What's the Sound of Grassroots Singing?

Back when we lived in tribes, music was everywhere, made by everyone in the tribe. It was constant and free. It belonged to everybody. It was magic, transformative, powerful, and absolutely essential to our health and survival. It was particular to a tribe and a place. We made our own culture, like we made our clothes and our shelter. We had songs for every passage--birth, coming of age, marriage, death--songs for the hunt, the work, the worship, the stories. Everybody sang.

We don't have tribes anymore, but we can still gather, and we can still make our own music with our own voices and hands. We can reclaim that power and that boon. We can make some culture. Here's how we're doing it with the Community Music Project.

How the Community Music Project Began

The Community Music Project is rooted in the rich, creative, and vibrant soil of the Carrboro/Chapel Hill/Chatham County North Carolina community. We started out recording our family's songs, and the songs of a few friends, for a family Christmas present. We liked it, we began to think a little bigger, and the Community Music Project began.

Since 2000, we have produced one CD every year. We record local songwriters and singers, compile the songs and artwork into a CD, press 1000 copies, and give them away to the CD musicians, friends, and community members--wherever we think the music will be appreciated. Many of the people who value the music and what we are trying to do give us donations to keep the project going.

Free Music - It's Revolutionary

The goals of this website are:

To share our local music more widely, and keep it free

To help others get their own community music projects started, by providing as much information as we can from our experience doing this

About This Web Site

This internet site is an attempt to explore other ways to distribute the music we are producing. At this site, you will find the music itself as downloadable MP3 files as well as the artwork from the CDs in downloadable/printable PDF files.

We invite you to download and manufacture your own CDs for yourself and as gifts for your friends. We ask only that you refrain from using these copyrighted recordings and artwork commercially (for money) without prior permission from the copyright holders. These songs, and the accompanying artwork, are copyrighted; they are not in the public domain.

If you have any questions about how our policy might apply to your situation, please e-mail us at info@communitymusicproject.org and put "Project Copyright Policy" on the subject line. Once again, if you do not put "Project Copyright Policy" on the subject line, our spam filter will toss your message into the bit-bucket.

We can press typical CDs, including typical printed artwork, packaged in paper sleeves (rather than jewel cases), for less than $1,500 per 1000 CDs. Internet download distribution is expected to cost less than 10 cents per downloaded copy.