About Alarana Atelier

Alarana.Atelier has been around in some form or another since the summer of 2005. Founded by Jessica Leza, the site has always been small in scope, designed to offer developing and emerging artists of all stripes portfolio space online, free of charge. Over the years, we have changed with the needs of our artists and expanded to offer new music, visual art, video, essays, teaching resources, fiction writing, poetry, and web art. We now helm a thriving facebook community where we feature and encourage new artists and disseminate resources and information to help the career goals of our community. We sometimes function as on online record label, we help musicians secure and market performances, design and print fliers, secure gallery showings, and connect artists to the people they need to accomplish their projects.

Alarana Atelier does not publish just any artist, but we do recognize that artists and musicians at the beginning of their career are also deserving of a public forum from which to gain feedback and improve their craft. Some of our artists have created the work shown on this site as a way to work through grief, chronic illness, addiction, and the other ugly elements of life. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the community for their support. It has been vital for all of the artists represented on this site regardless of their circumstances.

And now, we would like to offer the manifesto for our musicians...

We passionately believe in the value of music for the health and well-being of the individual, of local communities, and society at large. At a time when humanity has the greatest potential for destruction, it is vitally important that the mysterious power of the creative arts is able to flourish. Music allows us to explore and express our shared humanity. It forges a connection between us where language, class, race, and a thousand other boundaries divide. Music strengthens us. It has the potential to lift humanity into the exhilarating future of possibility, to technical and social heights that even now we can only imagine. It has always been this way.

It is today when we are most desperate for the connective power of music that the global "entertainment" industry has failed us most. It has never been easier to write, record, and release music - but it's never been more difficult to reach an audience and make a living doing so. Record labels, radio stations, and the other outlets of the industry have been infiltrated by businessmen who would like to think they are qualified to dictate the taste of millions. Mega corporations such as Clear Channel, whose only true goal is to make money by pawning off the products and services of completely unrelated products, have far too strong of a voice across a wide swath of the airwaves. Gone are the independent record stores and diverse local radio stations that once fostered a sense of local community and distinct regional tastes. As musicians and music fans, we have gained access to communities across the globe, but at the expense of losing our local voice in a desperate chorus of deafening sales pitches. Many musicians feel lost in the fray. Social networking tools and inexpensive professional recording equipment was supposed to level the playing field and allow small, independent, and DIY musicians to thrive from the long tail of music business - a sort of trickle down theory that has now been shown as a poorly thought out sham.

Record labels and music businesses are run by people who understand the length, width, and texture of a dollar, but couldn't find their way around an instrument to save their lives. It's time for the advertisers to stop dictating hits, time for corporate businesses to stop profiting off the drive and dedication of musicians who are poorly, if ever, compensated. Alarana Atelier is run entirely by musicians eager to take risks and explore new frontiers of sound. We believe that allowing musicians to retain their integrity, while creating a positive, dedicated, and dynamic organization for promoting music will help to bring about a creative revolution of new sound. We don't have binding contracts that force an artist to stay in the one genre that we have deemed profitable for a select number of releases. We don't hire models to auto-tune their way through a hit-factory. We aren't involved in this in order to get access to the sex, drugs, and rock n' roll lifestyle we read about in Billboard, Spin, MTV, or one of the other filth-peddlers more intent on selling detergent and increasing your personal debt than to contributing to a strong music community.

While we're getting our sea-legs in turbulent economic and political currents, we are offering all music free of charge. It's a sad reality that 95% of all music available as a paid download is never purchased a single time over the course of a year. While we vehemently believe that the music we offer is worth paying for, none of us are musicians in order to become rich, to become famous, to get the tour bus blowjob on the way to TMZ.

We have been accused of being crazy. Some think we are obsessed. We believe that crazy obsessive insistence on a genuine artifact of sonic expression actually makes us the right people to be at the helm of a new music community. We believe that by offering our music to stream online and download at no charge, you can form an invaluable and lasting relationship to our work, allowing us to raise the profiles of little known, independent, and underground musicians. We want to build a vibrant music community, united by the unrestrained desire for creative sound works. We know that music fans will respond to the unadulterated passion and individualism present in our artists.

We look forward to hearing your ideas about the site, the industry, and music in our soon-to-come forums. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to submit music for release through Alarana Atelier.

-Jessica Leza, contributing artist
2005-2010

alarana.net | 2010 | TX/USA