Riot Folk: Making Folk a Threat Again!

Riot Folk is a collective of radical musicians acting as an anti-profit record label/performance troupe. We're participating in the resistance by writing and distributing music that teaches, provokes, heals, and inspires. Riot-Folk is Anna Roland, Evan Greer, Mark Gunnery, Brenna Sahatjian, Tom Frampton, Ryan Harvey, Kate Boverman, and Ethan Miller. We are a collective, which means we make all decisions and run all these things ourselves. All Riot-Folk artists are also members of the collective.

We share resources, show opportunities, and more. We aren't exclusive to each other in any sense and we collectivized mainly to help each other get our music out there and be able to perform more easily. In other words, we all help our friends and other artists as much as the next person does but we make special care to help each other.

Riot-Folk started as an idea in a few different minds. Sometime in October '04 - after lots of discussion between us scattered kids - an email went around asking if folks were ready to make it happen. We officially "collectivized" in a conference call shortly after that, and have since used calls and emails as our main form of communication and brainstorming. Our first convergence where we all met, hung out, sang, and collaborated was in late April '05.

We are not out here to sell records or generate profit for ourselves. We are driven by a strong activist mentality that sees our art and words as part of a greater movement for social, political, and economic change. Music is a weapon and we intend to wield it to the best of our abilities. Some of us plan to tour often, using money from CD sales and shows to pay for food, transportation, and our general health; others plan to stay local in their areas to organize and/or participate in campaigns and actions.

We say "anti-profit" because we aren't trying to get more than we need to keep this thing going. As a predominantly white and middle-class group of folks, we realize that we come at this thing with a good deal of privilege... and it's something we wrestle with a lot. We want to give back what we can to the movements and people who inspire us to do what we do. We think once we get ourselves off the ground, with CDs to go around and a good website (riotfolk.org) with free music and such on it, we can begin using our art and ability to sell CDs to benefit groups in need of resources and cash.

We are down with all types of music and feel strange restricting our sound to mainly acoustic "folk" music. We we're brought together by a common sound, common politics, and mutual friendships. We often discuss the racial and class implications of our music and the relevance of having a certain type of sound. We have friends who make all types of music from all types of backgrounds, and we intend to bridge gaps between certain styles and backgrounds through our performances, compilation CDs, website, and livelihoods.

http://tribes.tribe.net/riotfolk