...

Situado num enigma envolto de um sorriso dentro de uma ironia...

Da Bahia, com afeto: Tudo isso – baseado em conexões de curto alcance entre pessoas e entidades muito díspares na economia criativa global (integrada) – começou entre as pessoas sublimemente comoventes no clipe acima. Música: Assis Valente de Santo Amaro, Bahia; Vídeo: Betão Aguiar de Salvador, Bahia

Você está agora dentro do vasto, virtual, dossel arbóreo de uma árvore da floresta tropical que se ergue do Brasil... concatenando, entrelaçando galhos que circundam o planeta... manifestando escritores e jornalistas, pintores, cineastas, coreógrafos, programadores de computador, designers de som e cenografia, designers de moda, matemáticos... do Brooklyn, Berlim, Buenos Aires, Cidade do Cabo, Mombasa, Tóquio...

Este matrix começou com uma pergunta: Como é possível fazer com que os músicos historicamente mais importantes do Brasil sejam descobertos por pessoas que vivem em qualquer lugar da Terra?

Resposta: Inclua-os em um sistema de curadoria aparentemente sobrenaturalmente interacessível (a magia aqui é matemática) que também incluiria membros da economia criativa de todos os outros lugares.

Assim, torna-se possível para quem conhece Quincy Jones descobrir João do Boi (o imensamente importante músico de raizes profundíssimas) em apenas quatro (ou concebivelmente menos) passos (Quincy Jones > Alfredo Rodriguez > Munir Hossn > Roberto Mendes > João do Boi).

Este não é um exemplo isolado. Caminhos curtos de poucos passos entre pessoas criativas amplamente díspares são universais em toda a matriz. Tal é o poder matemático do fenômeno do mundo pequeno, o fenômeno responsável pelos “seis graus de separação”, unindo a maioria dos seres humanos à maioria dos outros em cerca de seis passos. Esta é a superpotência da matriz.

Pergunta: O que há com a letra hebraica nas páginas da mídia matrix?

Resposta: Web Alef.

Pergunta: Como isso é uma matrix?

Resposta: O significado original de "matrix" é "fonte". A Matrix Online Network é uma realização virtual da Web Alef, permitindo que as pessoas realmente passem de membros da Economia Criativa Global para outros membros da ECG (portanto, uma Economia Criativa Global Integrada: ECGI) em etapas acessíveis. O matrix abre e une o mundo criativo de uma forma que não era possível desde que a humanidade tocou pela primeira vez uma flauta de osso há cerca de 40.000 anos.

Pergunta: Por que não usar Inteligência Artificial em vez de curadoria humana?

Resposta: A Inteligência Artificial faz recomendações pessoais de música com base no que uma pessoa escolheu ouvir anteriormente (e no que as pessoas consideradas semelhantes a alguém escolheram ouvir anteriormente). Mas a curadoria matricial é geral, não pessoal. Além disso, embora as recomendações de IA para música possam satisfazer algumas pessoas, essas recomendações são atualmente impossíveis para o trabalho de escritores, pintores, coreógrafos, cineastas, atores, chefs...

O Matrix é capaz de atingir profundamente...

Desembarques de Escravizados por Números

Ponto final de uma odisséia forçada de séculos, a região do Recôncavo baiano recebeu mais seres humanos escravizados do que qualquer outro porto de escala em toda a história da humanidade. Uma ironia é que essas pessoas criaram algumas das músicas mais edificantes fisicamente e espiritualmente já cantadas e dançadas. Outra ironia - verdadeira também nos Estados Unidos - é que sua música evoluiria para se tornar a música nacional do país que os escravizou. Uma meta-ironia, então, é que essas duas ironias gigantescas são quase completamente desconhecidas.

Número de Escravizados Embarcados/Desembarcados em Desembarques Selecionados de 1514 a 1866:Bahia, porto não especificado *

Embarcados: 1.339.627

Desembarcados: 1.206.934

* “Bahia” acima é o nome arcaico usado para a cidade de Salvador. Esses são os números de Salvador e do Recôncavo.Os números abaixo são para a Bahia incluindo Taipu e Porto Seguro:

Bahia

Embarcados: 1.347.121

Desembarcados: 1.213.691

Rio de Janeiro

Embarcados: 1.216.113

Desembarcados: 1.099.908

Brasil

Embarcados: 3.515.638

Desembarcados: 3.165.307

América do Norte continental

Embarcados: 359.628

Desembarcado: 301.740

Nossa fonte é o Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database centrado na Emory University e disponível online em http://slavevoyages.org/

Caro amigo, onde (e quem quer que) você esteja—

Você já reparou como lugares diferentes espalhados pela face do globo parecem quase existir em universos diferentes? Como se estivessem permeados por algo semelhante ao éter luminífero do século XIX, único, determinado pela história daquele lugar? É como um truque de luz da mente (suponho), mas de pé na praia ou escarpa em Salvador e olhando para a Baía de Todos os Santos para o grande Recôncavo, e atento ao que aconteceu lá (o Recôncavo foi o último porto de - clamar por mais seres humanos escravizados do que qualquer outro lugar ao longo de toda a existência da humanidade neste planeta), deve-se ser levado à inevitável conclusão de que estamos em um lugar único para a história e para o presente...

