People // Christopher Dunn // Blog

This was originally a 300-word class assignment at the New School Online class in 'Writing for Media': Come Together Indaba is a Zulu word that invokes the spirit of collaboration and community. At www.indabamusic.com, that spirit is alive. Its members can find like-minded musicians to collaborate with, upload tracks to 'sessions', mix those tracks on a session 'console', and download the completed recording mix as an mp3 file. Members find each other by Craft, Instruments, Genres, Influences, Experience and Equipment. At Harvard, Matthew L. Siegel and Daniel J. Zaccagnino began a non-profit student record label to serve the local community of musicians. Upon graduation, they handed over the reins to other students and, in their words, "We started thinking about other ways to help the larger community of musicians and music professionals...[by]... increasing availability of cheap digital recording technology and easily accessible digital distribution. Together, they enable anyone to make music and get it to people all over the world inexpensively and easily – we think of this change as a democratization of the music production process." When asked which styles of music have been most drawn to the site in its five months of operation, they replied, “We welcome all styles of music – one of our original goals was and continues to be to make Indaba a place where musicians of all types can come together to make music with one another. In fact, some of the most interesting collaborations so far have been between users from very different genres, and it’s exciting to see these people working together.” There was a time when young musicians had to earn hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dollars to produce a demo, to sign with a label--the only place to be professionally recorded. Occasionally, a rock star would become so wealthy as to have a private recording studio. Now, with IndabaMusic.com, we are all rock stars.