Manifesto

I started Big Tent in 2023 as a "project-based, value-aligned record label." After two years I think it's fulfilled the first part. To date the label has released 6 projects: an idm breakbeat album and remix tape, an indie pop record, a suite of rap songs, a downtempo ep, and a single that kinda sits at the intersection of all that. I went wide on genre but stayed close on collaborator. In each case I worked with friends whose music I had already been listening to for some time. As a result, these partnerships weren't just opportunities to come together and make a cool thing, but also to get to know each other better. Is that value-aligned though? I'm not sure.

What I do know is that the friend aspect, the working on music with people you know aspect, has always been the main draw of this stuff for me. When I started working in management I didn't know it was management, my friends needed help releasing an EP and I said sure. What excited me most was that they were my friends and they had made something good enough to be listened to alongside all the other music that gets released every day. I've carried that feeling with me through every project since.

The art world is animated by the desire to witness, it's what compels us to spend so many hours in galleries and cinemas and concert halls. The business of art is to take this attention and transform it into capital, to aggregate and financialize it into something that produces revenue. The controllers of the spectacle need to make it as big as possible so enough of us will watch. They need to make us believe that everything that matters is happening up there and we can't do anything down here. But we can actually do a lot down here.

Art is a small part of our world but a meaningful one, it influences how we feel about ourselves and each other. I believe that focusing more on the things which are made around us, by the people we know and encounter every day, can improve our sense of empathy for one another. Listening to someone's music is getting to know someone's soul, and we must understand each other first before anything significant can change.

This is not to say that Big Tent's aims are so lofty. My goal when I started the label was to release good music and this is still the case. However, prioritizing locality is something I will continue do as well, both because I think it's important, and because it feels good. The world as we know it has never looked more fragile than it does right now, but I, personally, am excited for what's to come. We can build something better than what was before.

- Nick DeMasi, founder