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Within anyone’s chosen musical field, an often asked question is ‘describe your sound’. This question is posed by many different people, be they fans of the band, promoters, marketers and potential employers, or even within the group, it is a question that we will encounter many times.
With IHiva, we have made, from the very start, a concerted effort to base our music upon the foundation of reggae. Where it becomes more of a gray area is in the fact that while we use reggae as the basic building block of a song, we often add different styles into this framework to highlight an emotion or a musical passage, a reimagining if you will. This to us, is second nature, we see it as a progression stylistically and we constantly seek out new musical realms within the songs themselves.
This, as you can imagine, has its pros and cons in that while we ourselves may thrive on exploring these differing musical elements, it can be difficult in a very cut and dried musical field to market the band .
Because of the band members' innate ability to blend these different styles into the musical melting pot, it can and does take our songs into new and very interesting directions, we always try to take the listener on a fresh and unexpected musical journey in our music. While we travel merrily into new and uncharted realms musically, we have to give thought to how these creations are interpreted. In the interests of always exploring both sides of the coin, I must make mention of the business side of things as well.
From a marketing perspective, many A&R folk, musical promoters and aggregators will tell you they need a defined musical style and base to ‘pigeon hole’ the music so that they can guide it into the ‘right’ playlists to increase the reach and chances of a successful income stream and audience.
There are literally tried and tested musical algorithms that are used to determine where different styles of music are placed.
Anyway, that is my limited understanding of the music industry and business so I will get back to the crux of this section of the blog…..
I think it is best for me to say that IHiva hasn’t yet found a pigeonhole that err, fits easily into a defined musical category and we are fine with that. Our music is world based thematically and is genre defying in a lot of instances. It is designed to speak to people from all walks of life and corners of the globe, our target audience is humanity.
Reggae is the vehicle but the accessories can be funk, jazz, blues, rock, drum and bass, anything that fits the vision and theme of our music.
We love this vehicle and we truly hope you do too.