Sofia Rei Koutsovitis has just recorded a fabulous new album 'Sube
Azul' - AND we have it for you exclusively thru Microfundo!! (see album storefront below...)
I could post the liner-note review in the usual
music-ese speak about the "fully formed immersion in modern and
progressive jazz while also responding to the pull of ancestry and the
appeal of organic, pan-musical connections..."
but i won't
instead
i'll say things like every now and then a truly worthy new voice comes
along. and I'll tell you that, listening to as much music as I do, this
is not an every day event - it's rare.
and that when most of us
think about music from South America our minds jump to Brazilian jazz
or Andean Pan Pipes. But these super popular styles have eclipsed and
hidden so many other beautiful styles - and it is this hidden realm
that Sofia is exploring.
Have a listen.
Then let me
know me if you can imagine that this fusion of Afro-Peruvian and
Argentinian music with jazz (most songs on the album are Sofia's) is
destined to emerge as vangard of a new South American music movement
(the next bossa nova...?)
One-of-a-kind moment!!
Sofia's
bassist, Jorge Roeder, also the producer of the new album, was nominated for the Monk Jazz award this year.
So come on - you've
just been given the chance to help bring this awesomely crafted album
into the light of day. This is how Microfundo is supposed to work -
crowd sourcing rare and beautiful artists.
take a minute to listen to this music (you can sample all the songs below) and then share this with YOUR community - tell people about it using YOUR words...
AND you'll get to download all of the other artist's live albums produced by Microfundo as they are produced throughout the year plus a signed copy of her studio recording
This is really a NEW way to trade and produce new music...
The all-women band Zili Misik is based in Boston and only occasionally tours outside New England, but each of its song takes the listener on a long voyage through a spectrum of musical styles, and even languages.
The band's name comes from the strong female Haitian spirit Ezili, and Haiti has the strongest presence in Zili's songs, but the eight-member band's focus is much broader than that.
Washington:“I like that people can see themselves in this
music. I also like enjoy that when people who have no connection to Haiti, to
Cape Verde, to Brazil, to California, that they feel that connection and it
encourages them to go and find out why, find out about the music, find out,
outside of Zili, where it comes from, why are people involved in it, what’s it
performed for, what’s the tradition, what’s the culture, what’s it like?”
Now,
thanks to a new Boston-based collaboration between Microfundo and
Adva Mobile, aspiring musicians are getting a helping hand - from fans using
their mobile phones.
The idea is simple: Fans lend money via their mobile phone
to support music projects of their favorite musicians. Fans are then repaid via
revenue from future download sales of the artist’s music.
Musicians create their own mobile site that displays their
microfunding campaign. Musicians make direct appeals to fans at a concert or
live event. Fans can respond and contribute - in the moment – using their
phones.
Microfundo
CEO and founder Brad Powell got the idea bringing microfunding to the music
industry while working for Calabash Music, the online world-music company that
he also founded. “All of the artists I came into contact with faced the same
financial hurdle,” Powell says. “They needed capital. Most international
artists in particular are ignored by the mainstream music industry, which is a
significant hurdle.”
Powell
found a solution in one word: microfinance. He studied how international
microfinancing organizations like kiva.org arranged for investors to provide
funds and services to small businesses typically shunned by banks. He concluded
it would not be too hard to start something similar to support musicians.
“If
this is working well for people who are funding what are basically complete
strangers in a foreign land,” he said, “why wouldn’t it work for music fans to
fund artists whose music they actually know and like.”
Powell was inspired by Grameen phone which pioneered a mobile and microfinance service in Bangladesh. "In the 1990's all these local entrepreneurs were empowered to grow their business - simply because they were given acess to capital and mobile phones. With the way the youth of the world use their phones today, imagine the music economy that can thrive between artists and their fans via mobile?"
Adva
Mobile founder and CEO Jack Kelly added the key ingredient of taking music
microfinancing mobile: “Music fans are the alpha mobile users. They are
constantly sharing their experiences via text and twitter – it’s only natural
that they will share their love for their favorite musician via their phone.”
