Mistakemistake is a Belgrade-based band with a "hip-electro- ragga-2-hop reggae-step" sound, which will be rocking Summit attendees when they perform at the concert on the evening of 15 June.

This band has an alternative approach to music-making: at the core of the band are brothers Edi and Ivan Bon, an astrophysicist and sculptor respectively, who collaborate with guest musicians who all bring their own sounds and ideas to the table. We caught up with Edi to find out more about the band, his thoughts on creativity, and the challenges that artists from the Balkan region are facing, and how CC provides a practical solution.

Daniela: The process of working with 'joined members' is quite unconventional. What benefits does this form of collaboration bring to Mistakemistake, and what has this process taught you?

Edi: Every artist brings something new to the group, so this concept has made us different and fresh. Also the album, that we published in 2004 (Hipelectroragga2hopreggaestep), sounds really eclectic, and this comes through in our live acts too. It is a little different from your typical band concept, where you have one singer, who soon becomes identified with a band, and if s/he starts a solo career, the band stops existing. So we introduced several solo singers, and each of them sang the songs with their own lyrics and style, on music that was made and performed by my brother Ivan on groovebox and samplers. Also, the concerts became more interesting with many different singers on the stage, all with totally different styles. This kind of concept already existed, especially in Jamaica, or the UK (for example, Massive Attack). We just applied it to our music too.

Daniela: This is going to make for some great entertainment at the Summit! I read that the name ‘Mistakemistake’ comes from the idea that every art creation is based on mistakes - so what would you say to the idea that every art creation stems from borrowed ideas, that nothing is really truly original?

Edi: You are right to some point, but it depends on the definition of ‘creation’. We are not obsessed with being original. We simply enjoy making music, with only one goal - that everybody feels good while listening to it.

Over time, some specific things in our concepts crystallised, and we become recognisable as Mistakemistake (by the sound, concepts, videos, etc.). So we became unique in some sense. We started off with the concept that every creation is based on error or mistake and that these small errors and mistakes soon lead to even better and more interesting creations - creations that you could not even have imagined in the first place. Making these mistakes let you recognise them and incorporate them into your creation. The point is that you should be aware of making mistakes, and be able to recognise them so that you can use them to lead you while creating.

That is the way that your creation must be unique, because this much randomisation is too chaotic to be repeated many times in history, and if it really happened then it is really a coincidence. Since Ivan is a sculptor and I'm an astrophysicist, we made some sort of combination of art and science with this approach.

Daniela: I see you attribute EgobooBits as one of your record labels. I’ve heard a huge amount about EgobooBits lately; it seems to be quite a haven for ‘abused’ artists and musicians...

Edi: At EgobooBits they introduced us to CC. Here in the Balkans the best deal that an artist can get from a publisher is to get a promise for a music video. The main point is that you cannot do anything when you finally do not get that video at all, after a long wait. I know of a lot of these cases. But with CC there is a way to get a video, by freeing you material too.

Many understand this as some kind of antiglobal anarchist fight against music industry, but it is in fact something to be used, and not to fight for or about. I hope to spread this to as many people as possible so anyone can do the same thing that we have done, and in fact this would lead to freeing more and more materials generally.

Daniela: So, what is your involvement with CC licensing - I see a reference to it on your MySpace page, but on your website it states: "Copyrights notice! All rights reserved so don't fuck with anything!" Tell us your CC story...

Edi: It all started after a workshop that I attended in Belgrade in 2005, about "record labelling". There I saw a presentation by Marcel Mars about the EgobooBits record label from Zagreb, which uses the concept of CC licences as a model. As a Linux user for more than a decade, I immediately liked this idea, especially after not being so happy with contracts and results after publishing our CD and two 12' es with Masterplan Records and Multimedia Records.

Each contract that we had to sign manoeuvred us into a ‘slavery’ position, even if we made, produced, financed and promoted all our material alone. We even made our videos alone and provided it to the TV broadcasters. All of this did not put us in any better position than any other band that was financed by the publisher for the production of the CD and the videos, or through the promotion of the band via commercials. So I simply wanted to try some new concept of publishing that would not put is in a position were everything we make is owned by someone, who just finances the prints, and at the same time, closes the channel to the listeners that did not have access to their localised distribution!

Soon we found using CC licences to be even more promising than we expected. In our case the most expensive investment is making a video clip, and we finally could not even get that from the publisher, with the (reasonable) excuse that the album would bring in less money, than the investment for making a video, which is probably true.

Anyway, I last year I saw a documentary movie "Plac" (The Market) by Ana Husman, previously published on EgobooBits. Since I knew that all works on Egoboo are published under a CC ShareAlike licence, I knew we could use it, under these terms. So in a few weeks we made a video for our song, and published it under the same licence, which is the basic idea behind the ShareAlike concept. The song moved to the top of nearly all TV and radio charts in the region, and was even played on MTV Adria, for a few months, which was more promotion than many bands that have videos worth many thousands of dollars.

As a result, I started to promote this concept, as something much better then selling yourself to record labels, just to have a video clip and for the band would be promoted. This way everybody had a profit in promotion - the author of the movie and us too. What was even better is that this concept frees other material, just by being free!

As for our website, this was the responsibility of an ex member who made it his portfolio some years ago. His name is Denis Radenkovic, and he did not incorporate any public domain concepts in it, though now he is involved in some projects using public domain licenses for mobile phones. Of course he used a full freedom to joke on formalities, as you've pointed to in your question...

Daniela: What do you hope to achieve from attending and performing at the iCommons Summit? What do you expect will be a highlight of the event?

Edi: Well, this is a hard one... We do not expect anything special. We hope that some people will like it, and that all of us will have a great time in Dubrovnik, since Summits are for that too, not just for the formal part. We hope that the concept that I mentioned previously about freeing of material, will be recognized.

If you're attending the Summit, come to the concert at 10:30pm on 15 June, to see Mistakemistake and Frapet perform - it's going to be a blast! If you can't make it, please visit Mistakemistake's Egoobits page to download more of their creations!

tags: Dubrovnik Croatia culture music band cc record-label summit07

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