The Once & Future Sounds Fund
The Once & Future Sounds Fund
The Once & Future Sounds Fund works to improve equity in the music industry by elevating artists from historically marginalized and exploited groups. The Fund, inspired by Allison Russell’s pairing of art and activism, will launch two signature programs — The Once & Future Laureate Program and the Once & Future Festival — over the next three years.
“We are more than seeds
We’re the soil and the water
The Good Ancestors
Once and Future Sounds
Branches Roots Revolution
It’s Our Time to Rise”
Art is humanity’s most potent empathy builder and paradigm shifter. Humans can intellectually grasp the need for things like harm-reduction, pay equity and antiracism but when wielded by transformative, transcendent artists, we experience an alchemy in real time. Art helps each of us access the place where intangible ideas take root and manifest themselves in disparate strands of humanity. Wisdom gained while dancing, shouting and crying lingers longer in the synapses and stirs the soul at a deeper level.
Black, Indigenous and queer musicians along with musicians from other historically marginalized groups have a long history of leading innovation in musical expression. While the contributions of these artists have helped elevate our culture and shape social movements, they have also been unfairly exploited by the music industry. The nature of this exploitation evolves over time and includes both historical injustices (e.g., minstrel performances and “race records”) as well as present day discrimination and unfair treatment faced by many artists.
To fully realize the transformative power of music, the music industry must be shaped and led by artists from historically marginalized communities. Over the next three years, The Fund will:
Launch the Once & Future Laureate program. Borrowing from the Nobel laureate and US Library of Congress poet laureate frameworks, the Laureate Program will uplift artists with singular mission and activism — artists who have shown themselves capable in their early work of difference-making brilliance. The program provides these artists with financial investment and support needed to help ensure they own their art and operate in a self-sustaining way. The program has an explicit focus on supporting musicians from historically marginalized groups.
Organize the Once & Future Festival. The Festival will recreate the celebration of eclectic feminine brilliance that Russell first curated at the 2021 Newport Folk Festival, where the Once & Future Sounds name and mission were born.
About Allison: Since the release of her first solo album two years ago, the self-taught singer, songwriter, poet, activist, and multi-instrumentalist Allison Russell has redefined what artistry means in the 21st century. Outside Child, her often devastating, deeply moving, cathartic celebration of survivor’s joy, has become one of the most acclaimed albums of the past 10 years (various honors include eight GRAMMY Award nominations, the Juno Award for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year, the 2022 Americana Music Association’s Album of the Year Award, two International Folk Music Awards, three Canadian Folk Music Awards, and four UK Americana Music Awards). Further still, Allison has consistently used her newfound platform to elevate, educate and inspire; curating the history making Once And Future Sounds: Roots and Revolution set for the Newport Folk Festival in 2021 and mobilizing this year’s triumphant Love Rising All-Star benefit concert in support of LGBTQIA+ causes in Nashville, are just two of the many examples where she’s raised her voice with power and purpose.
Unmanageable supports Allison through fiscal sponsorship and fundraising as she pairs art and activism to fight the dual pandemics of bigotry and abuse, using her voice and music as a vehicle to open up challenging conversations, encourage empathy, and inspire deeper healing.