Fans
can get an early look at mobile microfinancing for musicians by texting
microfundo to GETME (43863) where the service is launched with four artists:
Alex Alvear, Ecuador –
text alexalvear to GETME – 43863 for his mobile campaign
Avantrio, Peru – text
avantrio to GETME – 43863
La Otrabanda,
Venezuela – text otrabanda to GETME – 43863
Zili Misik, Caribbean - text zilimisik to GETME - 43863
More About Microfundo:Microfundo is changing the way the world finances music by bringing
microfinancing to the music industry. Microfundo is supporting economic
development in music capitals around the globe with a Microfunding Platform
that allows music fans to give financial support directly to their favorite
artist. www.microfundo.com
More About Adva Mobile: Adva mobile provides a software
service that enables Music Artists and advertisers to create closer relations
with their audience through mobile fan clubs. The experience includes mobile
messaging, mobile presence (mobile internet pages), mobile commerce, mobile
social sharing features, and mobile content fulfillment. The service is free to
the fan, and a revenue generator to the band. www.advamobile.com
"There is something fundamentally brilliant about the Microfundo
mission to support independent musicians in developing countries - a
kind of brilliance that can also be viewed as kind of crazy. In places
where people still survive on the bare minimum, it seems
counter-productive to fund musical efforts when there is still a need
for basic amenities, job security, and sustainability."
"However,
Microfundo clearly recognizes food for the soul is as equally important
as food for the stomach. By supporting musicians and potentially
increasing their visibility on a global scale, we are raising awareness
on the issues of the countries that these musicians are natives of. We
are sending a clear interpretation of human rights that yes, not only
are we all entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and security - we are
also entitled to leisure and many different expressions of personality.
With Microfundo operating in conjuction with efforts like Kiva.org,
we will create a better and more holistic world - a song and message
that I hope gets stuck in my head for the rest of my life."
Microfundo
based it's business model on the highly successful Kiva.org, the first
online peer-to-peer microcredit marketplace. Kiva is one of the
fastest-growing nonprofits in history.
Kiva's online platform allows ordinary
people to invest in small enterprises in the
developing world. Users log on to the Web site
to read the personal accounts of Kiva's carefully chosen borrowers
and then use their PayPal accounts or credit cards to lend as
little as $25 to a borrower. Users would get their money
back over the course of a year, with the option of either relending
the money or pocketing it.
In April 2005, the founders e-mailed a
description of Kiva, its mission, and the
business people it currently sponsored to a
list of 300 friends. Within two days, the
organization had raised $3,500 and funded
all seven enterprises. Kiva had just become
the first online peer-to-peer microcredit
marketplace.
Would Kiva Work for Music? We find this a particularly inspiring story mainly because of the
immediacy of the response. The obvious question for us at Microfundo
was, 'would the Kiva microfunding model work with musicians?'
So...
(drum roll please) we've just launched the first true peer-to-peer
microfunding marketplace for international musicians on our new platform at Microfundo.com.
Choose a Musician, Support their Artist Project Anyone can choose an artist with a microfunding campaign and microfund
$25. You receive a live album download by the artist (plus live album downloads by every other artist on microfundo as they are produced) and you'll get a signed copy of the artist's studio recording.
We think this could become as popular as the
microfunding at Kiva.
You can change the way the world funds music...
The Microfundo mission is to support the entrepreneurial activities of
independent musicians from developing countries around the world -
championing undiscovered musicians who would otherwise not have the
means to develop their music careers.
Hello, I am Alex Alvear and I am asking for
your support to help me record a new and very long-overdue album with
my band Mango Blue.
Music is made to be shared. We adore
performing live because there's nothing like that amazing short brush
with eternity one feels when making music for people in front of you.
Music has the power of bringing people together. Sometimes folks who
otherwise would not interact with each other come together even for a
moment, under the same roof, sharing a piece of their lives.
Nonetheless, the recording of an album is a very important part of the
culmination of a body of work. It allows the music to travel to places
and connect to people the band could not reach in the live performance
setting alone. It also provides possibilities for developing new
audiences, more gigs and a broader network. But most importantly, it
leaves a legacy of what has grown out of years of hard work, joy,
sacrifice, many challenges and tons of fun.
