CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
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Name:
Wouter Kellerman
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City/Place:
Johannesburg
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Country:
South Africa
Life
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Bio:
Globe-trotting flutist and composer Wouter Kellerman received a 2015 Grammy® Award at the 57th Annual Grammy® Awards for his album Winds of Samsara, a collaboration with Indian composer and producer Ricky Kej. Winds Of Samsara reached #1 on the US Billboard New Age Albums Chart and also peaked at #1 on the Zone Music Reporter Top 100 International Radio Airplay Chart in the month of July 2014, winning both the ZMR ‘Album of the Year’ and ‘Best World Album’ awards.
Kellerman’s newest album LOVE LANGUAGE was released in August 2015 and debuted at number 1 on the World Music Billboard charts in its first week. Love Language draws influence from Senegal and Spain, Cuba and India, Greece and the United States. The album encapsulates the myriad ways that people connect on the topics of life and love — and the countless languages with which people speak of the universal connection that binds them one to another. In the spirit of Love Language, all proceeds from album sales go to the SOS Children’s Villages in South Africa.
Kellerman has also been recognised at home, most recently winning three SAMA’s (South African Music Award, equivalent to the American Grammy®) in 2015 to add to his previous wins in 2010 and 2011, reinforcing his status as one of South Africa’s foremost musicians. A true crossover artist, Kellerman thrives on experimenting with the shades, textures and colours that his magic flute is capable of painting, and creatively blending them with other instrumentation and vocal sounds.
Wouter has travelled extensively over the last few years, performing around the globe in places like Berlin, Shanghai, New York and Sydney, including sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York City and the Grammy Museum in LA in 2014. His 2012 U.S. tour included appearances at the prestigious Kennedy Centre in Washington DC, at Summerstage and Joe’s Pub in New York City, and at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Kellerman performed his composition 'The Long Road' - a flute solo for Nelson Mandela, - on Nelson Mandela Day in South Africa for a stadium of 80,000 people and a television audience in August 2013. He has also performed at the opening of MIDEM in Cannes, France; MIDEM is the world’s largest music conference and festival and Kellerman was part of a Department of Arts and Culture delegation, representing South Africa. Kellerman's 2013 album Mzansi spent 6 months in the Top 40 of the international ZMR charts, (peaking at number 4) as well as 18 weeks in the Top 40 of the CMJ New World charts. It won the 2014 IMA (Independent Music Award) Vox Pop award in the USA for 'Best World Beat Album'. Kellerman's debut album, Colour, enjoyed rave reviews, topped the charts and was nominated for a 2008 South African Music Award for ‘Best Instrumental Album’. Three of his albums - Colour, Two Voices and Mzansi - were mixed in Los Angeles by Grammy-winning engineer Husky Hoskulds. In 2010 his show ‘Kellerman Colour Live’ won the 2010 SAMA for ‘Best Jazz/Instrumental/Popular Classical DVD’. He followed his performance at the FIFA Soccer World Cup Closing Ceremony with concerts at the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz festival in Johannesburg and two performances at the Shanghai World Expo in China.
Passionate about teaching and empowering young people, Kellerman has sponsored the living expenses of ten children in the SOS Children’s Village in Ennerdale, South Africa for the past 14 years. He has also financed the building of a house in the SOS Children’s Village in Rustenburg, South Africa. For his continued efforts in helping give these children a better life, Kellerman was nominated by the SOS Children’s Villages for the Inyathelo Special Recognition Award for Philanthropy. He continues to also facilitate the teaching of young dance and music students in his country.
Wouter Kellerman started playing the flute at the age of ten, and in 1981 appeared as a soloist with the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra. He went on to feature in several South African orchestras, garnering numerous musical accolades along the way. Among these was winning the Perrenoud Foundation Prize during the 1997 Vienna International Music Competition.
Using his classical training as a foundation, Kellerman focused his attention on world music, exploring the versatility of the flute and fusing classical and contemporary sounds, resulting in a potent and thrilling musical encounter. He is taking his crossover world music to a global audience, having gained a solid following in his native South Africa.
His albums have been released in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, North America and in Australia, where he combined his release with a nationwide tour, including an opening slot on Johnny Clegg’s Down Under tour. Kellerman’s strikingly original flute-playing can be heard on the soundtrack of the Emmy Award-winning film, Eye of the Leopard.
Clips (more may be added)
The Bahian 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.
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
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.
"Great culture is great power. And in a small world great things are possible."
The Matrix was built to open the world to Bahian musicians by opening the world to all creators.
In the Matrix you curate people (and entities) for what they do and where they do it. And they can curate you. A network is formed.
By the mathematical magic of the small-world phenomenon, everybody in the Matrix (as in human society) tends to within degrees of everybody else.
And by logical extension, the entire planet. All can (potentially) be found by everybody. QED
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"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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