Ari Stern, CCAS BA '09
(Michael Temchine For The Washington Post)Ari Stern, CCAS BA '09, still lives in Washington, D.C. His friend Sawyer Carter Jacobs, CCAS BA '09, moved to Beijing after graduation. Together, they help run a burgeoning independent (known in their musical circle as "indie") record label called Underwater Peoples, which has received national and even global interest thanks to their reliance on the Internet for communication and distribution.
With help from Evan Brody, CCAS BA '09, and Mike Mimoun, ESIA BA '09, Stern and Jacobs have been issuing recordings from several bands since February, also making MP3s available for free download. The four friends met during their freshman year, where they bonded over their shared affection for indie rock bands. They ended up inviting several bands to play shows at various house parties over the next few years, and by May 2009, they had formed a band themselves, as well as their record label. After graduation, everyone but Stern moved or traveled away from D.C., but they all stay in touch and continue to run Underwater Peoples through technologies such as online video chat.
Despite the label's global reach, the bands showcased by Underwater Peoples hail mostly from suburban New Jersey, where Stern and Brody grew up. The label took this personal approach and applied it to their distribution model, sending MP3s to small, relatively unknown music blogs, where the music generated enough interest to end up making its way onto more popular sites such as Pitchfork and Rolling Stone. Underwater Peoples also continues to organize live concerts to help spread the word about its bands.
Read more about Underwater Peoples in a recent Washington Post article.
Are you a GW graduate working in the arts – music, dance, theatre, visual art, or some other art form? We want to hear from you for an upcoming feature on alumni in the arts. If you are interested in being profiled or mentioned, email Matt Lindsay at mlindsay@gwu.edu.
