Tom Moon via MATRIX ONLINE NETWORK

From Brazil with love →

If You Can't Stand the Heat

Image above is from the base of the cross in front of the church of São Francisco do Paraguaçu in the Bahian Recôncavo

Sprawled across broad equatorial latitudes, stoked and steamed and sensual in the widest sense of the word, limned in cadenced song, Brazil is a conundrum wrapped in a smile inside an irony...

This is not a European nation. It is not a North American nation. It is 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. 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.

Oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption — elements of these are still strongly entrenched — have defined, delineated, and limited Brazil.

But strictured & bound as it has been and is, Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of — or perhaps because of — the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.

For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...

Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.

"Onde tem miséria, tem música!"* - Raymundo Sodré

And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.

Welcome to the kitchen!

* "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...

Why a "Matrix"?

I was explaining the ideas behind this nascent network to (João) Teoria (trumpet player above) over cervejas at Xique Xique (a bar named for a town in Bahia) in the Salvador neighborhood of Barris...

Like this (but in Portuguese): "It's kind of like Facebook if it didn't spy on you, but reversed... more about who you don't know than who you do know. And who doesn't know you but would be glad if they did. It's kind of like old Myspace Music but instead of having "friends" it has a list on your page of people you recommend. Not just musicians but writers, painters, filmmakers, dancers, chefs... anybody in the creative economy. It has a list of people who recommend you, or through whom you are recommended. It deals with arts which aren't recommendable by algorithm but need human intelligence behind recommendations. And the people who are recommended can recommend, creating a network of recommendations wherein by the small world phenomenon most people in the creative economy are within several steps of everybody else in the creative economy, no matter where they are in the world. Like a chessboard which could have millions of squares, but you can get from any given square to any other in no more than six steps..."

And João said (in Portuguese): "A matrix where you can move from one artist to another..."

A matrix! That was it! The ORIGINAL meaning of matrix is "source", from "mater", Latin for "mother". So the term would help congeal the concept in the minds of people the network was being introduced to, while giving us a motto: "We're a real mother for ya!" (you know, Johnny "Guitar" Watson?)

The original idea was that musicians would recommend musicians, the network thus formed being "small world" (commonly called "six degrees of separation"). In the real world, the number of degrees of separation in such a network can vary, but while a given network might have billions of nodes (people, for example), the average number of steps between any two nodes will usually be minuscule.

Thus somebody unaware of the magnificent music of Bahia, Brazil will be able to conceivably move from almost any musician in this matrix to Bahia in just a few steps...

By the same logic that might move one from Bahia or anywhere else to any musician anywhere.

And there's no reason to limit this system to musicians. To the contrary, while there are algorithms written to recommend music (which, although they are limited, can be useful), there are no algorithms capable of recommending journalism, novels & short stories, painting, dance, film, chefery...

...a vast chasm that this network — or as Teoria put it, "matrix" — is capable of filling.

Tom Moon I RECOMMEND

CURATION

from this node by: Matrix

This is the Universe of

Name: Tom Moon
City/Place: Philadelphia, PA
Country: United States

Life & Work

Bio: When award-winning music journalist Tom Moon began sharing his original music in 2011, he found himself routinely grilled by his peers about what some saw as his unusual move – transitioning from writing about art to creating it.

“I would try to point out that what I was doing wasn’t an ethical conflict of interest,” Moon says of the interviews he did to spread the word about Into The Ojala, from his group Moon Hotel Lounge Project. “I’d rattle off a list of people who thrived doing both pursuits – the composer Virgil Thomson, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, jazz pianist Keith Jarrett and many others.” During one of the more heated exchanges, Moon recalls, he went back to a transcript of a 2004 interview he did with Stephen Merritt, the singer, songwriter and leader of The Magnetic Fields, who was writing criticism at the time.

“Stephen had clearly thought about this, both from the ethical and aesthetic perspectives,” recalls Moon, a regular contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered and the author of the New York Times bestseller 1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die.

“He sensed that he had a responsibility to share whatever specialized knowledge he’d picked up, and wanted to use that knowledge to advocate for great work. Then he said something that stuck with me: “That wall between church and state, between the press and the people the press covers? The Internet has pretty much shattered it. If, as a journalist, you decide to refrain from sharing your original music or anything else you make, recognize that you are following your own code. Nobody cares what side you are on.”

Moon credits Merritt with helping to clarify his thinking on the church/state divide, which has eroded further in the years since he spoke those words. A saxophonist and composer, Moon has Merritt’s quote at the ready as he prepares to share Blue Night, the debut from his group Ensemble Novo. The album offers breezy, inviting interpretations of classic Brazilian samba and bossa nova, as well as several similarly-spirited Moon originals. To be released July 16 on CD and via all music download sites, the album marks the next step in Moon’s unlikely return to music-making.

Moon studied music at the University of Miami, and while living in South Florida amassed an enviable resume – performing in pit orchestras behind Tony Bennett, Eddie Fisher and others, working in salsa bands, entertaining on cruise ships, and touring for a year with the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra. He served as music critic at the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1988 until 2004, a job that prevented him from pursuing his own music.

Moon returned to active music-making in 2010, after the publication of 1000 Recordings. He started out at low-key jam sessions, where he was regarded as something of a curiosity: “Most of the players were in college or had just graduated,” the award-winning journalist recalls, “and they’d look at me and go “Who’s that greybeard? But they turned out to be incredibly open-minded. I’d been away from music for a long time, and those guys were incredibly patient with me. I was lucky to be welcomed like that –we developed a rich musical rapport very quickly.”

Since then, Moon has become part of a thriving collective working to improve the environment for creative music in the city. He’s composed music for several different groups – his originals are featured on Into the Ojala, the 2011 release by Moon Hotel Lounge Project. The album drew critical raves: USA Today described it as a “seductive spell, jazzy grooves rooted in a bygone era of nightlife sophistication.” Other Moon-led groups appear regularly in Philadelphia music spots – including Time Restaurant, Triumph Brewery, L’Etage, World Café Live and Milkboy Philly where he hosts the weekly Jazz Casual on Tuesday nights.

The roots of Ensemble Novo can be traced to one of Moon’s early jam-session sojourns. “I was deeply immersed in Brazil because I’d just finished a piece on the great singer Elis Regina for NPR,” Moon recalls. “And so at this session I suggested we play Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “How Insensitive.” The guitar player floored me – he knew every rhythm and voicing from the original, really understood the tune in a deep way. We connected instantly.” The guitarist, Ryan McNeely, was in his last semester in the music school at Temple University, and had spent much of his college years studying Brazilian music. He and Moon began playing regularly, and pretty soon – after McNeely returned from his first visit to Brazil – Ensemble Novo was up and running. The group also features percussionist Jim Hamilton, a founding member of the popular Philly drum corps Alo Brazil, and vibraphonist Behn Gillece.

Moon says his goal for Ensemble Novo is simple. “I just want to share these endlessly uplifting and accessible melodies. People have this perception of Brazilian music as a little bit dentist-officey, and sure, it can be that, but it’s also incredibly sensual, and powered by these beautiful alternating currents of joy and sorrow. It’s the opposite of music that demands attention – just a nice low-key elixir that can sneak up on you.”

YOU RECOMMEND

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 everybody 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.

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