What are you doing in the world music business?
I'm trying to take a different approach to 'World Music.’ On the one hand, I want to be true to the music - not re-cast it to make it more appealing to 'world music' listeners. There's a tendency for world music producers to want to soften the music - make it less edgy - to me, that's removing the essence of what makes music good. The other side of the spectrum is the ethno musicological approach, which is obsessed with the form and not concerned enough about whether the music is actually any good. I mean you can go out in the desert and record a man playing a one string violin in an ancient style, but maybe the man is just not a very good violinist. Or maybe that particular ancient style is pretty boring - add that to the poor quality of the audio and it doesn't make for an exciting listen.

So I’m somewhere in the middle. I want the music to have a 'street sound' - to capture the true feelings, expressions, and humanity of that culture in an uncensored way. But I don't want to be overly ideological in my approach. The most important thing is that it sounds good.

Something I believe in very strongly is live recording without a click track. Music recorded in this fashion just feels much more alive – no pun intended. Feedback between musicians in some cases can be very obvious, like a bongo phrase reacting to a variation played by the guira - and this type of feedback can be imitated in carefully crafted track by track recording (although it often isn't), but there is another kind of feedback which is much more subtle - slight variations of emphasis and energy, or even of tempo - in a live recording you can feel the music breathe - whereas in a track by track it feels by comparison sterile. Not having a click track mark tempo is also important - some people do live recording with click track - you don't want the music to have that metronome feel - it's natural that tempo should change slightly in different parts of a song - and maybe there are even minute natural cycles of tempo change.

I think people are so accustomed to electronic music these days that they don't really know what they're missing in terms of the live feel. On the other hand, I don't think track by track producing doesn't have its place and its merits. I am a great admirer for instance of Jamaican producer Lee Perry - who would endlessly sample and remix.
Certain types of modern music are based on this kind of sound - specifically hip hop and the whole spectrum of 'urban' type music. In these, the 'liveness' factor comes more from main vocalist - the beat is a kind of hypnotic backdrop.

But another problem with sampling and with track by track recording is that the producer and musicians need have neither good tempo nor pitch to put together an ok sounding track - so these two most clear queues of lack of musical talent are absent. In broader terms, technology and track by track recording can help cover up poor musicianship. But the music, while sounding correct, will be uninspiring.

What makes you unusual in the industry?
Well, for one, I have a background in business and technology – my bachelors is in computer science and I have an MBA – especially unusual in that my focus isn't hip-hop or electronica, but what you'd call more traditional music.

I've also traveled and seen a lot of the world from a young age, and I think this helps me see humanity with less cultural bias. So to some extent I'm able to listen to music with a fresh ear and hear it on its own terms. Music is so tied up with cultural identity - for instance you see groups of kids talking and dressing differently and forming cliques depending on what kind of music they're into - well this behavior mirrors a general human phenomenon - different groups speaking different languages within different traditions - and each with their own music. So to really hear the music of another culture
you have to be able to divorce yourself to a degree from your own culture, and put yourself in the other's mentality.

What is your ambition?
I'd like to build a successful label and make a positive difference in people’s lives with the music we produce. I'd like the recording to withstand the test of time, to remain appreciated for a long time.

I'd also like to help foster music in the communities I work with. To that end, I'd some day like to get involved in music education. My dream is to help set up a network of music schools all over the world - and to tie the schools to touring and recording outlets so that there be actual employment opportunities for the graduates.

Thoughts on technology usage in your work?
I'm a lover of technology. I use it on the production side, of course, to make recordings with the best possible sound. An area where I think technology is making the biggest difference is in reaching the audience. I want to create a community online around the music we work with - and not limited to the specific musicians we are working with.

What we've started to do with our website www.iasorecords.com is to make it a resource where one can do more than just listen to music - it offers opportunities to discover music in ways that just a few years ago weren't possible - articles with embedded video and music clips and blog-like discussions.

In terms of our own artists, we can film concerts, rehearsals, interviews, etc., and put them on our site - hosted on YouTube so that they take part in that whole community as well. It makes the music more real and intimate, and also makes it easier to discover – through search engines and links.

I believe to some extent in the democracy of capitalism - the more liberty people have to be exposed to everything that's out there the more likely they'll choose better quality products.

The problem up to now is that music industry has become a cartel with too much power over what gets released and promoted in the hands of too few. So people haven’t had much choice what to listen to. I hope technology will change this. Right now the cartel is weakening, but it's still very much present.