by Monti Karus
Kelebek Evrimi at Menada, Skopje – Macedonia; from left to right: Monti Karus, Dejan Spasovic (guest), Katerina Dimistrovska and Umur Sadico
What happens when three traveling street musicians from different backgrounds come together into a single path for a brief snapshot of time? You get the culturally rich sound garden of the Kelebek Evrimi project.
by D. Wild
When I was sixteen years old, I wrote and recorded a song called Infection. Eleven years later, it’s become completely cringe-worthy for me to listen to, but that song lead me to some of the most profound realizations I’ve had in my music career so far. The lyrics of Infection were about unrequited love, the negative feelings that come along with it, and the ability of those feelings to spread into other aspects of life.
At that time, I was extremely self-conscious about my voice, and my good friend Ravi Adams would sing on the actual recordings of my songs. Ravi was able to capture the things that my voice was not yet capable of, and for the first time in my life, I experienced the joy of having a completed musical project that I was proud to share with the world.
I continued striving to write better and better music, but one day Ravi stopped me in the middle of recording and told me “Dillon, you write awesome songs, but everything is sad and slow. Imagine what you could do if you changed things up and wrote a happy, more upbeat, song.”
October Books, the well-loved independent bookshop in Southampton, UK where I work was facing a rent increase and an uncertain future towards the end of 2017. What to do? My colleagues and I started to look at alternative premises in the local area and the city center in early 2018. We first viewed the former chemist next door, which had a smaller retail space and a lower rent, so we registered our interest. But it was not to be – someone else got in before us.
Everyone has a story. Complicated, joyful, challenging, and beautiful. This is mine.
I am an independent artist living and creating music, films, and installations in Los Angeles. Born in Russia and emigrated to the United States seven years ago at the peak of my career as a journalist, I dropped everything and started my life from scratch. Some people may say I waited too long, but I say the magic happened when I was ready and the time was right.
by Alex Southey
This song, We Have Been Here for a Week, is about the perceived personality of the city of Vancouver.
by Heath Church
When I play a song for you, I want to create an experience that sticks with you. I want to take you to a place in your mind where you feel accepted and understood in a unique way that you haven’t before. That’s what music does. It understands us. I think everyone needs a chance to feel understood.
by Iris Johner
It’s lost and heavy-hearted that I decided to settle down on my own in south Portugal in November 2017. After three years of travels around the world and a summer back to my hometown realizing time was flying and driving my dreams away from me, it appeared to be the perfect deal for a start over – as the one place I would most likely call home.
Back in the late ’80s, my parents started up a rainforest conservation project in Cameroon. They had their adventures getting there, having driven the whole way with all their gear in a Landrover. They almost got lost in the Sahara desert and crossed Chad, which at the time was in the midst of a civil war.
Their project was based in a remote village called Oku, in the north-west province of Cameroon. It revolved around working with local people to protect a remaining island of rainforest on Mt Oku, home of the Oku tribe.
by Jack Norton
I, Jack Norton, am an Emmy Award winning singer-songwriter performing hokum blues and vaudeville folk music. Based in the United States, I recorded my most recent album “Busker’s Blues” in a cabin in a remote part of Manitoba, Canada. Armed only with a mic, a guitar and a week in the woods, the following is a journal kept by me while recording…
We started out recording this album (Mother Coyote) as nothing serious. Originally it was supposed to be a four-song demo, so we started at a really slow pace. I went up to the studio maybe once a week to record some guitars or something. But as it evolved, it started to become a full album.
I began to push to get things moving faster but, a lot of problems started to come along: Like getting the drums recorded and getting the right drummer, getting the right keyboard player, someone to mix and master and someone to make the album cover. Everything took almost two years, and it was a real hassle, but now I feel very proud, and it turned out to be a great album!!