Got a note from Anneliefs Brown the other day, drumming up support for a band from Soweto that she manages. She’s Dutch, by the way… She and the band are hoping to leverage Internet power to pre-finance a new recording. A certain number of artists are doing this these days, some very successfully. If you want to contribute, or just see how they’re doing, go to the band's page at the Africa Unsigned website.
For people following social media trends, this hardly raises an eyebrow. If it works it will be, however, extraordinary. Not in terms of the Internet powering the experiment, but rather in terms of the intercontinental, cross-cultural component of the whole thing. From where I sit in the US, most of the social networking seems to be among like-minded souls, which in music means there are really high language and culture barriers. The chances of the hipsters from Chicago or Atlanta signing on to the latest Argentine hip-hop act or indie rock band are actually infinitesimal, in spite of their easy availability. There is what the French call a certain amount of nombrilisme (belly-button gazing) in the whole scene, where ever-more-obscure acts from Omaha break big in social media, but mostly from the same subculture: white, English-speaking, over-educated, under-employed.
But hey, prove me wrong! Support local live music, then follow my $10 to Africa Unsigned…
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