LOUD

Chairs are stacked and put away, the lights are dimmed and the crowd of fifty or so people are huddled around the stage. It’s a small stage, unnoticeable as the acts come forth, all confidence and charisma.

“Were we supposed to memorize the lyrics before this or?” I joke with my sister, as I notice how many people around us are echoing his lyrics. She laughs, but it sticks with me through the rest of the open mic, called #UP2SUMIN, by Ryerson University, OCAD University and LOUD, a music technology company and collective. This familiarity with the music goes for multiple artists who come up on the stage, as crowd members’ lips and bodies match the energy of the songs, hanging off each other’s shoulders. I spot someone filming the crowd with a smartphone stabilizer in hand — Mour, a producer for LOUD who took part in the panel discussion earlier — bopping along with the rest of the crowd, going word for word and bar for bar as artists come and go. After an artist steps off the stage, there’s always someone by their side whisper-shouting words of encouragement or simply throwing them into a sweaty hug.

The idea for LOUD planted itself in Peter’s head once he found himself face-to-face with his school’s dean.

It’s 2015 and he’s studying industrial design at Carleton University, one of fifty or so students in his year. Over the past few months, he’s gone from passing classes with ease to a no-show in class, a few assignments away from failing. This is what lands him in the dean’s office.

But as they talk, the conversation wanders. They’ve gone from Peter explaining his disillusionment with his program, to technology and its impact, specifically in terms of how accessible photography has become, with smartphones and apps like Instagram.The dean expresses how this is “ruining” the industry, how frustrated he is over this “oversaturation” of the market of photography.

Peter understands his perspective, but respectfully disagrees. “I'm not afraid of other people having access to do what I do,” he says, it only pushes him to do better. Competition is a threat for people like his dean, but that’s simply the reality for folks like Peter who come from BIPOC families with mantras like "work twice as hard as the next guy" memorized the moment they step into school.

Their conversation doesn’t help his situation at the time — he goes on to drop out of school — but it does stay with him. Peter has always been a fan of music. That’s what leads him to learn about disruptive technologies, to look at the way inventions like MP3 and digital streaming services like Spotify or Soundcloud have drastically changed the way we interact with music.

Peter believes record labels have yet to rethink the way they work. “I felt like there were a lot of opportunities in the gaps that have been left open by record labels not quite fully fulfilling their purpose in the music industry,” he says. And so he found the three areas these companies take care of — music production, exposure and investment — and worked to find ways in order to make these steps accessible for artists in need.

Unlike most companies, LOUD teeters the line between a music tech company and a hub, a home for both the technology side and community side of the music sphere, for everyone from producers, rappers, audio engineers, and more to come together in the name of music.

LOUD’s first big step was the creation of their LOUD box, an affordable and portable recording booth. Peter recalls being 16-years-old and wanting to make his own music, and how he struggled to follow through with it considering how expensive music equipment and studio time was.

With their latest product, LOUD is able to host free sessions for newcomers at Ryerson’s Music Den, and is working to bring it to the rest of the city, to the homes of musicians in need. 

After reaching out to a variety of musicians — some rappers, some R&B artists, and even a spoken word artist — LOUD has been able to directly help up-and-coming artists get to where they need to be. Each Sunday, you can find LOUD members, artists, producers, and other collaborators gathered together on the second floor of Ryerson’s Transmedia Zone to produce, record, critique, learn and grow as part of their artists’ development program.

Samantha Messam is one of the few to have joined as an artist this February.

Messam has always been interested in the arts, specifically in dance and singing. She managed to dance for 10 years, but not without sacrificing her passion for singing. Growing up in a West Indian household, Messam was discouraged from following any passion that didn’t involve getting a degree.

After finishing her postgraduate studies, she found out about LOUD through Peter’s Instagram. They both went to the same middle school, but Messam had never approached him until then. She had always been shy about her singing and LOUD only pushed her to pursue it.

“I needed to express myself in that way that I never actually got to before,” Messam says over the phone, “I just had this strong urge to just really delve into singing and see what that would look like for my life now.”

Photo by Rhandy Adolphe

Despite growing up with a mother known for singing in church back home in Jamaica, Messam had always kept her vocal abilities and aspirations to herself, due to her social anxiety. For those who first saw her perform at #UP2SUMIN, the last thing they’d peg Messam as was anxious. She oozed confidence and elegance, as she covered songs from the likes of Teyana Taylor and Daniel Caesar without missing a note. The crowd was scarily captivated by her voice, moving only to sway along to the beat, or to film her performance.

And Messam is upfront — she would absolutely not be able to do this without LOUD’s help. “Recording time is really expensive, paying people for beats is expensive, and all of those things add up. So that can dissuade anybody from their potential because it's just so expensive.” 

Ravin Wong, another LOUD artist, says this program “has given [him] the ability to actually say to myself that [he’s] a legit artist.”

This program has helped him grow confident enough to write, record, and share his music. “I feel comfortable just going on behind the mic,” he shares, over the phone, doing what he does best.

