Yosvany Terry
This Brazilian cultural matrix positions Yosvany Terry globally... Curation
CURATION
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from this page:
by Title Holder
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
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Name:
Yosvany Terry
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City/Place:
New York City
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Country:
United States
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Hometown:
Camaguey, Cuba
Current News
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What's Up?
Since arriving In New York City in 1999 Cuban saxophonist, percussionist, and composer Yosvony Terry “has helped redefine Latin Jazz as a complex new idiom.”
– The New York Times
Life & Work
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Bio:
Yosvany Terry traces his family’s roots to the kingdom of Dahomey, or present-day Benin. After being taken taken to work in Haiti and Jamaica, his relatives eventually were able to immigrate to Cuba in roughly 1910. As a child, Yosvany embraced the African musical and religious traditions that were a fundamental and integral part of his home life.
Born into a musical family in Camaguey, Cuba, he received his first musical instruction on the violin from his father, violinist and chekere player Don Pancho Terry who led Maravilla de Florida, the 1950s-formed collective widely acknowledged as one of Cuba’s most respected Charanga groups. As a result of his father’s legacy, Yosvany’s childhood house was home to music and an extended family of Cuban musicians.
Yosvany went on to study Western classical music in Havana at the prestigious National School of Arts (ENA). He chose the saxophone as his primary instrument for expressing his music to a global audience, selecting piano as a way to explore rich textural harmony and translate his music into original compositions and arrangements. His music draws inspiration from parallel and intermingling traditions that have roots in the Caribbean and West & Central Africa, as well as from European harmonic traditions and the broad range of Jazz Traditions. Yosvany became interested in Jazz at 14 and began educating himself via bootlegged tapes and records that found their way to Cuba. In 1995, he began traveling to the U.S. to join the faculty at Stanford Jazz Workshop and to tour with his first Jazz project, Columna B. He has lived in the U.S. since 1999.
Yosvany’s work cross-pollinates technical mastery with experiential vision and a desire for inter-cultural expression. A deep commitment to participating in meaningful exchanges compels Yosvany to perform and record with some of the world’s most talented musicians. Collaborators include Steve Coleman, Rufus Reid, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Vijay Iyer, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Avishai Cohen, Eddie Palmieri, Silvio Rodriguez, Baptiste Trotignon and Gerald Clayton. Yosvany received a Grammy Nomination, for his New Throned King CD and is a Doris Duke Artist award recipient.
A natural teacher and cultural bearer, Yosvany is driven to share talent, craft and experiential knowledge with the emerging generation of creative musicians, as well as preserve and deepen the understanding of the music from the Caribbean and other parts of the African Diaspora. Over the years, he’s taught courses and delivered master classes across the country and throughout the world. He has served such notable institutions as Princeton University, The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, the Brubeck Institute, NYU, Goddard College, Boston University, Casa de las Americas in Havana, Royal Conservatory of Music in Winnipeg, Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, Columbia University, the University of Salvador de Bahia, University of Rio de Janeiro, and he continues to be resident instructor at the Stanford Jazz Workshop. In 2015, Yosvany joined the full-time faculty at Harvard University as Senior Lecturer and Director of Jazz Ensembles in the Department of Music.
Clips (more may be added)
Few people know that the Bay of All Saints was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. And few people know the transcendence these people, and their descendents, wrought. That's where this Matrix begins...
Wolfram MathWorld
The idea is simple, powerful, and egalitarian: To propagate for them, the Matrix must propagate for all. Most in the world are within six degrees of us. The concept of a "small world" network (see Wolfram above) applies here, placing artists from the Recôncavo and the sertão, from Salvador... from Brooklyn, Berlin and Mombassa... musicians, writers, filmmakers... clicks (recommendations) away from their peers all over the planet.
This Integrated Global Creative Economy (we invented the concept) uncoils from Brazil's sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix... expanding like the canopy of a rainforest tree rooted in Bahia, branches spreading to embrace the entire world...
Recent Visitors Map
Great culture is great power.
And in a small world great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"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...
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.
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.com
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