Hey friends and fam,

Hope you are safe and supported in these extreme times. I’m thinking of all our transgender kin, people of color and immigrants under attack from the U.S. to the U.K. (where there have been extreme right wing riots and violence), the siege in Gaza City of which I have no more words left to describe, and all marginalized and oppressed people from Sudan, the Congo, Indonesia and beyond.

As all these struggles are intertwined, I feel it’s incredibly important to be sharing strategies and comparing notes on how to fight for justice together, across geography and identities, which one of the reasons I started the Outernational podcast. Outernational is a new podcast where I talk to musicians who are activists/organizers, using their platforms for change and making music that is socially engaged in these revolutionary times. It’s the third Monday of the month, so that means you get a new episode. If you haven’t checked out Episode 1 with Angel Bat Dawid or the uncut video, don’t sleep on it!

In the latest installment, I sat down in-studio at Pioneer Works with Greg Saunier, drummer and founder of legendary indie band Deerhoof. We talk about Deerhoof’s early history in San Francisco before the Bay Area tech boom and the band's recent decision to leave Spotify, leading a mass exodus away from the platform, which is entangled with military AI tech. Importantly, we discuss late stage capitalism, imperialism and fascism, our role and complicity as musicians, and what we can do about it.

We happened to record this on the same day that Deerhoof announced they were ditching Spotify!

Subscribe, like, follow, review and share on Substack @amirthakidambi / Apple Podcasts / YouTube

Credits: Hosted by Amirtha Kidambi, Edited by Z Park, Music by Deerhoof “Immigrant Songs”, Recorded at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn

In related news, I’m removing the entire Elder Ones catalogue from Spotify, which will take a moment to coordinate with distributers and our labels but is in the works. You can find us here on Bandcamp. Not to brag, but I haven’t personally used Spotify since 2018 and as a listener you can use various services to transfer your playlists to other platforms. When people ask about alternatives, I usually say Bandcamp for newer and independent music/buying physical copies from artists or transferring over to literally anything else. It’s important to do this while there is mass movement away from the platform. I could explain all the reasons why, but I think Greg does that even more eloquently in our conversation!

Also, we are geo-blocking Israel from distribution as part of the #nomusicforgenocide call (find out more at the link about how to participate). Thanks to our labels We Jazz and Northern Spy for being so immediately down with this decision! This is part of the broader Palestinian led Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement, one of the material demands of the people experiencing this horrific genocide, which threatens to move on to the West Bank next.

If you want to support families in the refugee camps, you can click this link for Palestine Handmade to beautiful crafts, tatreez embroidery, keffiyeh, olive oil soap and olive wood carved crafts to order. The money goes directly back to families.

If you live on the East Coast, we’re celebrating the record release of Neti-Neti, my voice, percussion and electronics duo with Matt Evans and the premiere of more new music by Elder Ones before we head out on tour in Europe for Le Guess Who?, Berlin Jazzfest and more.

October/November Shows

October 4th - 7:30pm Neti-Neti with Strider (Joanna Mattrey, Steven Long) at Studio 34, Philadelphia

October 6th - Neti-Neti at with Max Hamel, Francis/Hughes/Garrett/Scheibel for Outside Time series at Rhizome, Washington DC

October 11th - 3:30pm panel on the Culture Front, organizing on the Left for the Triple Canopy Symposium at Roulette, Brooklyn

7pm Neti-Neti and Chris Williams Dual Record Release Show at Light and Sound Design presented by Dada Strain

October 18th - 7:30pm Elder Ones opening for Ava Luna at National Sawdust

October 31st-November 9th - Elder Ones EU Tour

Solidarity!

Amirtha