Six Degrees Records

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article with relevant internal links.

This article does not cite any references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for Wikipedia.
Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.

When Six Degrees Records began in 1996, the music world was a vastly different place. Think about it: no iPods, no MySpace, no downloadable music files (legal or otherwise)... just a landscape created by the major record labels and inhospitable to most everyone else. That was ten years ago. And now? "If you're just a record company in 2007," says Six Degrees' Bob Duskis, "you're out of business."

Six Degrees remains very much in business, largely because Duskis and co-founder Pat Berry created a small, flexible, intelligent label that focused on the music first. From the start, the label's carefully curated global pop and other eclectic recordings were smart and accessible, and their catchphrase, “everything is closer than you think,” suggested that this music was just a step or two away from what the listener already knew and liked. Now, after a decade of unprecedented upheaval in the worlds of music and digital culture, Six Degrees finds itself in the vanguard of a new type of music business. The label has expanded beyond traditional record sales to include the new Emerging Artists Series, a digital-only platform for new releases, Six Degrees Traveler, the popular weekly online radio series devoted to globetrotting musical surprises, and a steady stream of music for various television and soundtrack projects.

Duskis and Berry were two label refugees living in San Francisco, but they took a global view of music's future. "We noticed that the first experiments in mixing world music with electronic and dance music were almost all American and European producers," Duskis recalls. "They'd use samples, often illegally, as a kind of exotica. But what interested us was that this technology was now in the hands of young producers around the world, who were rooted in their own traditions but had grown up going to dance clubs and using computers." One example is the style known as Asian Massive, which mixes classical Indian music with dance grooves and electronica. Label artists such as dj Cheb i Sabbah, Karsh Kale and New Delhi’s MIDIval PunditZ all pioneered this global style. In Mali, Issa Bagayogo has led a similar movement towards a homegrown form of contemporary dance music that draws on one of the world's deepest wells of traditional music. And with artists like the Brazilian collective Bossacucanova, Six Degrees is introducing a new evolution of Brazilian pop to American ears.

But Six Degrees has never been just a “world music” label, however broadly defined. The early release Festival of Light, a collection of contemporary works for Hanukkah in a variety of styles, was one of the seasonal hits of 1996. The Euphoria project, a spacey blend of slide guitar and ambient trance, charted in the Top 5 at both R&R and Gavin’s Triple-A chart and has since been licensed for many films, trailers and a national Infinity SUV campaign. In 2001, Six Degrees released Michael Franti and Spearhead’s Stay Human, which was one of the best-reviewed albums of that year. In 2003, Six Degrees partnered with the theatrical performance group Stomp on the soundtrack to Pulse, A STOMP ODYSSEY, an award winning IMAX film. And even the most enthusiastic fans of traditional music categories would have a hard time classifying The Real Tuesday Weld, a one-man English band that makes cinematic pop that sounds like it fell from a sky full of mid-20th century radio plays.

With free music downloads, online videos, and more, Six Degrees was embracing the digital future of music at a time when most of the industry was blindly (and unsuccessfully) trying to fight it. "We're a small, indie label," Bob Duskis says; "we can't compete financially with the majors, but we can move faster, be more guerrilla in our strategies. For example, we were one of the first indie labels on iTunes." The Emerging Artist Series is another result of the label's appealing blend of realism and idealism. "In the traditional model, where you pay an advance to an artist, manufacture the record, and then pay to ship it, the cost of entry into the marketplace is now prohibitive, unless the artist has an established career. We didn't want to be in a position where we made decisions based on cost-effectiveness instead of artistic merit. With a digital-only release, we can quickly get the music out to listeners and to music supervisors in television and film. It's like having a farm team, and when something does well, then you can follow it up with a CD." The label's farm team includes several artists likely to move up to the parent club - including DO a collaboration between Afro-Cuban pianist Omar Sosa and producer/guitarist Greg Landau, the Persian-inspired world jazz of ZAMAN 8, the classically trained producer/keyboardist MNO, the lush psychedelic downtempo of Rara Avis, and the Arabic electro of Jef Stott.

Of course, the label remains committed to its established artists and the good old compact disc. Six Degrees' digipacks sport handsome visual designs and are environmentally responsible as well. And the label's North American partnership with Ziriguiboom/Crammed Discs in Belgium sparked the phenomenal success of Brazilian diva Bebel Gilberto, whose worldwide million-plus album sales make her one of the world music scene's brightest stars. A startling array of Brazilian geniuses has followed: Celso Fonseca, Cibelle, Lenine, CéU, and more.

But it's not all gazing over the musical horizon; the label's eclectic catalog also includes a deep, atmospheric collaboration between Minnesota guitar veteran Steve Tibbetts and the Nepalese Buddhist monk Chöying Drolma. And for the truly global armchair travelers, there's the critically acclaimed Travel Series, offering a chance to sample dozens of the label's artists.

2007 proved to be a banner year, with the release of Bebel Gilberto's third album Momento; and the Spanish Harlem Orchestra's United We Swing, a stunning collection of irresistible Latin music from a band that includes many of New York’s greatest Latin artists – as well as guests like Paul Simon. The biggest breakthrough success for the label in 2007 was from a new artist by the name of CéU. CéU became the first international artist to be released as part of the Starbucks Hear Music Debut series. Her self-titled release on Six Degrees Records has sound-scanned over 75,000 copies and scored unprecedented chart numbers for a Brazilian female artist -- #1 on Billboard’s World Music charts (cracking the nearly two-year domination of Celtic Women), #1 on Billboard’s Heatseekers (New Artist) chart, and #57 on the Billboard Hot 100. CéU’s momentum continues to build with her beautiful album cover gracing the high-profile Apple iPhone commercials and her stunning 2007 Pan American Games opening ceremony performance becoming recognized worldwide.

For ten years - ten of the most challenging and difficult years in the music industry's history - Six Degrees has adapted, and at the same time persevered with its founders' original vision. The label has blazed its own trail, and has created a haven for music that crosses cultures and styles. Because now, in a world where almost any music can appear with the click of a button, everything is closer than you think.