Artists join forces to make an impact

It is a collective of creative persons, artists in the artistic spheres of music, spoken word, poetry, visual arts, and photography.

“I wanted to create a unifying group of all the arts because they are connected, therefore it made sense to connect them,” said Mark-Anthony Pierre, co-founder of Indigo Revolt.

The 20-year-old musician, composer, and producer conceptualised the collective in 2015 during the last year of his Bachelor’s degree in Music at the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT).

He told Sunday Newsday the idea came about while he was involved in a few dramatic productions at UTT. It made him realise how the lights, music, acting, backdrop design, other artistic aspects needed to be connected.

“It helped me to see how everything exists alongside each other, how if a single facet was missing, although you could still have the performance, it would be lacking. Also, being constantly surrounded by persons of various disciplines at UTT, I saw how we needed each other and I wanted to create a space for everyone to work together,” he said.

It also occurred to Pierre that musicians have access to other musicians, photographers to other photographers, painters to painters, and so on, but he wanted artists of different fields to have access to each other.

As a member of the local band Undivided, whose music was inspired by the alternative rap genre, Pierre went to his closest friends and bandmates about his idea.

And so Ren? Aleong, Mikhail Alexander, Rakeem Moses and Pierre eventually developed and worked out the collective’s operations, goals, logistics, and planned the initial releases in order to introduce the collective.

They recruited another friend and spoken word artist, D?ja Thomas, to help consolidate their schedules and work out the details to make it happen and began releasing new projects in December 2016.

So far, the members of Indigo Revolt include the members of Undivided - Pierre, Aleong, Thomas, Alexander, Moses, Emelia Aleung, and Aaron Smith - as well as photographer Matthew Creese, and spoken word artist, Alexandra Stewart.

In December, Indigo Revolt released four major projects - a mixed tape by Moses, a rapper; an e-book of poetry by Thomas; an EP from Undivided; and an orchestral album of cinematic music by Pierre.

Pierre produced all the music and helped design the e-book, while the photographer provided the cover art for Undivided’s EP.

Since those releases, other young artists have been expressing interest in the idea, contacted them to find out more and join.

He hopes to expand the forms of art provided by the collective, including film, painting, graphic de design and more. “It saves everyone a lot of time and will eliminate a lot of run around if you have people operating under one roof, when you need people for your projects,” said Pierre.

He stressed that being part of the collective did not mean that its members had to be involved in each other’s projects, nor would it stop its members from freelancing. Instead, he said, it was a way to create opportunities for each other.

“When the name and respect of any brand builds, being associated with the brand is a form of advertisement.

When Indigo Revolt constantly puts out high quality projects, the collective would become known for such, and clients would know that any artist associated with it would also be of a high calibre,” said Pierre.

Individuals interested in learning more about Indigo Revolt can check their Facebook page or visit www.indigorevolt.net.