 The music industry is precarious by nature, and that’s another reason why LOUD is so vital to Toronto’s current music scene.

There’s no clear path to becoming an artist, Peter says. “You want to become a doctor, lawyer, dentist, you go to school for four years and more or less there's a path into that industry,” he says, “But it's not like that for music. For some reason, artists are supposed to just take a leap of faith on their career. But it's just as valid and courageous as any other.”

This is why Alexander Gagliano, a producer for the company, loves LOUD. “We really want to support the artists more than anything in terms of them making the music that they want to create, and if that's not something that's super marketable — we’re going to make it work,” Gagliano explains. “We signed these artists recognizing that they're very talented, and we went into them knowing that we wanted these artists part of the team so we don't want to change things up.”

Recognizing the differences that make these artists so unique is vital, especially when the majority of LOUD’s team are Black, especially in terms of how Toronto’s music scene is today.

According to Kelsey Adams, an arts and culture writer, musicians Toronto are “stratified”. “It's small pockets, and they're not divided. They just don't work together,” she says, “So you can be really well known in one part of the scene and then not known anywhere else in the city.” This doesn’t discount the success artists can achieve in these scenes, she explains, as artists and DJs she’s covered in her own features (as well as others) have found popularity through publications like Fader and i-D. However, for those who want mainstream success within Toronto, the process is far different, especially for Black artists.

“It's very cool to be Black right now,” Adams says, but only in a specific manner. If an artist isn’t interested in jumping headfirst into mainstream R&B or rap, or trying to sound like a variation of Drake, Daniel Caesar or Tory Lanez, then it becomes much harder to build a fanbase and gain any sort of income in Toronto off of music. 

This perception of Blackness within the realm of music also makes an impression on artists. “I feel like people want to prove that they’re a hard person, that they don’t give a damn,” Wong says of people who follow the trap rapper route, “And you can see right past that.”

In his case, Wong is much more interested in people being authentic, and true to themselves. He grew up in a musical family, like Messam, listening to “baby making” R&B, and is trying to recreate that sort of “wholesome” feel R&B from the ‘90s and ‘00s feel songs used to have through his own music.

Messam is also a fan of R&B, in particular of legends like Mariah Carey and Beyoncé, as well as newcomers like Summer Walker and NAO. She’s attracted to the grace and authenticity these types of artists have, which reflects itself on the type of artist she wants to be. She describes her music as “dreamy R&B, very light but it's also very relatable.”

“I speak on issues relating to my community, being a Black woman, being a Black millennial and also just kind of just being relatable in the world that we are in now,” Messam explains, and it doesn’t stop at that. Without the artists’ development program and the workshops that accompany them, she wouldn’t have been able to access and put the feelings and themes she feels so strongly about in her songs. None of this would be possible if LOUD wasn’t the welcoming space it sought out to be.

Wong remembers the first time he came to the Music Den, Peter made sure to remind everyone that LOUD was an inclusive space and that discrimination of any sorts had no place at LOUD.

“We're not gonna be perfect,” he admits, “But how can I start to make sure that when we are in a position where LOUD is exactly what I imagined it to be? That we don't have those holes that I couldn't see before because I wasn't that person that faced that problem?”

 Gagliano describes LOUD’s group dynamic as “organic”, and that’s exactly what it is. Making sure everyone working with the company is open was Peter’s intention, and it shines through their events, their social media page and their words.

 “I don't want people to feel like we're too big or we're too cool for you,” he says, “I want [LOUD] to be the loser that wants to be friends with everybody.”

 And Peter makes sure to keep this familiarity not only with artists, but with listeners as well.

 “If you look on our Instagram, it's not like we have a ton of followers, but that was never really the goal,” he says. When throwing events like #UP2SUMIN, his goal is to create bonds, to shake hands and chat with strangers, or with friends of friends, to break down that wall between musicians and their fans. “The goal is to connect with people, build a community and grow.”

 A Sunday session with LOUD looks drastically different from their open mic event. It’s the same building, the same decor, a lot of the same people, even, but the mood is different, open and casual.

There are a bunch of Starbucks boxes filled with coffee and tea on a table, winter jackets and bags strewn everywhere, chair sets haphazardly across the room, and pockets of conversations happening all around the room. People chat and joke about music, about life,  and everything in between.

Peter enters the room, and after a couple of greetings and jokes, sits amongst the artists and members left that Sunday afternoon. They have an hour left at the Music Den, so it’s back to work. There’s a projection on the wall of the LOUD logo and a whiteboard with the agenda for the day, seemingly abandoned for the laptop pushed to the middle of the table. Peter presses play and the conversations around the room die down as everyone presses closer to the laptop. Someone fiddles with the speakers in the room as the artist in question slips comments here and there about the creation of the track, almost like a live Genius video.

The chorus of praise and critique is almost instant, someone yells “turn this up” and the music fills the room.