Acerca de

Musically, the South has always had a lot to say.

 

Innovation through fearless, passionate expression is kind of our thing. 

 

As one might imagine, conventional wisdom for sustainable commercial success and fearless, passionate expression don’t necessarily play exceptionally well together. 

​

Art influences culture, which influences the market, which influences art, and music’s no different. When the music industry as we know it approaches a Southern artist, conventional wisdom has it that that artist’s very Southernness is a major factor in their marketability, and the perception of Southernness by that market comes with expectations. Those expectations are often informed by a Southern Ideal rooted in co-opted sounds and iconography taken from here and sold back to us. When John Fogerty, a Californian, sings that he was born on the bayou, you believe him—he sings it like he means it. But after nearly seventy years of popular music informing our cultural identities, Southern artists are left with a hollow analogue of our culture; a caricature. A copy of a copy of a copy. 

​

So the South effectively has its own miniature economy of Southern Music that’s deemed unfit for the market if it doesn’t tick the necessary boxes to become a cartoon of itself. But our artistic sub-market has its own underrepresented communities. Those boxes are a lot tougher to tick for people of color, for LGBTQ+ people, for women— to be an under-represented group in a misrepresented market is– in many cases– to be forgotten. 

​

Meanwhile, the music industry as we know it has been slowly and sheepishly coming to terms with being dead in the water for roughly twenty years. The internet, through file sharing, online radio and video platforms, social media, subscription based music services and the like has made music easier to come by for the consumer with each passing year. This is great news for the consumer, but record labels, radio conglomerates, A&R companies, talent agencies, and their ilk have found themselves uncharmingly antiquated, middlemen in a transaction that has the newfound (arguably unrealized) potential to exist between the creator and the consumer. 

​

This paradigm shift has the ability to be both lucrative and liberating for the artist, but a new problem is presented. Those record companies and radio conglomerates, predatory and cutthroat as they often were, didn’t exist for no reason. Recording an album is an expensive notion, and rightly so, consumers’ expectations for audio quality grow more discerning as technology continues to improve fidelity, and the equipment to deliver this comes with a high price tag and a steep learning curve. Summarily, recording engineers and producers tend to guard their techniques, developed over years of research, practice, and trial and error.

​

Traditionally, record companies fronted the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars commanded by recording studios, but with record sales continually declining while recording prices slowly but steadily rise, record labels’ response was to put more promotion into fewer artists while universally cutting artists’ profits to fractions of pennies on the dollar and recouping studio expenses off the top of record sales. This leaves the emerging artist with an apparent choice between spending years and thousands of dollars attempting to effectively become a recording engineer in their own right, while finally self- producing, promoting, managing, and (perhaps most dauntingly) funding their own project, or making the Hail Mary shot at one day signing with a major record label, all while knowingly taking on the risk of being one of too many artists with a gold record and nothing to show but thousands of dollars of debt to a company that now owns all their past and future creative output.

​

Either way, the risk of burnout for the artist is massive. Either one takes the independent path, effectively spending every waking moment and spare dollar on one’s career, touring for years or often decades with no guarantee of success, or takes the traditional industry path, losing creative control over the sounds, images, and very humanity that make up one’s musical talent, all while assuming the risk of being under-promoted, underpaid, or outright dropped.

For decades, musicians shouldered these monumental risks as inescapable and obligatory— in exchange for the possibility of reaching and expanding on a broader audience for performance. That’s the payoff in terms of both finance and personal satisfaction through artistic merit, a concept ostensibly shelved until further notice. 

 

It’s kind of a raw deal. 

 

Cartographer offers an elegant solution.

 

Simultaneously record both audio and video of artists, working efficiently and pragmatically, presenting a tastefully naturalistic representation of a group of musicians performing a piece of music together.  Exclusively record Southern artists— focusing on under-represented communities and esoteric genres— and do it for free. Then, rather than handing off recordings to record labels, distribution services, agents, and the like, maintain a close relationship with the artists and share the workload of promotion and development. Present these artists to the public as just what they are, a collection of rarities, of under-represented, fresh-faced Southern musicians making the music we actually make down here. With this previously disjointed group thoughtfully fostered under one umbrella, each individual success can then further opportunity for the whole. 

​

In tandem, conduct in-depth interview sessions with these groups, focusing on the practical aspects of being a living, working musician in today’s creative economy. Actively unweaving the fabric of the conventional mystique placed on the musical group allows for two things: a personal look into the amount of real world work that goes into sustaining a career in music, and a free educational resource for young and emerging artists. While the former lets the listener/viewer feel a closer, more meaningful connection with the artists as individuals, not only through shared regionality but also through shared struggle, the latter addresses the types of lessons unlikely heard from the piano teacher or school band director, lighting the path through experience. 

​

While the recording and mixing process takes place, allow time for transparent discussion and explanation of the techniques and equipment used to make good recordings. Providing an opportunity for hands-on experience in recording to musicians can serve to demystify and decode those decades of closely guarded secrets and inform a group’s most sensible personal approach in future recording endeavors. Provide a functional internship of sorts. 

​

Finally, while Cartographer intends to work specifically with the Deep South, other areas of the world stand to be helped by this new model for region specific artistic focus; we’re not the only ones feeling the effects of a collapsing music industry. Cartographer harbors no wish to keep this model to ourselves, but to allow other regions to use our work as a template to provide opportunity for sustainable practice for musicians wherever they might be. We are ready and willing to help foster the growth of this model  in any community with a few forward-thinking individuals able to put the effort into making it work.

​

Get in touch so we can start working together.