DETROIT – There's something uniquely formative happening in a historic church on 17th Street in Detroit, and it's having a profound effect on the city's musicians who share a passion for creating the sounds of souls.
The church has changed ownership several times since it was built in 1871, but the sign outside has continually advertised the same purpose: "Restoring lives, one soul at a time."
Enter, Assemble Sound.
"For a lot of people, music is their introduction to Detroit, and always has been," organizer Garret Koehler said.
For more than a year, Koehler and several others who are dedicated to the cause of creating a support system for homegrown musicians have been working to restore the church and increase Assemble's connections.
"Simply put, Assemble Sound is an initiative to better connect Detroit musicians with each other and the broader music loving world," Koehler said. "What's really cool about Detroit, pick a genre, and we're doing it better than most places."
Assemble works to incorporate programming, the use of recording studios, licensing, songwriting and general artistic collaboration.
"But we also believe that all of that stuff needs to be sustainable, so we have a back-end business in music licensing - where, essentially, if you want to put music in film or advertising film or TV and you want to make an effort to buy local, you can buy Detroit music through us in a way that you've historically never been been able to so," Koehler said. "So, for the last year, we have been organizing a catalog of every genre you could imagine. The one unifying factor of this musical catalog is that all of the artists are from Southeast Michigan."
Assemble offers a more favorable split with their artists than other licensing houses. The organization's cut goes back into operating costs, and the artists' cut goes back into creating more music.
"Buying music from us really is sort of an investment in the city's cultural landscape, that's how we see it," Koehler said. "It's important in the same way retaining any sort of talent in the city is important right, these are the individuals that make Detroit an interesting place to live, a rich place to live. I think that a lot of times these are some of the most important voices in our cultural fabric in the city."
So why do business in a church that is more than a century old? Koehler called it a blessing.
"The idea of the space was pretty simple. We wanted to convene people around a shared belief. And that shared belief was the power of creative collaboration and economic cooperation," he said. "The belief is that if we convene around those things, we're going to be more successful as individual artists and as a collective. Where historically have people convened around shared beliefs? In churches. So, we knew we needed to do this in a church."
Koehler also said the church is the city's second oldest.
"(There's) a lot of symbolism tied into that building, right? All of the people coming into Detroit before World War II were walking out the doors of the train station looking for work, you know, the hope of jobs and new factories. This church was the first thing that you would have seen or saw when you walked out. This was, sort of, your introduction to Detroit," Koehler said. "I think there's a certain symbolism in that walking out of the train station and having music to be part of that introduction of the city."
The artists
Mona Haydar is a spoken word poet and recording artist. She said the Assemble community really fosters collaboration, not competition.
"The experience is really brilliant, honestly. There's a real spirit of collaboration, and you know, people just want to work together and help each other out. It's really about the collective process and building something beautiful ... it's the opposite of capitalism," Haydar said. "Some of the best music in the country is being made here right now."
Jax Anderson, of Flint Eastwood, said the fact that the music is being created in the church only adds to the effect.
"From the outside, it's a little rugged around the edges. Some of the paint is peeling, some of the ceilings will fall every once in a while. But inside, it's something that's very passionate, it's something that's very honest, and I feel like that's Detroit is all about. We don't care about the esthetic as much as we care about the people inside what a building holds," Anderson said. "For all of its existence, it's always been a place for people to meet, and other people to gather for hopefully a greater purpose. And I feel like that's what it is continuing to do."
- For information on Assemble's studios and resident list, click here.