Marty Ballantyne knows it’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll but hopes to make the climb a little easier for Indigenous artists starting out in the business.
The well-established Aboriginal musician has gotten together with Juno-award winning musician Derek Miller and multimedia house Thru the RedDoor to form a new venture called 6 Arrows Media.
6 Arrows Media will offer video, recording and photography services to new Indigenous artists from their base on the Six Nations reserve, near Toronto, as a way of helping them to get their careers off the ground.
Ballantyne says one of the primary goals of 6 Arrows Media is to help Aboriginal musicians get the maximum value out of the money they are investing.
“We have the cameras to make a music video and we want to make the kind of music videos with artists where it costs nothing but a million people will watch it,” he says.
He says a big part of 6 Arrows Media will also be mentoring young Indigenous musicians and teaching some of the lessons the partners have learned along the way during their many years in the music business.
“I didn’t recognize my value. What I mean by that is I focused on trying to write good songs and I focused on trying to preserve my integrity but I operated out of fear in the sense that I didn’t really want to become rich doing it or I didn’t have aspirations to be monetarily compensated and I think that’s the wrong way to look at it because I think it goes against realizing your full value.”
Things get underway on Nov.1 with the official launch of 6 Arrows Media with a webcast.
For more information and updates, go to the website http://www.6arrowsmedia.com/.