African Music – The Blog of Samite

Posts Tagged ‘Michael Jackson’

If you never heard east Africa music, it is closer to your ears than ever before.  Some talented musicians are bypassing traditional avenues to bring their sound directly to the audience.

For example, there used to be dozens of recording studios in Manhattan including the famed Hit Factory on West 54th Street.  The biggest names in American music all got their records produced there, names like Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen.  Today that building is a condominium complex.

This is a story repeated on block after block.  Sony, Media Recording and the Hit Factory are all gone now in this digital age.

The reason is because technology has evolved so that musicians can invest in home studios that produce terrific sound quality right from a laptop computer.  Real estate prices are also exorbitant and they rose at a time when aspiring musicians stopped hiring studios to record demos which were the bread and butter of the industry.

The major record labels have cut their budgets, so the recording studios cut hours of operation until they could no longer survive.

One critic of the home studio trend is Tino Passante, general manager of Avatar studios, one of the last thriving operations in New York City.   He says it’s impossible to get quality sound from a home, so even if you are able to do it, it doesn’t mean you should.

Another trend in the music world is artists appealing directly to their fans for the money needed to produce a recording in a professional studio.  This is what Samite is doing.  He believes his resources can be best spent creating the unique sound for which he is known, bringing east Africa music to the masses and a personal connection to the music he loves and knows you will too.

Order Samite’s latest CD: “My Music World“.