This is the second installment of “It Started @ FEST”, a series showcasing the projects and initiatives that include FWB FEST as part of their lore. Innumerable magic happens in the woods of Idyllwild over three August days on the stunning Idyllwild Arts Academy campus. That magic has an undeniable ripple effect year round. Tickets for FEST24 are available now at an early bird price of 30%-off.

We sat down with our friend iamnick.eth to talk about the journey of Soulquest, a pop-up music collective that received 2nd place in Music in Optimism’s massive We <3 The Art competition. Less than a year ago, Soulquest was merely a party crowdfund.

This all started with a Party crowdfund and a vision. You wanted to recreate the magic of the Soulquarians, a collective of 90’s hip-hop and R&B legends recording at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village. The Soulquarians captured a moment in time, a specific place, and a particular scene. Fast forward to Summer 2023 and we now have a powerful set of emerging technologies that can create immutable moments in time, place, and scene. Tell us more about the initial insight that eventually led to Soulquest, an onchain pop-up music collective.

In early 2023 I had an itch to work on something that combined my love of music with web3. I spent a lot of time talking to the pioneers who were experimenting with releasing their music onchain like Latashá, Black Dave, The Park, Songcamp etc. The common theme that emerged from these conversations was that people were desperately seeking online spaces where they could connect with likeminded people and collaborate on projects together. There was a lot of amazing infrastructure and tools for releasing music onchain but nothing that really helped artists and collectives grow and nurture a community. I started to explore the current suite of tools available for forming onchain collectives and decided to experiment with Nouns Builder and Party.

About a month before FEST23 the idea for Soulquest just kinda popped into my head. I was thinking about how so much of the incredible music I listen to and love was birthed out of collectives. The Wu Tang Clan, Odd Future, Native Tongues, . I had always been inspired by the legendary Soulquarians collective (Questlove, D’Angelo, Questlove, Erykah Badu, Mos Def and many others) and wanted to see if we could recreate that energy and experimental approach to making music, but do it in a really onchain way. I decided to launch a Party crowdfund and see if we could collectively form a hip-hop/neo-soul supergroup and send them to Fest to record and release a song.

Tell us about the artists Iman, illCamille, SWARVY, and vthemartian. How did this group come together and what role did everyone play?

We raised 5 ETH and had 35 people contribute to the Soulquest crowdfund and initially the idea was that we’d let artists apply and the Party would decide on who made up the group. Very quickly we realized that wasn’t going to work and that it needed to be curated. On advice from Derek Taylor (of The Park) I reached out to Iman Europe and asked if she’d like to help curate the group with me. I mentioned I was keen to get V.C.R on board for her amazing vocals and was going to hit up some producers who had a real J Dilla / Q-tip vibe. Iman convinced V.C.R to get involved and decided she would also like to be an artist on the project. After a bit of back and forth trying to agree on a producer we reached out to Swarvy (who V.C.R had worked with before) and told him about the concept and Iman reached out to rapper Ill Camille. Finally we had our crew locked in and I was blown away by the caliber of artists we’d managed to assemble. Collectively they had collaborated with the likes of André 3000, Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre, The Alchemist and more.

So far the story is inspiration >> idea >> resources >> artists. The next piece is the location. The group made the long, but stunning trip to Idyllwild, CA to create their first release as a collective. “Idyllic” was birthed and recorded onsite in The Park’s fully outfitted studio space at FEST23. Why did you choose FEST to play such a critical role in the Soulquest story?

Choosing to do Soulquest at FEST23 just made a lot of sense to me. I had seen many musicians and creatives join FWB over the years and start to release their work onchain as they learned more about the technology and use-cases. I felt that by bringing a bunch of musicians who had no prior experience with web3 (with the exception of Iman) to an event like FEST, it might help them better understand the incredible tools that were being built and how they could leverage them in their own creative practice. My hope was that they’d see crypto/web3 as something more than just charts and speculation.

What did Soulquest show you about this kind of creative coordination? Said another way, what are some lessons or things that surprised you about the process?

I learned pretty quickly that strangers on the internet are happy to contribute money to a project they think is interesting or cool, but that doesn’t mean they’ll participate. It’s really hard to get people to vote, propose ideas and be part of a dialogue if there is no incentive to do so. In our case we decided that ~15% of any proceeds from the sale of NFTs (or the Optimism competition) would flow back to the crowdfund contributors so that helped motivate people a little but it still was surprising.It also highlighted the importance of getting buy-in and having a core group of people driving the project forward, rather than an individual. Most of the decision making was up to me, and even though I had hoped some of the crowdfund contributors might jump in to help coordinate things that didn’t end up happening. Creating the right guard rails and structure early on is super important.

One way to look at this is to say that Soulquest is an instance of emerging technology outputting the creation of culture IRL. This is core to our thesis at FWB – that culture will drive adoption of emerging technology in service of a better internet. What do you make of that?

Our goal with Soulquest was to experiment with new models of collective collaboration to produce cultural artifacts that live forever, onchain. I believe that these new tools and technologies will be adopted in a very bottom-up, grassroots kind of way. It will be driven by individuals, collectives and communities who are looking for alternatives to the algorithms, feeds and zero-sum games that creators are forced to play.

What’s next for Soulquest? Will there be a FEST run back in 2024?

Well we don’t know yet, but I would really love to see Soulquest come back to FEST in 2024. We’ve been throwing some ideas around and I’ve proposed to the Party that we could use the 15% split from the Optimism competition to fund the next iteration of the project, whatever that may be

Anything else you want to share?

The next generation of music communities, labels and fan clubs will be onchain, and will make decisions collectively. If you’re interested in experimenting or want to collab hit me up.We also recently started a collective called Cheeks with the goal of curating a monthly club night in cities across the world and live streaming it to members. Right now it’s just a Telegram chat with ~90 people but the plan is to form an onchain collective that will fund the events and choose the acts that play. Stay tuned.

About iamnick.eth

Define “a better internet."

A better internet is one in which connection and collaboration are prioritized over scale and reach. It is an ecosystem of millions of niche micro-communities cross pollinating and thriving together.

Curate your top 3.

Top vinyl records in my collection by Soulquarian members:

Fantastic Vol. 2 - Slum Village

Voodoo - D’Angelo

Mama’s Gun - Erykah Badu

What are you reading?

The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich. It’s about how culture, rituals and institutions shaped the West’s psychology and contributed to its prosperity.

What are you listening to?

Recently I’ve been listening to a bunch of Acquired podcast eps. I really loved the one on Nintendo as it goes deep into their history before gaming. They were originally a concrete company and then manufactured playing cards for Yakuza run gambling parlors.

What are you obsessing over/can’t stop thinking about lately?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of memecoins not as speculative assets but as a new curation primitive that can also help emerging artists make some extra money. The idea that you could start to form a social graph and highlight creative works based on the amount of onchain tips creators receive opens up a pretty vast design space.

What’s your FEST core memory?

Hearing the Soulquest tracks (they made three in 4 hours) played in full for the first time in front of the crowd that had gathered in the room. It was special.