Since 2002, Barbès has specialized in promoting music from around the world - be it with the its Brooklyn club, its associated record label, Its Secret Planet showcases or its event production branch.
We have promoted musicians from Colombia, Peru, France, Chile, Poland, Tuva, Serbia and Brooklyn. Not necessarily in that order. We have released albums by Chico Trujillo, Slavic Soul Party, Hazmat Modine, Chicha Libre and Juaneco y su Combo - as well as as series of Chicha compilations: The Roots of Chicha.
The artists we have worked with have toured on every continent, been featured in movies by Almadovar and Wim Wenders, in TV shows Weeds and Homeland. More importantly, all have contributed to alter the perception of what transnational music can sound like. Barbès is not specialized in World music, although the anglophone world might think we are. Barbès is specialized in living music from around the world.
Increasingly, Barbès has been involved in managing musicians’ careers and booking tours for foreign artists. The Barbès Agency will focus on this new mission, with a special focus on new Latin music from across the Americas. Most of the musicians we are working with have an idiosyncratic approach to writing and performing. They tend to like mixing influences and blurring borders. We like to mess with purity laws. We like musicians who pillage their neighbor’s treasure chests and come up with their own mix. Play cumbia with fuzztone pedals, put a rock beat over a clave, study Bach and play bugalu. You get the idea. We work with Latin musicians who care about innovating and reaching out to both old and new audiences.
Check out our artists, and we hope to be working with you in the years to come.