A NEW music label being launched in Cyprus is not guaranteed to receive a welcome as warm as the weather, and Olive Tree Music are no exception.
“We are a music company called ‘Olive Tree Music’. The first phase of its development was forming the band called ‘Poetz4Peace’ and the main core of the band is myself, Zeki and San Francisco based Steffen Franz. It was initially an experiment which became a band and which is now a record label,” says DJ Haji Mike, a driving force behind the project.
Poetz4Peace have already performed live in America and England with audiences of up to 10,000, and already people on both communities of the island are beginning to take full notice.
Olive Tree Music producers, popular Cypriot DJs Haji Mike and Zeki Ali, however, told the Sunday Mail that they had encountered obstacles in getting the recognition their cause deserved.
“It has been quite a struggle getting this together and it took some effort from both of the communities to get this thing going,” said Ali.
Haji Mike added that radio stations on both sides of the divide did little if anything to help their cause, which they say is “not to make the same mistakes but to move forward through the powerful and all embracing power of music and lyrics”.
“We were getting trouble getting the tracks aired on the radio because the Greek Cypriot radio stations would only play Greek songs or famous English songs from the UK or America. We had roughly the same problem with the Turkish Cypriot radio stations and so the only airtime we would get would be token air times. We deserved better than that. There are too many radio station genders.”
He added: “I believe that politicians have not done anything for us. It is us the people who decide and are making things happen and music is a great way to bring the communities together. The politicians should follow our example.”
So far, Olive Tree’s artistic work only revolves around Poetz4Peace – a loose collective based in Cyprus and the USA consisting of musicians and poets. The album, which includes various international artists and not just from Cyprus, released as ‘A pair of olive leaves’, received great reviews from DJs and music critics around the world.
“Artists may come to us with demos or ideas and we could produce them if the meaning of the song is there or help them redo the song if it needs more work. Occasionally, we may run into artists who are into hardcore ‘hip-hop’ and want to be aggressive in their songs. That is not what we are about and we simply show them the do.”
Other problems encountered during the publicity of their music label was the stigma attached to Olive Tree Music, which is part of Independent Distribution Collective, because they were sponsored for their first album by UNOPS.
“We encountered some problems with trying to get publicity because we were sponsored by UNOPS. The recent ‘witch hunt’ in Cyprus for people being sponsored by foreign or American entities gave us problems with some stations that didn’t want to air our music simply because we were sponsored by UNOPS to enhance relations between the two communities.
“Some people may brand me a traitor but I don’t care what they think. If a traitor is helping to bring two communities together then so be it. Ali wrote something very true, ‘Give me a line as blue as the Mediterranean’.”
The latest album to be released by Olive Tree Music, which has alternative songs ranging from rap to hip hop to folk music, is ‘Cyprus Thing’, the first double CD ever to be released by a local label and featuring 29 tracks by 19 different artists and groups.
For information visit the following websites
www.olivetreemusic.com
www.independentdistro.com