Perhaps the best thing about this particular independent recording
project is that there is no middle person, no broker, no record label
and NO COMPROMISE! Instead, it's a simple and direct transaction
between the artists and the people who love their work.
I sure hope you can be a part of this and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support.
Microfundo has been tweeting away for some time, although to be honest, we were rather late to the party. You can find us, and follow us @microfundo. please say 'hi'. Tweeting is fun it turns out, but the question remains just how useful is Twitter for the average musician?
On the other hand, Music Think Tank contributor, Bruce Warila suggests a music-industry-as-beach metaphor with music genres being coastlines and music tastemekers being beachfront property while individual artists are the grains of sand. You can imagin that when 5 million musicians are all using the same social media tools at the same time, their self-promotion tweets will be as welcome as sand in your sandwich.
What I've observed is that there are some remarkable channels for conversation on Twitter. For example: Kiva.org, which is a microfinance web site that allows people to lend small amounts of money to entrepreurs in developing countries, has a huge twitter conversation going on. People who lend tweet about it. They join teams and tweet about that. They promote the entrepreneur who they've just loaned money to. And if any corporation has a promotion which donates money to Kiva, they tweet about that.
Twitter also seems like a viral Olympian. for instance just a few days ago A REALLY COOL VIDEO featuring Bobby McFerrin was posted and within hours was being shared on Twitter by thousands (or tens of thousands). The interesting part is that this was a musical demonstration by McFerrin as part of a panel discussion at the World Science Festival - which normally could be fairly dry material. And here it was racing across the Twitter-sphere.
Twitter seems to have taken the 'everyone-as-journalist concept and put it on steriods with all participants hungry for something interesting to tweet about. So when something outstanding does show up it's broadcast far and wide instantly.
My takeaway for musicians is that Twitter has a large appetite for conversation pieces - something people want to share and talk about. So if you send up conversation starters -like kiva - which lots of people can believe in and get behind - or if you do something musically remarkable - like the McFerrin video - you win the game on Twitter because everyone else will be talking about you.
As a final Twitter note - Twitter was down today and this too became a big topic of conversation among all the recovering twitterholics. Here's just a few samples from #whentwitterwasdown: it almost cost my sidekick because i was about to break my phone!
I ACTUALLY considered going back to Myspace to ease the tension....
I checked myself into REHAB. Then I found out it was back up I checked out of REHAB
I wrote tweets on my whiteboard
people talked instead of tweeting
i had to live my life and not tweet about it... it felt weird. - Microfundo founder, Brad Powell
Earlier this summer budding Brazilian diva CéU released her critically-acclaimed sophomore set, Vagarosa.
One of this summer's scorchers, the album delved deeper into her
signature blend of reggae, Brazilian pop, indie rock and post-paulista electronica.
But we weren't surprised that Vagarosa made good on the
promise of CéU's self-titled 2005 debut (not released in the U.S. until
2007). We've been fans of this talented songer-songwriter right out of the gate.
Recently Nat Geo Music invited her to come by our studio and record a little somethig for their Geo Sessions series.
Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale, using audience participation, at the event "Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus", from the 2009 World Science Festival, June 12, 2009.
You kind of have to see it to get it. That is to get how people make great music out of objects like matches, basketballs and toilet plungers. The Colombian experimental percussion group is as much theater as anything, but their also highly trained talented and creative musicians.
You'd be forgiven for confusing Tekeye with STOMP the Anglo-american international sensation. Tekeye's leader, Tupac Mantilla, was heavily influenced by STOMP - even saw the show three times. But Tekeye's philosophy, rhythms and origin are all its own.
Tupac Mantilla was born 31 years ago in Bogota, Colombia along with expectations that he would carry on a family tradition of excellence in classical and traditional music. His grandfather, uncle and father had been a prominent composer, conductor and clarinetist respectively. Mantilla started piano at age 4 and entered the National Conservatory of Colombia 3 three years later. It was not a childish childhood. MANTILLA: "I can't say that I really liked the piano, but I was in the best possible sense kind of forced to do it. I spent a lot of years, you know, running from the high school right to the Conservatory to make the lessons and everything right on time and then leave and go back home at PM and do my homework - it was a really busy life as a kid. Of course my mom wanted me to be the best pianist ever."
