Bio:
Weedie Braimah descends from a long lineage of drummers and composers, which includes his mother, Ann Morris, a respected Jazz drummer, his father, Oscar Sulley Braimah, a world-renowned composer and master drummer, and great-uncle, Jazz drumming icon, Idris Muhammad. Braimah honed skills learned through study with greats including Mamady Keita, Famadou Konate, Abdoul Doumbia, and Sylvester Sun Shine Lee among others. He excelled musically and became one of the leading exponents of the West African diasporic drum and dance world in his teenage years. For more than 25 years, Braimah has been a performer, teacher and preserver of African culture who continues to traverse new musical pathways.
Braimah exemplifies tradition, evolution and soul as he brings his vision of building a reverence for folkloric West African music to life. His mission? To have the evolution of this folkloric music recognized as relevant, respected and as the essential root of Jazz, funk, fusion, global music, and hip hop. And for his style of Stretch Music to take its rightful place as one of the pillars of modern music rooted in the African percussion continuum he has spent his lifetime championing throughout the world.
The Hands Of Time is the new album from Weedie Braimah, via Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah’s Stretch Music label. The album features the band of the same name, a cast of the hottest players in the game, with special guests Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Trombone Shorty, Terrace Martin, Tank Ball, Cory Henry, Mumu Fresh, Pedrito Martinez, Osain del Monte, Alain Perez, Elena Pinderhughes, Magatte Sow, Hatouma Sylla, Bassidi Kone, and Petit Adama Diarra. For the full list of elite performers, and to preorder the album, visit Weedie’s Bandcamp page.
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).