001: On human-to-human music curation in the time of AI
Everyday is a lesson on humility
Hey amigos!
I've been thinking of creating a place to talk to my English speakers friends for a very long time. Ultimately, I chose the simplest of my dozens of ideas:
To send directly to your inbox a brand new playlist curated by me + a paragraph or two about music and other subjects. That will happen twice a month, always on Mondays, so that you begin your week with new and exciting music. No social media involved.
And so it is. The first playlist is just a few words further. :)
OK, Eduardo! But why did you choose to create playlists for us?
Well, researching and curating music for businesses it's one of the things I have done professionally in the music industry since, well, let's see… 2013. (Gosh, I guess we are all getting old, right?…) Anyway, there are fancy names for that, like “music curator” or “playlist curator", both simply meaning “a human being who works behind the scenes to delivery the most suitable music for every situation".
So, you know, why not share some of the beauties I run into daily?
Right, got it! And what's in your playlists?
Old songs, new songs, in-between songs from different countries and genres. Mixing my favourite tunes from indie contemporaries, B-sides from music legends with dancing cuts and some avant-garde nuggets from Brazil. That's pretty much it.
The other part is that I'm an activist in defence of human music curation. So if you enjoy listening to music and discovering artists and sonorities, but you're also interested in supporting your local human curator, well, this is the place to be. Just think of me as your alternative to the algorithm — a real, live human that helps you discover songs you’ll hopefully like.
I guarantee every playlist will be “made with utmost care & in strict compliance with an old traditional method”. (This is an excerpt from an incense pamphlet I bought the other day, and, well, that can describe my playlists too. So thanks, Himalayan Incenses).
// THE 001 PLAYLIST
Never liked singles, always loved albums. So I decided to put these songs in order as if they were part of a record I was releasing. How would I start this? Where should the vibe calm down, and where should it be more upbeat? And my favourite: what would be the best tune to end it with? Hope you enjoy the sequence as much as I did working on it. And remember: in 2 weeks, these songs will be replaced by other tracks, and so on. And now, with no more delongas, there you are:
// ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eduardo Lemos is a music journalist, playlist curator for businesses and co-founder of the record label Pequeno Imprevisto. Having worked in many different roles across the industry in the last ten years, Eduardo had the opportunity to collaborate with artists such as Milton Nascimento, Paralamas, Da Lata, and many contemporary names from Latin America, Europe and the UK. He is the artistic director of the show Lua Rosa, in which Brazilian musicians perform their interpretations of Nick Drake's songs. As a music journalist, he has interviewed music legends such as Gilberto Gil, Arnaldo Baptista and Beto Guedes, and indie artists like Kings of Convenience, Tim Bernardes, Perotá Chingó, and many more. He writes monthly articles for the Brazilian Union of Composers (UBC) website and magazine. Eduardo is also the creator of the newsletter Distante, wherein he writes about music and immigration. He was born in Brazil and currently lives in London, UK.
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