CURATION
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from this page:
by Augmented Matrix
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
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Name:
Victor Gama
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City/Place:
Luanda
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Country:
Angola
Life
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Bio:
Victor Gama was born in Angola and currently lives between Luanda, Lisbon and Bogota. His work of musical composition intersects areas as diverse as music, image, field recording, audio-video installation and the design of contemporary musical instruments. Gama has been commissioned work by ensembles and institutions such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Kronos Performing Arts Association, the National Museums of Scotland, the Tenement Museum in New York, Prince Claus Fonds, the Amsterdam Fonds for the Arts, the Royal Opera House of London or the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.
A graduate in Electronics Engineering and a Master's degree in Organology and Music Technology from the Sir John Cass College of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University, he was recently guest artist at the Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in California and the MIT Center for Arts Science and Technology. He composed for the Kronos Quartet, who premiered his piece 'Rio Cunene' at Carnegie Hall in New York with a European premiere at the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon. The multimedia piece 'Vela 6911'premiered at the Harris Theater in Chicago commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra/MusicNOW and the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Vela6911 was further presented at the Dinkelspiel Auditorium in Stanford and at the Hous der Kultur der Welt in Berlin. Gama's multimedia opera '3 thousand RIVERS' commissioned by the Prince Claus Fund and the Gulbenkian Foundation premiered in Lisbon in 2016 and in Bogota in 2017. 'Aisa Tanaf: the Book of Winds' premiered in February 2017 at the Kennedy Center with musicians from the National Symphony Orchestra directed by Edwin Outwater.
Gama has been at the origin of projects such as Berimbau-Ungu with Naná Vasconcelos and Kituxitouring in Southern Africa, the Folk Songs Trio with New York musicians William Parker and Guillermo E. Brown, Odantalan with Barbararo Martinez-Ruiz and Hugo Candelario, and the Makakata Exchange in South Africa with Diso Platges and the Kalahary Surfers.
In 1997 he started Tsikaya, an online platform of musicians from the interior of Angola. Among several works, Pangeia Instruments was released by Aphex Twin on Rephlex Records, Naloga, Oceanites Erraticus and Quatro Momentos were released by his own label PangeiArt.
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
Gama's meditative solo pieces for the metallic acrux evoked both the Balinese gamelan and Cage's prepared piano, while his studies for the gleaming toha had the sophisticated simplicity of Howard Skempton or Ludovico Einaudi...
- John L. Walters, The Guardian
Fantastic desert music from radical experimentalist Victor Gama on Naloga album ...
- Louise Gray, New Internationalist
Victor Gama is a composer whose process begins with the creation of an entirely new instrument, one whose design is steeped in symbolic meaning. Concept design, the selection of materials, fabrication, and scoring is all part of the rigorous way Gama creates new music for the 21st century, blending current fabrication technologies with ideas, materials, and traditions inspired by the natural world. "The post-digital world has circled back to the object. The same technology that has dematerialized the object is working to rematerialize it,” Gama said in his lecture/demonstration at MIT. "Innovations like 3D printing, digital CAD modeling and Finite Element Analysis have brought the potential to free the instrument from the fixed design paradigm and move beyond pre-sampled digital sound libraries with controller interfaces."
- Ania Ventura, Arts Research Writer at MIT
Clips (more may be added)
When creators curate people (and entities) for what they do and where they do it, a matrix is generated.
Following human society, by the mathematical magic of the small-world phenomenon, all inside such a matrix tend to within degrees of all others inside.
And by logical extension, to within degrees of all humanity.
It is almost completely unknown that the Recôncavo of Bahia was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place throughout the entirety of mankind’s existence on this planet.
And widely unknown that Brazil — a repository of African deities now largely forgotten in their lands of origin — absorbed over ten times the number of Africans taken to the United States of America.
And unknown that 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 — 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.
This matrix began here and opens pathways to everywhere.
Recently accessed from:

"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
Ground Zero for the project was the culture born in Brazil's quilombos (in Angola a kilombo is a village; in Brazil it is a village either founded by Africans or Afro-Brazilians who had escaped slavery, or — as in the case of São Francisco do Paraguaçu below — occupied by such after abandonment by the ruling class):

...theme for a Brazilian Matrix, from an Afro-Brazilian Mass by
Milton Nascimento
I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones 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...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for 32 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), 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 (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) 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.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
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 founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
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