Herein a world of innumerable islands is bridged in a way that almost everybody who creates art is somehow potentially findable by almost everybody else in a limited number of steps, in much the same way that within some six or so steps we can make she knows/he knows connections from almost anybody on the planet to almost anybody else.
And rather than following the advice of combined multitudes, giving value only to what vast numbers of other do via charts and hit parades, why not be able to follow the advice of one person we respect? Who might be able to point us to somebody unknown to the clamoring multitudes but nevertheless wonder-inspiring?
Herein, individual curations/recommendations are strung together -- page by page -- into worldlines forming a convoluted matrix reaching people and art we would never otherwise come across. This is a new paradigm in access and discovery.
If you'd like to join to recommend somebody(ies), and prefer not to be recommended yourself, simply do not create recommendable categories for yourself (categories are created on one's own page via clicking on the WORLDLINES BACKWARD tab and following the instructions).
Sign up from the top of any page. Create worldlines (tacit recommendations) leading to whomsoever you wish, for categories by which people use to describe themselves. These are on their WORLDLINES BACKWARDS tab; simply click on the little green crosses when you are logged in. The person you are recommending will appear on your WORLDLINES FORWARD tab.
FAQs
Q: Why are there so many Brazilians in this thing?
A: Because Salvador Central is located in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. The site began as a guide to Salvador.
Q: What does a guide have to do with music and musicians?
A: Music is big in Brazil. And it's especially big in Bahia. Since the days of African slavery it's been the people's primary cultural manifestation.
Q: So why not just write about and recommend musicians in Bahia. What's the point of having, say, a piano player in New York City sign up and create a page.
A: From these pages people can recommend other people. That piano player can recommend Bahian musicians. Then people who know the piano player, or come across the piano player's page, can follow those recommendations to the Bahian musicians' pages.
Q: But what if the piano player doesn't want to recommend musicians in Bahia or in Brazil. What if that's something the piano player doesn't care about? What if he wants to recommend gypsy guitar players in Europe? And balalaika players in Russia?
A: It's not that we love Brazilian music. We love music. We are located in Brazil and work in various capacities with musicians here, but there are wonderful people making wonderful music in a wide range of styles all around the world. Besides, these recommendations are like the Kevin Bacon game; most musicians can be gotten to from most other musicians in a limited number of steps.
Q: So the network is limited to musicians then?
A: No. It's not necessary to be a musician to appreciate music and recommend people who make it.
Q: But it is limited to music?
A: No. It's limited to the creative arts widely speaking. When people create their pages they create the categories for which they might be recommended, or described. For example somebody might create "Trumpet" and "Jazz" and "New Orleans". Then they will be listed under these categories. People can look into these categories and they'll be there, the people with more recommendations for these categories rising closer to the top. Some musicians write books about music, so it makes sense to allow them to create the category "Author" or "Writer". Some make documentaries, so it makes sense to allow "Documentary Filmmaker". Then of course there are documentary filmmakers who aren't musicians, so it makes sense just to open things up to the arts in general.
Q: What if I just want to recommend? And I don't want anybody to recommend me? Can I do that?
A: Yup. Recommendations/curations are always for categories (Santa Claus as a Sleigh Driver, for example, or for living at the North Pole, etc.). If you don't add categories to your own WORLDLINES BACKWARD tab, nobody will have anything to recommend you for.
Q: Is the site/network run by a highly financed international consortium? : )
A: It's run out of a record shop in Salvador (Cana Brava Records). The shop was opened to divulge powerful and important music here (Brazil's highly moving analogue to the blues in the United States) which is for the most part unknown even to Brazilians. The shop is also devoted to Rio-style samba, and choro, and the music of candomblé, etc.
Q: Why do you call the network a "matrix"?
A: The original sense of matrix was something which gives rise to something else, quite literally the mother of something (from Latin). In this sense a matrix is a source. Our network is a central source of knowledge, information, and the fruits of artistic creation. As Johnny "Guitar" Watson put it, it's a real mother for ya.