(Hypebot<\/a>) — Alongside all of the pain and suffering caused by the pandemic, there has also been an explosion in creativity.<\/p>\n

By\u00a0Chaseedaw Giles<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0KHN<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

When the pandemic hit, Deb\u00f3rah Bond, like many artists, was caught off guard. \u201cI thought I\u2019d be juggling gigs and touring,\u201d said the independent R&B\/soul musician.<\/p>\n

A full-time artist, Bond, 44, made a living through a patchwork of vocal gigs \u2014 performing live at weddings, bars and theaters, recording jingles, teaching vocal lessons and hosting events.<\/p>\n

But the coronavirus pandemic found her burning through her savings and struggling to make ends meet in a tiny rental accessory dwelling unit above the tree-lined garage of a home in Hyattsville, Maryland. According to a 2020 report from the\u00a0Rand Corp.<\/a>, artists were more likely than others to have lost their main source of income \u2014 music-related or not \u2014 due to the pandemic.<\/p>\n

So, with few other obvious options, and the world at a standstill for the foreseeable future, she set out to write her first solo album in the small rental she fondly referred to as her \u201ctreehouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

But cut off from family, friends and other nearby musicians, she devised a way to bring together out-of-work musicians from around the world, people who felt just as abandoned and stuck as she did. What resulted is an extraordinary transnational album \u2014 \u201ccompass: I<\/a>,\u201d released March 5 \u2014 that connected her with a far broader musical community and buoyed their collective spirits during a year of isolation.<\/p>\n

The new album is a pandemic-fueled collaboration of musicians such as\u00a0Chelsey Green<\/a>, PhD. a violinist and acting chair of the strings department at Berklee College of Music in Boston; two-time Grammy-nominated drummer\u00a0Nate Smith<\/a>\u00a0in Nashville; and a percussionist from the British acid jazz band\u00a0Incognito<\/a>, who sent in his recordings from London. \u201cEveryone jumped on board from wherever they were,\u201d Bond said. And most, she said, \u201cdidn\u2019t even stress me for money. We all wanted to create.\u201d She was even able to work with\u00a0Gordon Chambers<\/a>, a songwriter who has written for several artists from Beyonc\u00e9 to Anita Baker and likely would not have been accessible to her or available pre-pandemic.<\/p>\n

They were up against the challenges of not just a pandemic, but also a music industry that has come to rely heavily on curated playlists like Apple Music\u2019s \u201cNew Music\u201d or \u201cFrom Our Editors\u201d to promote new releases. Mainstream artists who have released music during the pandemic have teams of industry professionals ensuring their tunes end up on the most highly trafficked playlists.<\/p>\n

Some music-streaming platforms<\/a>\u00a0like Apple Music don\u2019t allow third-party playlist curation. So, without a direct connection to their editorial team or partners, landing a spot on these lists isn\u2019t likely. Without being able to perform live at clubs and events this past year, Bond says, some independent artists may feel financial pressure to focus less on the quality of their music and more on finding ways to go viral on social media to tip the scales.<\/p>\n

How does an independent artist find new listeners at a time when performing for a crowd isn\u2019t allowed, and they\u2019re battling against more than\u00a050 million and 60 million songs<\/a>\u00a0already on Spotify and Apple Music, respectively?<\/p>\n

Bond was not na\u00efve about how the music world works, having been a performer for decades. She and her band, Third Logic, had been performing together since they were in their early 20s, but as time passed and adulthood \u2014 marriage, children, increased work responsibilities \u2014 set in, finding the time to write music together became nearly impossible. They hadn\u2019t released a new album since \u201cMadam Palindrome\u201d in 2011. Time and distance from her bandmates meant that gigs were few. So, in 2019, she decided to embark on a solo career. Then covid hit.<\/p>\n

