Mixing and matching music
Quote the Raven, Kubasonics participate in Global Music Match 2021, matching 78 artists from 17 countries
ST. JOHN’S, NL — On a sunny Saturday morning, in the shade of a tree in Victoria Park, sit Jordan Coaker and Kirsten Rodden-clarke of the band Quote the Raven with Brian Cherwick of Kubasonics.
Members of bands with completely different styles of music, none had hesitated when asked if they’d be willing to try an impromptu collaboration. This is unsurprising considering both bands are participating in Global Music Match 2021.
The project spans four continents, 17 countries and involves 78 artists. It was started in 2020 “in a bid to continue developing profiles for artists in international music markets within the challenging and unprecedented parameters of COVID-19,” a news release from the East Coast Music Association said.
Collaborating allows for new ideas and ways of creating music to be found, Cherwick said.
“The music that we already play is mixing two or three things together and now you get to mix still more stuff, so it makes it like a big giant sundae out of it all,” he said.
Quote the Raven, whose members find Americana a pleasing enough description of their music, are on a team with Hudost (U.S.), Lucy Farrell (U.K.), Dani Larkin (Ireland), La Riipa Group (Finland) and Musketeer (Australia/germany).
As for how Kubasonics sound, Cherwick says, “You know all the genres of music? We’re none of those.”
They’re on a team with Jill Stark (Taiwan), Jack Rutter (England), Ernest Aines (Australia), Treya Lam (U.S.) and Ánnámáret (Finland).
HOW IT WORKS
Every two weeks, each team will boost the content of one artist on their social media.
“It’s a brand-new audience from five new perspectives for a single artist. And then the next two weeks, it shifts to someone else, and it just rotates for the next 12 weeks,” Coaker said.
How they choose to collaborate, is up to them.
“None of the content is set, so you can have creative control over what you want to do over those weeks,” Roddenclarke said. “It might be a livestream, it could be a brandnew song that you write, it could be you putting your instruments or your vocals on someone else’s track.”
In the first two-week period, Kubasonics were working with Jill Stark, an electronic dance musician.
“She noticed the (tsymbaly) I play is similar to a traditional Chinese instrument. She said, ‘Oh, it’d be cool if you played that Chinese thing on my record.’ I said, ‘Yeah sure. Why not?’” Cherwick said.
“(The tsymbaly) is like a hammered dulcimer (which has) all kinds of strings you hit with sticks. In China, they have their version of it called the yangqin. It’s super cool.”
Time differences are a challenge, but othewrwise it’s been easy to connect across countries and cultures, all three musicians said.
For instance, the weekly team meetings are supposed to be a half-hour, but sometimes they go as long as two hours because they’re enjoying themselves so much.
“The magical thing about music is that whenever we’ve travelled anywhere outside the country, or even in the country, as soon as you meet a musician, you automatically are on the same page in some capacity,” Coaker said. “A couple of the people, I (thought), ‘Man, how have I not known these guys for years?’”
Follow Quote the Raven and Kubasonics on their various social media platforms to keep updated, or go to globalmusicmatch.com for more information.