Join La Mission: Sophisticated Booty Call 2012

Hey, remember that one time you saw a puppy with only 3 legs and it's owner was blind and had a sign saying "please help me get my Limpy a fake leg so he doesnt keep hitting his head on the concrete and sustaining head trauma"? Well, you walked past that guy and his sad little dog and have felt guilty about it ever since. Don't. This is your opportunity to make it better. La Mission is the personification of that guy and his dog, only when you give us money we are going to use it to help change a broken system. So there wont be more brain damaged, off kilter dogs, and that guy might not be blind anymore either. Somehow.

***NOTE: Indiegogo takes payment via CREDIT CARD ONLY!  If you would like to pay with EC/Maestro Card/Bank Transfer/Paypal OR want a receipt for the German tax-man, please see our GERMANY-BASED campaign at http://www.inkubato.com/de/projekte/LaMission or http://www.inkubato.com/en/projekte/LaMission ***

***P.S.  If you would like to support La Mission with a contribution of more than 5K, we'd love to take your money.  We could fly to your location and throw you a private secret society/cult coming-of-age initiation fest with your closest friends. L.M. themed quinceaneara dress or yarmulke-n-tallit included. Contact us for information about how to pay with a check!***

WE ARE LA MISSION

Yo.  I am Pablo aka “Beaner” aka “Skirtchaser” aka “El Frijolero” etc. I am an internationally working musician and dj who has enjoyed a modicum of success, but who doesn’t like what has happened to the musical landscape vis-a-vis “conservatism” in respect to both Money and Art.  I mean the relationship of the two, okay? It sucks. And I want to change it.

This is Mandie (yo) aka “Knuckle Cartel”, a former big cheese and intellectual powerhouse behind the wildly successful Seattle-based experimental theater company Implied Violence.  I, Mandie, agree with Pablo’s qualms regarding the music scene, and I have experienced the same “conservatism” and capitalistic partnership between Money and Art in the performance/theater scene.  Witnessing firsthand the immense power that cash-wielding creeps hold over creatives is sickening, sad, and sordid.  I’ve had enough, and so have you...right?  Let’s fix a broken system.  If we can’t fix it, let’s circumvent it.

Hiya. it's Luis aka "LMGM." I'm a dancer, a writer, a scholar (and an amazing cook of Peruvian food, thankyouverymuch). Somehow, I've turned my years of experience in rave scenes and club cultures into a career as a scholar of electronic booty-shaking music (so to speak). Ethnomusicology, music anthropology, popular music studies, dance studies, gender studies, affect theory: these are all things i do in one way or another. Ever since disco crashed under the exploitative mismanagement of major record labels in the late 70s, dance music has been increasingly shaped by capitalist music markets that only recognize familiar "pop" formulae and massive sales. In the process, electronic booty-shaking music has mostly lost its connection to its original contexts. This music was (and, on some dance-floors, still is) the ass-jiggling soundtrack to the utopian nocturnal worlds of sexual, ethnic, and class outcasts of an unjust system. This history is still urgently relevant, as global neo-liberal capital systems increasingly destabilize communities, neutralize political resistance, and profit off the world's most vulnerable. I want to revive and revisit the politics of booty-shaking in an unjust world.  

BACKGROUND & CONCEPT

In every musical genre EXCEPT for electronic booty shaking music, vinyl sales are up.  In dance music, however, vinyl sales have been steadily dropping, forcing most labels to either fold or become more and more musically and conceptually conservative. This economic reality has left artists who make music that is not easily consumable or disposable up shit creek (so to say).. Self-releasing your music is not easy, people. ALSO the dance music scene (which has its roots in minority identity politics and the politics of resistance) has become a slovenly, hedonistic, individualist capital venture-cum- nightmare. So. Two birds with one stone. You’ve heard the saying.  We, La Mission, want to prove there are other ways to make, release and love music that are not about the accumulation and maintenance of capital.  Eventually we hope to inspire cultural, political, and social offshoots of La Mission.   We want to see OTHER people following our production model.  You can help us jump-start the movement by first helping us to actualize our dream project.  How?  Easy.  Join the Cult of La Mission.

CROWDFUNDING

Right now, crowd funding helps make a lot of dream projects happen.  That's because there aren't any middlemen there to determine what they think people actually want. There is no insidious profiling (PROFIT MONGERING) or archetyping going on; it's just creative people working hard to give people who appreciate their work what they want on their own terms. Crowdfunding is a socially conscious, new method of developing creative communities and raising money for projects without the rules, regulations, depressing beggary, or the rampant compromising of morals/ideals in favor of a chunk of change from governmental granting organizations and money-hungry production companies. As such, it is the ideal platform on which La Mission can introduce itself to potential consumers (blech), supporters, participants, and fellow creatives and intellectuals (double blech).  ATTENTION: Most of this past paragraph was stolen directly from successful crowdfunders ‘Project Possum’. They did a good job ‘splaining what is going on. Thanks, guys. We couldn't have done it better ourselves.  So we didn't even bother trying.  

We are currently fundraising for the first three releases/premieres of our five-part project: your money will go directly towards the creation of three records, magazines, and performances.  

ROUSING STATEMENTS

Brethren, Citizens, Plebes, you ALL can be a part of history if this concept takes off!  You can say you were there at the very beginning, you can say you were there before successful horizontalist/anarcho-syndicalist systems (look it up) were built, starting with fucking independent record companies! And even if you don’t give a shit about all that noise, well, we are totally offering you some amazing one-of-a-kind art and culture pieces, too.  Records!  Tracts! Patches! Performances! Sexy times!  Etcetera Etcetera et al!  You could, ya know, like, auction these things off for more than a hundred bucks at Sotheby’s someday, guys.

CONCLUSION

Instead of slaving over our keyboards in order to write a well-written and graceful summary paragraph, we are simply  going to list the expenses and costs for our FIRST THREE RELEASES AND PERFORMANCES below:

• Mastering each record will cost 400 Euros (1200 total).
• Pressing of the records will cost 1000 Euros.
• Printing and design of gorgeous sleeves will cost 250 Euros each (750 total).
• Public Relations will cost us at least 500 Euros (that’s with a generous friend discount).
• Printing and hand-binding of each political tract will cost very little (if we steal copies like the sneaky bastards we are and force our friends into slave-labor) but at least 50 Euros each (150 total).
• Assorted goodies included with each record (cult membership cards, Kool-Aid, Dental Dams, etc) will cost some dough, lets say about 100 Euros each (300 Euros in total).
• Silk-screened posters and flyers for performances are labor-intensive but will only cost about 100 Euros (300 Euros total).
• Rehearsal/performance space can also be stolen, squatted, and negotiated to a paltry sum (50 Euros or 150 Euros total).
• Materials for the performances will cost about 200 Euros each.  We will beg, borrow, steal, and shop at the Euro Shop (aka the "Dollar Tree" in American).  Lets say 600 Euros total.

This sum equals about 2700 Euros per La Mission “Missive”.

HELP THE THREE LEGGED DOG!  Don't be a dumb jerk!

JOIN LA MISSION!