Balkan Bump: The Winner is…

Editorial is open for submissions: [email protected]

Please introduce yourself and what made you interested in NFTs: 

I’m Will (Balkan Bump), a Music Producer/Computer Geek/Ethnomusicologist/Trumpeter living in Oakland, California. I make acoustic and electronic dance music that blends sounds from all around the world. I was first introduced to NFTs by my friend/collaborator Gramatik. While NFTs can be explained in a lot of different ways, I look at it simply as a new way for individuals to invest in art, and, in the process, support artists in what has been a truly difficult time period.  “Old Money” families have been investing in art for centuries. To me, NFTs are a way for “New Money” to invest in music/art. You don’t need to be Zuckerberg or Musk level rich to start being an NFT collector. And if you invest in the right artists, the value will appreciate. 

What do you say to skeptical folk out there who refer to NFTs as Non-Functional Tokens? 

First of all this makes me crack up. I admit, there’s a lot of hype in this space, and a lot of mediocre NFTS, which is one of the reasons I am thrilled to be releasing my art on a highly curated platform like SuperRare. An exciting thing about NFTs is that the functionality is still being explored by artists and collectors. We are playing with the creative applications of releasing digital art that is non-fungible and unique. One thing that might separate me from a lot of other NFT artists is that I look at it as fundamentally a new medium. As an example, for my first drop, I designed a piece that changes depending on creative decisions made by the collector.

Tell us about your first drop? 

It’s entitled “The Winner is…” It’s a new song paired with an animation by Dylan Casano. The collector gets to be involved in naming the piece and finishing the title with a mutually agreeable name/phrase after the auction. If you’re the collector, it will go live on Spotify and other music platforms with the chosen finished phrase. When the art gets resold, so will the naming rights. I love the idea of 1/1 auctions allowing for some interaction between the artists and the collector, and I love that as buyers continue to resell art, the buyers themselves become part of the piece’s history. 

The music itself was a laborious process, recording dozens of brass instruments, reeds, percussion, and chopping up intricate samples. On average, my musical works take about 100 hours to create. This piece was no exception. The result is a funky, global affair, with some musical easter eggs to discover. I recently put out a 14 track album. This is the unreleased 15th track, with a spin. 

The visual is a collaboration with Dylan Casano, a brilliant digital designer who I’ve been working with for years. His career is really starting to blow up and we sort of came up together over the last few years. Fun fact: we actually met randomly being neighbors in the same apartment building. After countless late nights talking about the nature of art, music and society, we knew we’d be working together for a long time to come. 

Speaking of art, music, and society – why is music your preferred platform? 

If you think about what music does to people, it’s a pretty far out concept. For example, listening to recorded music is essentially you blocking out time for far away humans from the past to manipulate the oscillations of airwaves and make your ears and body vibrate in a certain way. It’s this weird, primal, psychedelic massage that we enjoy, and we enjoy it in every corner of the globe. This way of thinking helps my composition and performance. It connects me to a deep musical spirit that is in our DNA as humans.