Origin Hartford, Connecticut Website Thomas Rome Official Role Musical Artist | Years active 1984-present Name Thomas Rome Genres Jazz, World music | |
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Occupation(s) producer, concert impresario, lawyer, manager Associated acts Youssou N'Dour, Abdullah Ibrahim | ||
Thomas Rome (born February 25, 1956 in Hartford, Connecticut) is an American producer, concert impresario, lawyer, and manager in jazz and world music. He's known for his work with African artists, including pianist Abdullah Ibrahim and singer Youssou N’Dour, who went on to be named “Africa's Artist of the Century.”
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Early life, education
Thomas Rome was born February 25, 1956 in Hartford, Connecticut. His father, of Lithuanian Jewish heritage and from a family of printers and publishers in Vilna, is a lawyer. His mother is of Roman Catholic heritage, and worked in education.
Rome was raised in the Hartford suburb of Bloomfield. He attended Bloomfield Public Schools from 1961 to 1969, and from 1970 to 1974 attended The Loomis Chaffee School. He graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1978. He majored in history, and his studies on art and the African diaspora at Yale would later influence his focus in the music industry. Among his professors were historians Richard Wightman Fox, John Merriman, Leonard Thompson, Vincent Scully, Robert Farris Thompson, cultural critic Fredric Jameson, and poet Yves Bonnefoy.
Rome earned his J.D. degree in 1982 from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He was admitted to the bar in New York and Connecticut in 1983, beginning a long-term career in law in both states and internationally.
Early years
Rome began producing music in 1984 in New York City. In 1985 South African musicians Abdullah Ibrahim and Sathima Bea Benjamin persuaded Rome to leave his position at Proskauer Rose law firm to manage their careers.
From 1988 through 2010 Rome was a personal manager, record producer, and concert promoter primarily in world music, influencing the careers of musicians such as Senegal's Youssou N’Dour, Morocco’s Gnawa modernist Hassan Hakmoun, the late Pakistani Qawwali master Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Khan's nephew, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. Rome has also collaborated with rock musicians including Joe Henry, Van Morrison, Peter Gabriel, and Daniel Lanois.
Youssou N'Dour
In 1991, Rome invited American filmmaker Spike Lee to Dakar, Senegal to witness Youssou N’Dour’s popularity. The visit resulted in a recording contract for N’Dour with Lee’s 40 Acres and Mule Musicworks, with distribution by Sony Music and a broadening of N’Dour’s activities in the United States. Rome was executive producer and a contributing songwriter on N'Dour's 1992 release on 40 Acres, Eyes Open.
From 1999 through 2005 N’Dour and Rome produced The Great African Ball, first in New York, then in Paris. The annual event featured N’Dour’s Super Etoile band in performances typical of Dakar nightclubs, and, in its last edition in 2005, King Sunny Ade and his band from Lagos, Nigeria.
In 2000, Rome secured a recording contract for N’Dour with Nonesuch Records. N’Dour went on to become a Grammy winner and a figure in public health advocacy and politics. Rome was inducted into the Afropop Hall of Fame alongside N’Dour in 2005.
Recent years
In later years he partnered with a number of South African jazz artists, such as chromatic harmonica master Adam Glasser, saxophonist Zim Ngqawana, and singer Nonhlanhla Kheswa, who is also an actress in Peter Brook’s Theatre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris.
He is a lawyer and advisor for the estate of Jackie McLean, the late American saxophonist who founded the Artists Collective, Inc. and the Jackie McLean Institute at the University of Hartford.
As of 2013 he is senior producer and managing director of African Hypertext in New York. He was a delegate to the first WOrld Music EXpo in 1994, and also participated in 2006, 2007, and 2008.
Rome has been a voting member of The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences since 1997, and of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) since 1996. He is a trustee of the David Lewiston Archive, an organization dedicated to preserving sacred and traditional world music. As of 2013 he's a member of the City of Hartford’s Commission on Cultural Affairs, having been appointed by Mayor Pedro Segarra in 2010.
Discography
Rome’s major recorded works as executive producer, producer, contributing songwriter, or consultant include: