The Global Beat Fusion Project explores today’s converging world culture through music. Based on Derek Beres’s 2005 book, Global Beat Fusion: The History of the Future of Music, the project travels to Brazil, India, Morocco, Romania, and across the US, talking with some of the most creative and loved musicians from each culture. Asking the artists why they make music, what that music means to them personally and collectively, and how collaborations between musicians from different parts of the world bring humanity closer together.
Thematically, Global Beat Fusion suggests that by listening to a culture’s music you gain direct access to the soul of that culture. We tend to learn about other nations predominantly through major media sources, which tend to focus more on tragedies in those countries through an almost exclusively comparative lens. While politics, social philosophy, and religious ideology must be considered, the heart of a culture resides in its arts. Global Beat Fusion gets to the heart of the matter.
Another important theme looks at the computer as the world’s first global folk instrument. Never before have human beings around the globe created, distributed, and shared music on the same instrument. Considered commonplace today, from a sociological and mythological perspective, the speed and ease of technology offers a fresh and innovative trend, and has extensive consequences for how we communicate and relate to one another as a people.
We plan to produce a feature documentary, but more importantly, build a transmedia portal for international music that continually offers new videos, music and news. Global Beat Fusion’s transmedia experience utilizes traditional motion pictures, print/eBooks, the Internet and the physical world of music events/performances. We’d like to share our process and journey with our audience along the way, and create a strong, active community that thrives in the future.
The Kickstarter campaign will allow us to design/build the fully integrated website, database and social network for all content generated by the project, plan/schedule our entire production over the next year, fund the Austin, LA and NYC productions (15-20 interviews and 6-8 musical events), and fund the first international shoot in Morocco. The donations used for production include travel, lodging, equipment, and a small stipend for the dedicated, efficient and highly experienced crew.
The collaborators on the project include:
- Derek Beres (World music journalist/DJ/Producer) of EarthRise SoundSystem
- Mike Hull (Co-Director, Producer) of Fifth Column Films
- Mitch Schultz (Co-Director, Producer) of Spectral Alchemy
- Shiloh Crawford (Cinematographer, Producer) of Fifth Column Films
- David ‘Duke Mushroom’ Schommer (Music producer) of EarthRise SoundSystem