Stone Tapes is an

independent record label An independent record label (or indie label) is a record label that operates without the funding or distribution of major record labels; they are a type of small- to medium-sized enterprise, or SME. The labels and artists are often represented ...

music collective Musical collective is a phrase used to describe a Musical ensemble, group of musicians in which membership is flexible and creative control is shared.Liisa Ladouceur"Collegjthk ctive Souls" ''This Magazine'', November/December 2004. The concept is ...

and imprint of

Joyful Noise Recordings Joyful Noise Recordings is an independent record label from Indianapolis, Indiana. The label was founded in 2003 in Bloomington, Indiana by Karl Hofstetter, who also played drums on many of the label's first releases. Joyful Noise maintains an a ...

curated by

Yonatan Gat Yonatan Gat is an Israeli producer, guitarist, and composer based in New York City. His cross-genre work has been called "a vital new music form" by a "legendary live performer" by ''Magnet'' magazine, "melding punk, improvisation, world music ...

. The label was founded in

2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; 2022 Sri Lankan protests, Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretari ...

, branching off of Joyful Noise's artist-in-residence program, and emerged from visions and insights arising in conversations between players, producers, promoters, journalists and other indigenous artistic peers around the eponymously titled Medicine Singer's LP, which ultimately evolved into Stone Tapes' debut release.

History

As Stone Tapes recorded and began to tour its first releases and art projects, collaborators internal to the collective took to calling the new approach " End of World Music" or " Scorched Earth Music." Despite presumed good intentions the existing conventions of the established World Music genre now seemed, in 2022 and in light of public conversations around cultural issues accelerated by reactions to the white supremacist rhetoric of the under the umbrella of the American right during the

Trump administration Donald Trump's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 45th president of the United States began with Inauguration of Donald Trump, his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican Party ...

, fetishistic and exclusionary—ultimately limiting the scope and potential of performers and releases. A new and more collective approach, balancing traditional spirit with radical new forms of musical experimentation would be the mission of the collective. As Daryl Black Eagle Jamieson said, reflecting on the

Medicine Singers Medicine Singers is a group of Native American ritual performance artists who began performing at pow wows and in other contexts, singing in an Eastern Algonquian dialect under their original moniker, Eastern Medicine Singers. In 2017, they beg ...

release, "I think it's a completely new realm of music." In the summer of 2022, the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

printed a feature about this rising sense of a new direction or changed inflection of emphasis and sense of mission amongst indigenous artists, both affiliated (Joe Rainey Sr. of Niineta) and unaffiliated ( Pulitzer prize winning composer of " Voiceless Mass",

Raven Chacon Raven Chacon (born 1977) is a Diné-American composer, musician and artist. Born in Fort Defiance, Arizona within the Navajo Nation, Chacon became the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music, for his '' Voiceless Mass'' in 2022. ...

Laura Ortman Laura Ortman is an American musician from Whiteriver, Arizona who lives in Brooklyn, New York City. She bridges the gap between music and fine art, which can be seen from her inclusion in fine art exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial. Early ...

, Suzanne Kite, Warren Realrider, Natha Young,

Postcommodity Postcommodity, a Southwest Native American Artist collective, was founded in 2007 by Kade Twist and Steve Yazzie Their name refers to the "commodity era" of Native American art trading in the late 1800s and 1900s, with the "post" being in refere ...

, Ajilvsga and others) with a meditation on the shift in tone from one of the

' Daryl Black Eagle Jamieson appearing at a climax in the cycle of reflections included in the article that recalled a conversation with the mentor who taught him elements of the

Wampanoag The Wampanoag , also rendered Wôpanâak, are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands based in southeastern Massachusetts and historically parts of eastern Rhode Island,Salwen, "Indians of Southern New England and Long Island," p. 17 ...

and Algonquian dialects among other things:

"...Jamieson, worried hat the experimental approachmight bend those historic sounds until they broke. A 62-year-old Air Force veteran who learned the Massachusett language only as an adult, Jamieson asked his mentor, Donald Three Bears Fisher, to approve the lyrics for “Daybreak,” the album’s first single and an ecstatic aubade with pounding drums. 'He said, ''I want it played everywhere'',' Jamieson remembered... Fisher died in 2020. 'So that’s what I’m doing.'"

Other releases from the first year of the Stone Tapes label/collective include releases by Maalem Hassan BenJaafar "Moroccan

gnawa The Gnawa (or Gnaoua, Ghanawa, Ghanawi, Gnawi'; Arabic: ڭناوة) are an ethnic group inhabiting Morocco. The name Gnawa probably originated in the indigenous language of North Africa and the Sahara Desert. The phonology of this term accordi ...

master of Innov Gnawa fame", Mamady Kouyaté "

Guinea Guinea ( ),, fuf, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, ߖߌ߬ߣߍ߫, bm, Gine officially the Republic of Guinea (french: République de Guinée), is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the we ...

n guitar legend, formerly of Bembeya Jazz", Yonatan Gat's American Quartet "featuring Mikey Coltun of

Mdou Moctar Mahamadou Souleymane (born c. 16 August 1984 or 1986), known professionally as Mdou Moctar (also M.dou Mouktar), is a Tuareg songwriter and musician based in Agadez, Niger, who performs modern rock music inspired by Tuareg guitar music. His musi ...

Greg Saunier Greg Saunier (born 18 May 1969) is a musician, producer, and composer best known as the drummer and founding member of Deerhoof. ''Rolling Stone'' included Saunier alongside Brian Chippendale (of Lightning Bolt) and Zach Hill (of Hella, late ...

Deerhoof Deerhoof are an American musical group formed in San Francisco in 1994. They currently consist of founding drummer Greg Saunier, bassist and singer Satomi Matsuzaki, and guitarists John Dieterich and Ed Rodriguez. Beginning as an improvised noi ...

, and Curt Sydnor", and the legendary (and occasionally "exiled") Israeli punk band

Monotonix Monotonix were a garage rock band from Tel Aviv, Israel. The group—singer Ami Shalev, guitarist Yonatan Gat, and drummer Ran Shimoni (later replaced by Haggai Fershtman)—released their debut EP in 2008 and toured mostly in the United States ...

References

External links

Official Website

Discogs

Secretly Distribution
{{Authority control Israeli independent record labels American independent record labels Indie rock record labels Experimental music record labels Musical collectives Pow woW songs

History

See also

References

External links