Soundwall Miami Is a Collective Looking Out for Local Musicians

The members of Soundwall are excited. I had arranged to meet with one of them to discuss the unique new creation, but when I arrive, there are four members of the Miami music scene’s new “artist’s collective” seated at the table for our lunch meeting.

All four are local musicians in their own right, so they have fair reason to be enthusiastic about what they're calling a “community building” venture, created “by musicians for musicians.” Originally scaled around a core handful of local acts including electro-experimental duo Raker, alt-rockers Years Apart, and prog-metal outfit Form & Design, the already rapidly expanding project was inspired, according to Renzo Zenatta (Years Apart) after “a short period of time during which a lot of bands got fucked over” and was assembled with the singular intention of preventing that sort of thing from remaining the norm.

Fueled by a far too common fatigue of “watching bands get burned,” Soundwall cofounders Mike Sarasti (Raker), Adrian “AC” Cossio (Form & Design), and a handful of other friends are working — in the space between their regular jobs —  to build Soundwall into a fully integrated production, promotion, marketing, merchandising, representational, and organizational machine, designed to drive what they see as the Magic City’s vastly underrated live music potential into the future while securing the artistic and financial interests of everyone involved.

In addition to acting as booking agents to get the talent out in front of a crowd, Soundwall plans on promoting shows to bring crowds out. Members of the collective will also be working every facet of their event: sound engineering, lighting, merchandising, flier design, and social media promotion are only a few of the concerns this syndicate oversees at its productions.

When you attend a Soundwall event, everyone from the person applying your wristband to the person working behind the merchandise table to the crew of people helping the bands carry their gear back to their vans is likely to be wearing matching logos on their T-shirts (T-shirts designed, printed, and distributed entirely by members of Soundwall). To fulfill one of its original intentions, Soundwall will also have someone make sure that all of the bands get paid as promised when the show is over.

An individual member may be a photographer, video producer, web designer, accountant, attorney, or entertainment industry professional, but all are willing to put their skills to work to advance a music scene that they see as “a spark waiting to be fed,” without concern for the petty backbiting and competitiveness among artists that all too often taints a local music environment.

When asked to finish by summing up their creation in a few words, Cossio grins and evokes a slogan he’s clearly been waiting to get some use of: “South Florida bands finally have something to lean on – Soundwall.”

Keep up with Soundwall and its events through Facebook. If you're interested in getting involved, email [email protected].