I think we can all pretty much agree that the remix revolution is in full force at this point. Musicians (at least the ones who get music 2.0) are letting their fans remix their music. Artists like Girl Talk, who we recently interviewed, are mashing up songs left and right. Well, that’s great. BUT, what about all the no names and indie artists who are just as usually more creative, and yet don’t get recognized for their remixing efforts because they just don’t have the same visibility. How do the little guys introduce their smashed up art to the world?
Social media has certainly lent itself to such aims. But Twitter, MySpace, blogs, Facebook, and all the other myriad tools out there don’t necessarily guarantee success. You know what TOTALLY helps though? A viral video. Soooo…. how does one make a video viral? It’s pretty freakin hard as it turns out. Some of the successful ones out there were secretly promoted by companies hired to ensure virality. Some just got lucky. And some are really just… That. Good. Kutiman’s ThruYou project is one of the those.
Kutiman, an Israeli artist who grew up on jazz and later became enamored with genres like funk, reggae, and afrobeat (especially that of the Nigerian star, Fela Kuti), managed to stitch together all the proper ingredients for a very clever, and quite viral, video. He spliced and diced together all sorts of random content exclusively from YouTube (um, can we say long tail?) Not only did the result not suck, it was actually really good. The songs are solid and the video editing is slick and interesting. Perhaps Kutiman did kill the video star… See how did it here.
There are 7 tracks, all well worth a gander. Here’s my favorite:
Actually it’s a tie between that one and this one:
Pretty sweet, right?
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