Until one day in his mid teens, Mantilla made a discovery. He and his brother and cousin decided to start a rock band and his cousin traded some roller skates for a drum set.
MANTILLA: "I saw it and I felt something different. It was like, 'That's a nice instrument, I like it, It's cool.' And my cousin was trying to play, but he really didn't know much. Neither did I. I was like, 'OK'. But I sat down and I don't know why or how I was able to play a beat. And we all were pretty surprised. Even myself. I was kind of like, 'What?' And I'd never done that before, ever."
Mantilla convinced his cousin to be the band's singer even though he had a terrible voice so that Mantilla himself could play the drums.
MANTILLA: "And after that I started playing with everything. Like literally everything around. We had these pillows in the house that were destroyed after a week. I bought myself a couple of drum sticks and since I didn't have a drum set, I started playing, you know, around my house which is the typical kid that loves the drums. And my parents of course were really mad at me. The way to solve all the damage was by just giving me a drum set for my birthday when I was 15."
But in Colombia at that time the path for those wanting to study percussion was narrow. There were a lot of people like Mantilla interested in learning rock and roll or jazz drums, but with no one to teach them, he says, so after high school he enrolled in a university classical training program. MANTILLA: "So we started studying snare drum, timpani, cymbal, marimba, vibraphone, which was really cool, but that wasn't quite what I wanted, so that made me kind of start exploring a lot with percussion, you know and rhythm, especially rhythm. Everything that sounded and had a rhythm in it - I was into it - you know and I was walking on the street and listening to the cars and saying, 'hey you know that car - check that out, that car just made that noise, that's nice and then, you know, this person is walking... I started becoming really aware of my environment".
And then there was that casual encounter.
MANTILLA: "It's funny because someone showed me showed me a little trick with a tin can and I loved it. So I learned it and I started to show it to people. I showed it to my friends, my peers, and they loved it, they learned it. The next lesson I came up with a little trick that I wrote with a rhythm based on a traditional Colombian rhythm. We put it together. It just kept developing."
"My friends started telling me,'Why don't you do a group. Why don't you do something else and it to the next level.' And I decided to do it. So I started to talk to people at the University. I had a lot of percussion friends who were into it. So we just got together and I started to compose music for them based on things like little objects, like small objects, like a tin can or a basketball."
This was the nineties. STOMP had recently come out in England and crossed the Atlantic. Mantilla loved it. And before calling the band Tekeye, he called it 'the Percussion Group based on the STOMP Idea'. Still, Mantilla insists that Tekeye is rhythmically distinct from its Anglo American predecessor.
MANTILLA: "STOMP is really, like, North American back beat kind of thing. You hear that it everything they do. Even though they are really creative, that's what you hear most of the time. But we have such a variety of different rhythms and grooves. So that's probably the difference."
The band was renamed Tekeye because the made up word contains a range of sounds the group likes to generate. Although Mantilla likes to joke that it comes from a tribe from his country's upper coast. In any case the Colombianess of Tekeye, the name and the band is central to its identity.
MANTILLA: "I would say, not because I'm Colombian, but because I'm a musician, that we are probably one of the countries in the world that has more influences from different parts of the world. We are in the center. We have the Pacific coast.All the African influences came.We have the Caribbean, up in the upper coast. Then we have the plains, with Venezuela, which is a totally different music. Of course we have influences from you guys. Then we have in the Center of Colombia it's a totally different thing that came from the Andes and all the way from the South. You know a lot of things happened and a lot of things got to Colombia from different places."
Creating these rhythms using different objects has made Tekeye a huge hit in Colombia Mantilla says. This has led to success in the world of advertising.
MANTILLA: "You know we've worked with IBM doing the keyboards and then cell phones. Red Bull, technology related companies, car companies, the French company Renault, and you know with the car actually closing doors and doing stuff and moving the car and, you know, grooving to the car and everything. In ten years we've done a lot."
