Matrix is a small-world network. In a small world great things are possible. All is closer than we imagine.

The Integrated Global Creative Economy 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 but enveloping the entire world... ground zero being someone who blazed across Brazil like a meteor crossing the star-filled night skies of his native ground — the sertão and Recôncavo of Bahia — until silenced, disappearing into the waning gloaming over the horizon...

Tens of millions of Brazilians were enchanted by a now 78-year-old musician on the night of August 23, 1980 — a night as unforgettable for them as are the nationally-televised debuts of Elvis Presley and The Beatles to people who witnessed them in the United States.

Raimundo Sodré's band took the stage at Rio de Janeiro's Maracanãzinho arena and the opening chords of "A Massa" resounded... portent-laden bells announcing an anthem destined to reverberate from the jungles and rainforest of the Amazon to Brazil's deep industrial south... in support of Sodré's people: the poor, the invisible, the trod-upon.

But unlike the careers of Elvis and The Beatles, Sodré's was crushed under the boot of Brazil's dictatorship and ground into the dust of the backlands from whence he arose. As far as most of Brazil was concerned he vanished.

By virtue of the mathematics of the small-world phenomenon, and having begun with Sodré and the voiceless in villages and favelas of Brazil, this matrix positions the artists inside it within accessible, discoverable reach of everybody else inside it. And by logical extension, within discoverable reach of the entire world.

Laura was a filha-de-santo. She danced and "incorporated" a caboclo on the night of July 22, 1947. The following day Raimundo was born.

Raimundo learned the rhythms of candomblé while still shorter than the drums it was played on. From Laura he learned to play guitar, the music of their region of the sertão (backlands).

Raimundo's father, Anacleto Sodré, never did marry Laura, but he did participate actively in his son's life. Anacleto was a native of Santo Amaro (Caetano Veloso and his sister Maria Bethânia are from there too). While growing up Raimundo spent extended periods in both Ipirá and in Santo Amaro, learning and absorbing from the latter the samba of the Recôncavo — the primordial African samba carried south to Rio de Janeiro by Bahians in the manner that the blues was carried north by African-Americans.

At the end of 1978 Sodré was invited by Roberto Menescal's production assistant Miguel Chaves (Roberto Menescal was famous on the bossa nova scene, one of his best-known songs being "O Barco") to test. Sodré recorded several songs for PolyGram, among them A Massa (The Mass; "massa" having, as "mass" does in English, a wide gamut of meanings).

A Massa's first manifestation into reality was Sodré stepping out of the shower of the Hotel Imperial on Salvador's Avenida Sete de Setembro, and while still wet, clapping his hands and singing "a massa da mandioca mãe" ("the manioc mass, mother", the English translation loses the punch of the original). Sometime later he was kicked back in a hammock strung outside the simple house he was living in in Bom Jesus dos Pobres, on the far side of the Baía de Todos os Santos (Bay of All Saints) from Salvador, Bach's Minuet in G running through his head. He wrangled the melody into a chula (an originally pejorative term for Bahia's primordial samba), with "a massa da mandioca mãe" in the chorus, "a massa" a metaphor for the great mass of poor, invisible, powerless Brazilians stepped on by the powerful...particularly the dictatorship. Sodré turned to his friend, poet Jorge Portugal, for lyrics.

A Massa exploded, blasting from radios everywhere in Brazil. It struck a fundamental chord. Sodré participated in the yearly televised music festival by which record companies promoted artists and by which Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and the flower of young Brazil became famous, with an audience of tens of millions. Sodré placed 3rd but to call him the public's favorite does not do justice to the times. Sodré's defense of his people had struck more than a nerve; it channeled a raging undercurrent. Although others had sung in cryptic defiance — Chico Buarque's powerful poetry being among the finest — nobody had stood up in stark defiance like Sodré.

Or wound up having so much taken away for doing so.

You have entered a village the size of the planet, THROUGH A GATEWAY SPANNING THE PLANTATIONS AND BACKLANDS OF BAHIA, BRAZIL...

Having begun in a record shop (our logo above) with an artist who rose from Brazil's invisible and powerless to stand in his people's defense and who saw his career — and nation-wide reach — destroyed for it, we take advantage of the small world phenomenon linking most human beings to most others within 6 steps to turn the creative universe into a closely interconnected creative village with no delimiting horizons, darkness and silence resolving into light and music, words and dance on a planetary scale. Making not just Bahian, or Brazilian, but all artists and creators in all cultures everywhere potentially interdiscoverable and interaccessible for the first time since mankind first blew through bone flutes and painted on cave walls over 40,000 years ago...

By topological proximity, not algorithms and AI. In a small world great things are possible. All is closer than we imagine.

Visitors above are David Dye and Kim Junod for NPR; the interview is here.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar found us (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves hung out here daily for a week... Spike Lee came by 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 shop's ethos of promoting magisterial regional and largely unknown musicians, 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 small-world topology — 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 tend to a handful of steps away from each other.

So then, all that's necessary to put the Bahians and other Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.

Anybody on the page of Quincy Jones (rest in power) — 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 transitable small-world steps away from Raimundo 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, 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... everywhere — do also. Algorithms and artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.

—Sparrow

[email protected]

Years ago in NYC I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Mongo Santamaria, Ray Barretto, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Robb Royer of Bread, Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam), Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Philip Glass, Richie Havens 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.

"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"

—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists (musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe)

"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...)

"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"

"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."

—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington

"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"

—Nduduzo Makhathini (JOHANNESBURG): piano, Blue Note recording artist

"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

"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"

—Randy Brecker (NEW YORK): Trumpet giant

"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"

—Matt Garrison (BROOKLYN, NY): Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...

Matrix founding creators are behind one of "10 of the best music radio stations around the world":

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