In this matrix it's not which pill you take, it's which pathways you take, pathways originating in the sprawling cultural matrix of Brazil: Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, European, Asian... Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, delineated by the Bay of All Saints, earthly center of gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings — and the sublimity they created — presided over by the ineffable Black Rome of Brazil: Salvador da Bahia.
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano Veloso, son of the Recôncavo, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
Bio:
Zisl Slepovitch (Dmitri Zisl Slepovitch) is an internationally renowned multiinstrumentalist (clarinetist, saxophonist, flutist, pianist, keyboardist, singer), conductor, composer, arranger, translator, and music and Yiddish educator. Zisl Slepovitch is Musician in residence at Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. He is the founder and artistic director of the Litvakus klezmer band, Zisl Slepovitch Trio, Zisl Slepovitch Ensemble, The Beary Brothers project, Assistant Music Director / Music Director / Music Coordinator, and woodwind player in many productions by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, including Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish directed by Joel Grey (off-Broadway).
Zisl Slepovitch has taught Yiddish language and culture The New School, served as educator and artist in residence at BIMA at Brandeis University, guest artist at University of Michigan, Indiana University, and Amherst College and Vassar College, a teaching fellow and performing artist at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (New York City), Vienna Klezmer Workshop (Vienna), The Moscow Sefer Center, and Eshkolot Project (both in Moscow). Some of Slepovitch’s theater, film, and TV contributions include consulting and acting in Defiance (Paramount), Eternal Echoes (Sony Classical), Rejoice with Itzhak Perlman and Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot (PBS), original scores for the documentary Funeral Season, children’s musical The King of Chelm, ballet Di Tsvey Brider, and many more.
Zisl Slepovitch has performed/ recorded / collaborated / worked with / wrote for Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Ron Rifkin, Joel Grey, Edward Zwick, Michael Alpert, Zalmen Mlotek, Paul Brody, Psoy Korolenko, Frank London, Lipa Schmeltzer, Yale Strom, Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin, Cantor Yaakov “Yanky” Lemmer, and many others.
Slepovitch brought over from his home country Belarus a rich ethnographic collection of Belarusian Jewish music folklore collected together with Dr. Nina Stepanskaya. The collection was used in Slepovitch’s his multimedia concert program Traveling the Yiddishland. Some of Yiddish poetry by Zisl Slepovitch has been set to music and published in Israel, Russia, and the US. Over the years, Jewish music and Yiddish culture have remained the core elements of his creative inspirations.
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"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
I built the Matrix below (I'm below left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) 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. 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).