We recently started Studio Sessions, where we invite Baha'is and their friends to come into a recording studio in different parts of the world, in order to share songs they've composed based on the Baha'i Writings while we film and record them.

We then make these videos and recordings available on our Baha'i Blog YouTube Channel and SoundCloud page for everyone to listen to and download for free! This initiative has proven to be extremely popular and a great resource!

We're aiming to produce 52 new Studio Sessions (one per week) from around the world for 2016, but we need your help to do this!

How & Why it Started

A letter from the Universal House of Justice to all National Spiritual Assemblies dated 12 December, 2011, states:

"We long to see, for instance, the emergence of captivating songs from every part of the world, in every language, that will impress upon the consciousness of the young the profound concepts enshrined in the Baha’i teachings." 

As someone who’s had the opportunity to travel a whole lot over the years, I’ve had the good fortune of attending a variety of different Baha’i-related gatherings around the world. One of the things I’ve enjoyed immensely while attending these gatherings, is being able to experience "the emergence of captivating songs from every part of the world, in every language" first hand!

I’ve always wished others could hear these wonderful songs which celebrate the Writings of the Baha'i Faith, and now with Studio Sessions they can!

The Impact

We've been releasing one Studio Sessions song per week (that's over 20 songs so far) and we've recorded in Sydney, Australia; Los Angeles, USA; Arequipa, Peru; London, UK; Toronto, Canada; the Gold Coast, Australia and Madrid, Spain.

The global response to these Studio Sessions has been absolutely amazing, and we've had a ton of great feedback from so many different people, but here's an example of one response which really sums it all up:

"Just want to let you know how much I am enjoying the Baha'i Blog Studio Sessions. Every time we get a notification a new one has gone up, its the first thing I jump on YouTube to check. I have seen friends using these prayers in their devotionals and this Sunday night we also used one of the prayers to start our devotional. They are really useful to the teaching work underway as well. I think as more friends start to engage with these prayers others will be inspired to craft their own prayers or pick up a guitar to learn these prayers within their own clusters as we have seen already in some of the comments.  Anyways just want to say to the team keep up great work and I hope this series will continue on for the foreseeable future, traveling to more and more countries!" -Chad

As we want these songs to serve as a resource for you and communities around the world, every song we release includes the lyrics and the chords so you can learn to play them as well. We do hope this initiative encourages the use of music in communities around the world and inspires others to create their own songs.

How You Can Help

We have enough songs recorded to take us to the end of the 2015, and we'd really like to be able to continue Studio Sessions into the future, but getting people into a studio and filming and recording them isn't always that easy - or cheap.

So far Studio Sessions has been possible thanks to the help of volunteers, and because we've been digging into our own pockets, but unfortunately doing things this way is simply not sustainable.

Since we don’t generate any income through advertising (and we don't want to do this - can you imagine having to listen to an ad before listening to a beautiful prayer?), and we also don’t want to charge anyone for these wonderful songs either, we're asking for your help to make sure we can keep Studio Sessions going. 

Based on our experience, and excluding our time and the generous help of volunteers, we've calculated that if we had to pay for everything else, each Studio Session song would cost on average US$250. So, to have 52 songs will cost a total of US$13,000. I know this may sound like a lot, but it goes towards things like studio room hire, sound engineer hire, hire of a camera person to film and edit, some travel expenses (for instance sometimes we have to help artists to come in from certain parts of a country which isn't always that cheap), and other bits-and-pieces like hard drives to store all the footage.

And remember! The above covers both the video and audio production, which are FREE to download and available online as long as the internet exists! ;)

Any funds raised in excess of what is needed will be put aside for Studio Sessions 2017 and the years beyond. 

What's in it for You?

Most crowd funding campaigns provide those contributing  with rewards or perks for their contributions, but after discussing this at length, the team at Baha'i Blog decided that we are going to keep the perks very simple, and I'll explain why:

We feel like the production and release of these Studio Sessions to the world ARE the reward, and this is the product we're offering. It's not a CD, a slick suitcase or a belt buckle - it's a collection of songs based on the Baha'i Writings made available for FREE on YouTube and SoundCloud for millions of people to listen to and use.

Nevertheless, we thought about creating t-shirts, we thought about producing a CD; but then we calculated the cost and time this would take, and we quickly realised that would increase the cost, and would take away from the limited time we have to dedicate to this very important initiative. Additionally, things like creating a CD and shipping it would not only add up cost-wise, but could also have legal and copyright issues with those wonderful individuals who have contributed their music for free to this initiative. We'd like to try and keep this initiative as simple and straightforward as possible, ensuring that the music is always free. As a result, we decided to give everyone who makes a contribution a digital copy of the most listened to Studio Sessions song of 2016 as a token of our appreciation. The main reward therefore, is the sharing of this beautiful Baha'i-inspired music from around the world - with the whole world!

Other Ways You Can Help

If you can't contribute to Studio Sessions financially, that's totally cool, but we’d really appreciate it if you could help us by doing the following:

1.  Help spread the word and let others know about this campaign.

2. Subscribe to Baha’i Blog’s YouTube Channel so we can share with you all the new Studio Sessions as they're released.