O Brasil não é uma nação europeia. Não é uma nação norte-americana. Não é uma nação do leste asiático. O Brasil atravessa - selva e deserto e centros urbanos densos - tanto o equador quanto o Trópico de Capricórnio. O Brasil absorveu mais de dez vezes o número de africanos escravizados levados para os Estados Unidos da América e é um repositório de divindades africanas (e sua música) hoje amplamente esquecidas em suas terras de origem. Era uma espécie de refúgio para os sefarditas que fugiam de uma Inquisição que os seguiu através do Atlântico (aquele símbolo não oficial da música nacional do Brasil – o pandeiro – quase certamente foi trazido para o Brasil por essas pessoas).

Pelas savanas ressequidas do interior do nordeste/nordeste culturalmente fecundo do Brasil, onde o feiticeiro Hermeto Pascoal nasceu na Lagoa da Canoa e foi criado em Olho d'Águia, grande parte da população aborígene do Brasil foi absorvida por uma cultura caboclo/quilombola pontuada pela Estrela de Davi. Três culturas - de três continentes - correndo por suas vidas, sua confluência formando uma quarta sem precedentes. Pandeirista no telhado. Em nenhum outro lugar, mas aqui.

"Onde tem miséria, tem música!"* - Raymundo Sodré (↓)

* Observado durante uma conversa que ia da Bahia ao Haiti e Cuba a Nova Orleans e o lado sul de Chicago e Harlem às aldeias da Irlanda e aos acampamentos ciganos e shtetls da Europa Oriental...

A rede foi construída em uma obscura loja de discos evidenciando este caldeirão (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar o encontrou) em uma cintilante cidade portuária brasileira...

...foi inspirada na (ficção inspirada na cabala) de Borges (conto fenomenal) El Aleph, aquele no pilar da Mesquita de Amr, no Cairo, onde o universo em sua totalidade ao longo de todos os tempos é perceptível como um zumbido infinito das profundezas da pedra.

Ela "funciona" em virtude do fenômeno do "mundo pequeno"... o mesmo responsável pelo fato de que a maioria dos 7 bilhões ou mais de seres estão dentro de 6 graus ou menos uns dos outros.

Ela foi descrita (até certo ponto) e pode ser acessada através deste artigo do jornal britânico The Guardian (que elegeu nossa rádio de artistas matrix como uma das dez melhores do mundo):

www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/apr/17/10-best-music-radio-station-around-world

(O nosso rádio — construído abaixo — está aqui)

Com David Dye para o Rádio Nacional dos EUA, National Public Radio: www.npr.org/2013/07/16/202634814/roots-of-samba-exploring-historic-pelourinho-in-salvador-brazil

De acordo com o "espírito" acima, nosso logotipo é um cortador de cana. Foi projetado por Walter Mariano, professor de design da Universidade Federal da Bahia para refletir as origens da música em que a loja se especializou, música que continua sendo uma força potente no restante de sua terra natal, o Recôncavo propriamente dito, onde é dançada à terra batida, sob o luar quebrado por folhas de bananeira, palmeira e manga, erguendo as almas de seus participantes quase como algo religioso, o que era, e deuses à parte, é.

O "alef" brasileiro não cantarola... dança e canta. E tudo está mais conectado do que imaginamos.

Bem-vindo à cozinha!

De Salvador com amor,
- Pardal "Sparrow" Roberts

Anos atrás em NYC (vivo aqui no Brasil há mais de 30 anos) eu "resgatei" royalties não pagos (performance e mecânica) para artistas/compositores incluindo Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass e muitos outros. Aretha me ligou do nada em relação ao dinheiro devido pela Atlantic Records. Allen Klein ligou sobre o dinheiro devido ao espólio de Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) ligou apenas para ver se ele tinha algum dinheiro não pago circulando por aí (o mundo da realeza era uma selva cheia de tubarões, para destruir metáforas, e duvido que tenha mudado).

Mas o cliente (e amigo) pertinente no presente contexto é Earl "Speedo" Carroll, dos Cadillacs. Earl passou de doo-wopping nas esquinas do Harlem para o sucesso no topo das paradas para trabalhar como zelador na escola primária PS 87 no lado oeste de Manhattan. Com tudo isso, ele nunca perdeu o que o fez grande. De certa forma, esta árvore de floresta tropical brotou de uma esquina no Harlem.

A grandeza e a fama são muitas vezes confundidas. O primeiro deve ser acessível independentemente do segundo.