So Indie, They Don’t Even Know It
Wed, Mar 24, 2010
By Yepoka Yeebo
Last year, five 12-year-old girls from Brownsville, Brooklyn recorded an exuberant, electro-tinged song that would see them featured in music snob bibles ‘Pitchfork,’ and ‘The Fader.’ By a bizarre twist of the record industry, it became the soundtrack to luxury label Proenza Schouler’s show at Fashion Week in February. But only one of the five girls knows they’re an indie electronic sensation.
“There’s this totally fucking creepy runway show with all these emaciated 18-year-olds marching around looking angry and indifferent in these bizarre get-ups that are exorbitantly expensive,” said Sam Hillmer, who helped produce the song. “They’re playing this music made by these really down-to-earth, normal, basically happy, all things considered young African American women from Brownsville, Brooklyn, one of the toughest neighborhoods in America.”
The song ‘Born 2 B Fly,’ from the debut album ‘Da Brats from Da Ville,’ was the product of a program at PS284, a Brownsville school in the shadow of the Langston Hughes projects. Hillmer, director of the youth program at the Beacon Centre for Arts and Leadership in Bushwick, designed the program to teach young people about business through the music industry, with help from True Panther Sounds, a small indie record label.
“It was as simple as someone hearing it and liking it,” said Dean Bien of True Panther.
Soon after ‘Born 2 B Fly’ was released on vinyl, True Panther was bought by Matador, a huge label and home to artists like Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth and Cat Power. “It was super, like, in the upper realms of people selling shit to each other,” Hilmer said.
“Totally bizarre.”
Matador, in turn, is owned by indie records conglomerate Beggars Banquet.
Hilmer said: “Beggars Banquet has people who basically take these portfolios of music, and sit down with with, like, Honda and whoever the fuck else wants to buy music for commercials and movies.”
And fashion shows.
Sam Hillmer by Yepoka Yeebo / The Brooklyn Ink
In theory, all five girls made a modest amount of money, but Hillmer is only in touch with one, Tamara Barden, 14. “There’s one young person who I don’t think ever saw it or knows about it or anything, she had to leave her neighborhood because of complications about gang stuff and I was never able to get in touch with her,” said Hillmer, who also plays saxophone in the experimental rock band the Zs.
The program, Representing NYC, was also about connecting the artists moving into neighborhoods like Bushwick and Bed Stuy with the community.
“You can come and be on a vibe where you’re like waiting for the coffee shop and the restaurant with the arugula salad to come through, or you can really be where you are and bring whatever you have to the table,” said Hillmer.
Proenza Schouler and Matador did not respond to requests for comment.
Tags: Born 2 B Fly, Brownsville, Dean Bien, Fashion Week, Matador, Proenza Schouler, Representing NYC, Sam Hillmer, The Fly Girlz, True Panther, Yepoka Yeebo
This all seems kind of hypocritical on Hillmer’s part, or at the very least naive. If his goal was to connect local artists with local students and make some cool art, why bother recording it and taking the vinyl to record shops? Just like any other record released on a small label, there’s a chance it will catch on and get in the hands of a bigger label and get more exposure. If he’s concerned about the students being exploited, maybe he should take a second look at the program and keep it within the school system, promoting arts education rather than arts commerce.
this is sam hillmer. i am not in the habit of responding to posts on the internet. in general i think it’s good for people to critique eachother’s work, mine inlcuded, but this is so off base that i thought i’d like to clarify. that said, i can see how it would seem that i had a problem with this based on the quotes featured above. i may have spoke a little bit carelessly. i think the fashion world is creepy, and i think that the way cultural artifacts get bounced around from one entity to another at the corporate level is really bizarre. the purpose of the project i am doing is to help people who are socially excluded from these machinations become literate in these types of social contracts and arrangements. the inner workings of social and cultural capital are far from intuitive and work against the inclusion of people outside the ruling class in the conversations present in the cultural sphere. from this point of view, young people turning their own cultural capital into a record, selling that record (and thereby learning about whole sale vs. retail, distro, etc…) and then subsequently learning about how licensing works, is extremely positive. while this may have only happened for one of the participants, well, it’s a start, and we are working on contacting the other five. i choose to focus my comments on my critical attitude towards my piers, rather than on the positive benefits garnered by the young people i work with, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. as far as connecting local artists to young people in inner city neighborhoods, i’m doing it 24/7 365, and pete is welcome to come down to the center and hang and check it out. the next representing nyc record is out in the fall!
and a a few more quick things:
1. that was supposed to be chose, not choose there at the end.
2. there is no risk of our students being exploited, we are extremely careful about copyright and ownership issues. furthermore, true panther, matador, and beggars banquet were totally above board and legit about the whole thing. so exploitation is not at issue.
3. while the primary goal of the program is to benefit the young people we serve, the program serves the dual benefit of bringing up weird idiosyncracies within the cultural sphere. and if yall don’t see that fashion show as idiosyncratic, then i don’t know what is…
4. the program in question is representing nyc, not the beacon center for arts and leadership, they are two separate entities, and the beacon had nothing to do with any of this.
Hello, I don’t go along with everything in this write-up, but you do make some very good points. I’m very serious in this matter and I myself do alot of research as well. Either way it was a well thoughtout and nice read so I figured I would leave you a comment.