At first, she despaired about how she would be able to pay for things like rent and food without the hope of recurring live gigs. \u201cThe pandemic relief money was really helpful,\u201d she said, because independent artists can sometimes go weeks without making any money even without a global pandemic. Between her stimulus check and unemployment, Bond budgeted $600 a week to live on. She had affordable health insurance through Kaiser Permanente, \u201cthanks to Obamacare,\u201d she said. She cut expenses, stuck to her budget and received modest payments from booking a few covid-friendly, livestreamed events for Washington, D.C.\u2019s Kennedy Center and the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland.<\/p>\n

She was able to improvise a home-recording studio with mics, speakers, her MacBook and ProTools software and the help of music engineering friends over video conferences. Bond writes song lyrics and performs but doesn\u2019t herself compose music. So, she put out a call to the musicians in her network and found many of them were also at home tinkering with new tunes and willing to share. Bond would \u201cwait until late at night, turn on colored bulbs, blast things through my monitors and write,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

After a rough draft of the album was completed in September, she and independent producer Brandon Lane put out a broader call for help for more live instrumentation. Their pleas circulated and produced a village of talent, as musicians from all over the world sent the singer their high-quality home recordings. \u201cIt showed me how many musicians were in the same boat,\u201d Bond said.<\/p>\n

Lane, who lived nearby and became part of Bond\u2019s pandemic bubble, would come to her home studio \u2014 fully masked-up \u2014 as technical support and to co-produce the album. The title \u201ccompass: I<\/a>\u201d reflects an appreciation of the importance of trusting your own internal compass, she explained. The project showed Bond \u201cwho has my back,\u201d she said, and that in a time of global crisis musicians \u2014 many of whom Bond considers friends \u2014 would come together to co-create with her.<\/p>\n

Bond, who describes herself as having an eclectic Bohemian style and devil-may-care attitude, said she doesn\u2019t want to change herself to jockey for a spot on the Billboard charts or playlists \u2014 even in the post-pandemic world.<\/p>\n

The music industry is notoriously\u00a0youth-obsessed<\/a>\u00a0and male-dominated, she said. The third annual report on the industry, \u201cInclusion in the Recording Studio?<\/a>\u201d from professor\u00a0Stacy Smith<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative<\/a>\u00a0found that in evaluating gender across eight years of Grammy nominations for Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Producer of the Year and Best New Artist, 21.7% \u2014 or about 1 in 5 artists \u2014 were women.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is who the f*** I am,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not 18, but I\u2019m not \u2018old\u2019 either.\u201d She wants listeners to have the chance to discover diverse musical options for female entertainers, at different ages, with different sounds and styles to match. By dint of necessity, the pandemic opened new types of doors for performers like her \u2014 through which she hopes new types of music will continue to be heard.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to be smart,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not hard to find new music.\u201d Manually searching streaming apps like SoundCloud and Spotify take no more effort than scrolling through Instagram, she said. Bond hopes that listeners will take a break from the algorithms that sneakily sway our musical interests toward those artists pushed to the top of the charts and follow their own compass.<\/p>\n

From KHN (Kaiser Health News<\/a>) reprinted under\u00a0a Creative Commons license<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Hypebot) — Alongside all of the pain and suffering caused by the pandemic, there has also been an explosion in creativity. By\u00a0Chaseedaw Giles\u00a0from\u00a0KHN When the pandemic hit, Deb\u00f3rah Bond, like many artists, was caught off guard. \u201cI thought I\u2019d be juggling gigs and touring,\u201d said the independent R&B\/soul musician. A full-time artist, Bond, 44, made<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":88845,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_stc_notifier_status":"sent","_stc_notifier_sent_time":"2021-04-22 13:32:51","_stc_notifier_request":false,"_stc_notifier_prevent":false,"_stc_subscriber_keywords":"","_stc_subscriber_search_areas":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[71,51,22],"tags":[1989,4408],"class_list":["post-104467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artis-news","category-breaking-news","category-industry_news","tag-diy","tag-songwriting"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n