Interview: Social Innovation Fellow Chris Marianetti on Found Sound Nation's new initiative with the State Department

Found Sound Nation, 2011 Social Innovation Fellow Chris Marianetti’s organization that unites people through collaborative music projects, recently announced some exciting news. It’s partnering with the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs on a new initiative, OneBeat. This project, which kicks off in September 2012, will bring together over 50 musicians to the U.S. from around the world, ages 19-35, for a month-long exchange to connect with American musicians and audiences, and especially those in underserved communities. We checked in with Marianetti to see how the project came to fruition with the State Department and what he’s most excited to see from the partnership.

PopTech: How did the collaboration between Found Sound and the State Department come to fruition?
Chris Marianetti: Buckminster Fuller talks about the "coincidental nature of discovery" as a wave that rolls across the environment of exploration and invention.  It was a wave like this that rolled across our organization, Found Sound Nation, most recently.

About a year ago we held a strategic planning meeting about the future of our organization.  We dreamed up something that, to our surprise, shared a lot of similarities with the ideas that some people in the State Department were thinking about at the same time. 

We envisioned creating a music exchange project that, in a sense, disrupts how a traditional music "festival" operates.  We imagined that the focus of this musical happening would be not only performance, but on the creation of original music via an intensive people-to-people exchange of ideas and creativity.  We also felt that these collaborative exchanges had to be shared with an ever-widening circle of folks who are culturally, geographically, and technologically connected to this happening.  We imagined that great artists would come together not only to create amazing new music, but also to share these music-making experiences with youth and communities. 

How did you turn that concept into a reality?
A few months later I was forwarded a copy of the State Department's call for proposals, and I felt this "wave" significantly.  Our team rallied together, and we spent several weeks designing and refining what this musical happening would look like.  With Found Sound Nation partners Jeremy Thal and Elena Moon Park, we submitted our proposal (with three minutes to spare!) and three months later we were talking with folks at the State Department about how to go about implementing this plan.  Also, our mentors and the administrators at Bang On A Can (of which we are a wing) were fundamental in making this project happen.

What outcomes are you hoping to achieve from this project?
OneBeat is a truly international project and the goal for the next two years is to bring together musicians from around the world to the United States to collaboratively write, produce, and perform original music, and develop ways that music can make a positive impact on our local and global communities.  For musicians, we hope this becomes an opportunity to seek common ground, create completely new musical combinations, push the boundaries of music technology, and find ways to involve all members of society in the process of musical creativity. 

Beyond this we aim to create a community of OneBeat Fellows - a talented, adventurous and innovative group of musicians from diverse backgrounds.  We believe that a group such as this has extraordinary power to make a positive impact throughout the world. 

What's one aspect of the project that you're most excited about?
I'm so excited for the music - all of the new, experimental, and wildly original music that will be born during OneBeat.  For me, the creation process has always been the most exciting part of it all.  Also, we are creating a custom-built studio that will become mobile and will travel with the group for the entire experience. 

OneBeat is really divided into two parts: a retreat where the Fellows come together to collaborate and create, and a tour where the entire group travels (for the 2012 program) up the East coast, through the Appalachian mountains, Washington DC, and ends with performances and workshops in New York City.  Along with all of the performances and workshops taking place during OneBeat, we will create and produce an album of original OneBeat work.  The wonderful thing about the mobile studio is that it allows this album, as with the rest of the work, to be continuously developed and refined throughout the entire month-long project.