This has been great, Mantilla says, but it's not what Tekeye's dozen band members want to be doing. The're more interested in live shows and that's what they're trying to do more of in the states as well as Colombia. They are also hoping to expand the Tekeye foundation which teaches experimental percussion to under privileged children in Colombia and Panama.
MANTILLA: "This is just the beginning of it because right now we are doing programs to entertain them and to show them that, you know, there's a lot to learn and that a lot of, so-to-speak 'bad things' that they could be getting into could be replaced by the act of doing art and playing and exploring objects. Besides the fact of, you know, teaching them how to recycle, for example, how to find instruments anywhere."
Taking Tekeye to the next level, that is more and bigger live shows, poses a particular challenge because Mantilla is the one band member now based in the US. He came to Boston four years ago to study at the New England Conservatory and now plans to move to New York. Still, he wants American to experience the Colombian-based band. Tekeye will be in Boston in September and they're working on a global themed show for December. They're thinking big with a crew of 50, but not at the expense of the group's trademark accessibility. Tekeye is all about interacting with the audience.
MANTILLA: "I stand in front of everyone and start clapping things for people to repeat. People are suddenly smiling and they are doing it. So then by the middle of the show we just go down the stage to the actual audience and start playing with them and, you know, doing the same thing. By the end of the show after four or five times, you get to see people that get to do really nice things. And people that didn't know that they have a little rhythmic essence hidden in them - then they notice that they do have that - that it's part of them."
Though Mantilla sees having rhythm as an essential part of being human, American and Colombian audiences are quite different. That is Americans can be hard to please at first Mantilla says, but they are often blown away by unfamiliar Colombian rhythms.
MANTILLA: "We use a lot of off beats. If I play something different it's going to call your attention a little more. It's more of a Latino type of groove. People are like 'Wow I haven't heard that'. People really liked what we did last time here. So we'll see what happens next time."
Interview by Microfundo correspondent, Amy Bracken
Tekeye is coming to Boston from Columbia to perform at
the New England Conservatory in September, 2009. They need your help to get there! You can help microfinance their U.S. tour with a microloan and get repaid once the tour is complete. For more information: http://microfundo.mymondomix.com/tekeye/tour
In what feels like a labour of love, Rio producer Mauricio Pacheco
took a hand-picked collection of Angolan tracks to a select crew of
Brazilian remixers. The results are soulful and dreamy.
Sourcing
songs from the archives of the Angolan National Radio, Pacheco
unearthed some gems from the 60s and 70s, a golden age in Angolan pop
music which spanned the bitter fight towards independence in 1975. Bonga, Teta Lando, Artur Nunes and Carlos Lamartine
were part of the generation of popular songwriters who took a
pro-independence stand and became legendary touch-stones as their
country headed into a civil war which would not end until 2002.
Plugging retro African tracks into shimmering studios on the other side
of the Atlantic takes a sure hand, and Pacheco has gathered together
some of the most sought-after left-field Brazilian producers to carry
it off. In a call for a united Angola on Angolé, Teta Lando’s mournful and heartfelt vocals get a gentle lift from Pacheco’s drifting electronica and his reverb rework of Avozinho’s Mama Divva Diame is another highlight.
Kassin operates at the epicentre of the Rio avant-garde. Here, with Berna Ceppas, he puts a breezy, spacey spin on Bonga’s gorgeous lament Kapakiao. Celebrated Pernambucan innovator DJ Dolores tips breaks and metallic upbeats into the liquid guitar loops of Merengue Rebita. While on Kappopola Makongo, Moreno Veloso traces the sweet spot where Angolan semba meets samba. In this exchange, Comfusões celebrates and reroutes Angola’s rich musical past. With new kuduro king Dog Murras guesting on Chofer de Praça
this album is clearly forward facing. But with all their experimental
takes, Pacheco and Co have cut up the beats but not severed the links -
the album is shot through with a tender mood and the sense of sad
longing so at the core of Angolan song remains intact. There are deep
cultural connections between Angola and Brazil, and this album explores
that fractured story with the balanced flow of a capoeirista.
