In an age where computer algorithms are dictating the music we listen to, and artificial intelligence is beginning to write its own songs - can we remember the deeper power of music for building community?

Listen to James Frost's music on your favourite streaming service.

Once upon a time, music was less about the revered performer - high up on a stage in adulation of the audience - and more about welcoming the spirit of community and creativity alive in us all.

Like the bards of old that travelled from town to town, with stories and music to share. Or the voices around fires or in drinking houses, making merry with song. Or the town choirs, lifting our hearts at the turning of the seasons. 

Concert

In making my new album, I set about testing whether this approach of community participation and creative collaboration could still be relevant today - tapping into a network of grassroots support and involving hundreds of people in the process.

Without a record label offering a loan, every independent artist faces the same question: how am I going to fund my music?

Crowdfunding has become the modern form of artistic patronage - a way to support musicians by investing in their work upfront and receiving the music later - a 'pay it forward' scheme.

So at the start of the project, I launched a crowdfund appeal and humbly came online to ask for help. It's a vulnerable act, a radical act, to wear one's heart on one's sleeve and ask the community for support. But in that vulnerability, Life responds and things start happening. 

I promised to make a beautifully recorded album full of meaningful, uplifting songs... and people started donating. I also offered gifts and rewards (us musicians will do whatever it takes!) such as: I will call you on your birthday and sing you a song down the phone (for £100); I will come to your front door and play a concert in your home or garden (£300); I will write and record an original song, especially for you (£750).

Communities

In all, over 400 people backed my album before I’d even recorded a note, raising over £16,000 - placing community support at the centre of the project, from the very beginning.

I decided my album would be called All Of Our Hands - it was one of the songs for the album and one of my favourite tracks when I played live. But it is also the essence of crowdfunding … by each lending a hand, the whole vision is carried.

Something about making albums (or writing books or creating art) requires the artist to step out of the comfort zone, grapple with the edges of what they know, and go beyond it.

In my case, with the goodwill of hundreds of people behind me, and the money to seed an artistic vision, I decided to quit my job, leave everything behind and set off on a musical pilgrimage.

Many people had booked house concerts which led to performances in front rooms, backyards, birthday parties, private beaches, and after-hour bars ... from Glasgow to Pembrokeshire, Totnes to central London... enabling me to meet new communities up and down the land. How intimate it is to be welcomed into people's personal spaces, filling them up with life, song and stories - every concert different to the last.

Musicians

And through the connections I made on the road, I was invited to play at Glastonbury Festival, Secret Garden Party, Folk East and lots of other fabulous festivals that England curates so well.

I was following my nose, living at the kindness of strangers, housesitting, subletting, and sleeping in the back of an old Estate car. For the first time in my life, I was nomadic - following an invisible thread of kindness that led me from place to place. 

It was a network of patronage and exchange that I had not experienced before. I stayed in million pound houses in Greenwich and tiny shepherd's huts in Wales. Many who offered me their homes had connected with my music or seen me perform live and felt like they knew me already, as my voice accompanied them in their lives.

And along the way I recorded musicians that I met on my travels, piecing together the album like a patchwork quilt. I recorded a live band in Bristol, saxophone players in Brighton, folk musicians in Suffolk and pianists in Dartmoor. Piece by piece, the album took shape, with a few additional instruments being added by an international network of musicians online, by percussionists in Columbia, producers in Los Angeles and banjo players in Nashville.

The record was taking shape, yet I knew something was still missing... the sound of human voices! 

Choirs

Typically, in the music industry, if a label wants to put voices onto an album, they will hire a professional choir for a sizeable fee or use a small ensemble of trained singers. 

But I thought... what if you just record the people that funded the album? What if you give listeners a chance to go behind the scenes and take part themselves?

So I hired one of the recording studios most synonymous with creative collaboration - Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios, synonymous with the WOMAD Music Festival. I opened up the studio for the day and invited fans from all around the country, people of all ages and backgrounds, including families and children, to form a huge community choir and sing themselves onto the album.

We warmed up our voices, got comfortable singing together, organised into sections (bass, tenor, alto, soprano), put the headphones on and recorded layers of harmony arrangements onto my songs. It was a creative risk as people had never met before and most had never been in a recording studio or sung in a choir. But thankfully, it worked!

It was the day of a lifetime for so many, giving people a new found confidence in using their voice. And the songs recorded that day are so rich, so full of life, with all that human spirit woven into the tracks.

Artwork

With the music complete, I turned my attention to the packaging and artworking of my CD.  In the same spirit of open collaboration, I put the call out on social media for original pictures of hands to collectively represent All Of Our Hands - asking everyone to get creative!

I received a great variety of ‘hand art’ from all over the UK and beyond, including oil paintings, pen and ink drawings, digital illustrations, children’s pictures, collages, prints, and work with natural materials such as bark, natural pigments and sand sculptures.

The result was a beautiful, organic collection of images representing the spirit of All Of Our Hands and deeply connected to the album’s themes of community, co-creation, and creativity. 

All the images were presented in an online exhibition and pieces were chosen to accompany the lyrics of each of the songs in a colourful lyric booklet.

Audience

Since the album's release, I've been holding community listening events - intimate gatherings where people come together to hear stories about how the songs were made and then listen to the album from start to finish, receiving the creative work as a community. 

For me, this is the coming home, the end of the hero's journey - the artist bringing the treasure back from time spent in the wilderness and sharing it with the village. 

This album simply wouldn’t exist without community. Hundreds of people have contributed through donations, voices, artwork, places to stay, creative input and moral support - all of which helped shape the music that was created. 

It was a radically different way of making an album in today’s digital world, where a single producer can create a song from start to finish, and the artist’s brand is often kept separate from the songwriting and recording.

But in my experience, when you break down those barriers between artist and audience, and involve listeners directly in the creative process - something deeper emerges - a shared space where music belongs to everyone.

This Author

James Frost is a musician with a focus on community and nature. His new album ‘All Of Our Hands’ is available now on all streaming platforms.