the awareness journal
Sound business: Celestial Harmonies does the right things
The sounds of Celestial Harmonies' eclectic recordings
have delighted the ears and nurtured the souls of millions of listeners
world–wide.
Under founder Eckart Rahn, the Tucson–based music
label has created a unique mix of good business practices, socially
conscious ethics and adventurous, unusual music.
"Music is really at its best when it is dealing with
something larger than itself, " Rahn says.
Under the motto, "The nobility of purpose and the
refinement of expression," the label has bought the artistry of
Deuter, Patrick Ball, Paul Horn, R. Carlos Nakai and many others to
listeners. It also opened up new vistas with its extensive world recordings,
such as The Music of Cambodia and the Tibetan monks of the Dip
Tse Chok Ling Monastery. Last year's 17–disk collection of The
Music of Islam set a new standard for comprehensiveness, including
more than a thousand pages of detailed notes.
Julian Parnaby, sales and marketing manager for the label,
says, "It's an artistic endeavor, but it needs to be a business
endeavor to survive."Rahn agrees, "We
are in the culture business: half is culture and half is music. You
can't support the culture if you're not good at business."
Rahn has thrived for more than 30 years in the music industry.
His company is the last surviving privately owned independent label
from the 60's. Contemporary labels such as Immediate, Island, Charisma,
have either gone bankrupt or been swallowed up by the major labels,
such as Sony and EMI.
"I'm a typical child of the '60s" the German–born
Rahn concedes. "And in those days, music really had a social purpose.
Today, it's run by accountants and lawyers. I mean, have we really gone
from Leonard Cohen to Garth Brooks, from The Who to Hansen? No wonder
music has lost it's social importance for young people, with manufactured,
cosmetic music, devoid of any real message, except 'please make me rich.'
There is no serious message in there, nothing that you can relate to
in a prophetic sense."
Indeed, Celestial Harmonies is
the antithesis of calculated music. Its albums are often recorded in
remote locations with obscure local musicians. The purpose is not "hits,"
but an inventory that continues to sell over decades.
The label has more than 250 titles ranging from jazz to
ambient and ethnic recordings to comprehensive world music boxed sets.
Its catalogue includes the Black Sun Music, Fortuna Records and Kuckuck
labels.
"We don't delete recordings from our catalogue,"
explains Parnaby. "We know that some of these recordings made 25
to 30 years ago stand up today."
Rahn notes there is no pattern to the sales of individual
titles. "Some of them might sell well, some of them used to sell
well and might be slacking off, some of them did not sell and they're
picking up. It goes in cycles.
When we started to do the Tibetan monks, the chanting,
we thought that was the most ludicrous thing you could do, " Rahn
remembers. "It turns out that over a 10-12 year time span, those
have been among our most consistent sellers."
In 1981, Rahn signed a then–unknown instrumentalist
named Kitaro.
Kitaro's first seven albums outside his native Japan, including
Silk Road, originally appeared on the Kuckuck label.
Rahn estimates that the label has sold 8-10 million albums
over the years. Because of use of the label's music in movies such as
Little Buddha and other factors, he believes that his company
has been heard by several hundred million people around the world.
Rahn and his modest staff work out of unpretentious offices
and a warehouse with more than 350,000 units of cassettes and compact
disks in stock. The catalogue growing by 10 to 25 titles each year.
Because of Rahn's '60s consciousness, Celestial Harmonies
has been an industry leader in environmental concerns. It was the first
label to declare a company policy to reduce the amount of waste in CD
packaging.
Its efforts have included use of recycled paper for all
CD booklets and cassette inlays, despite higher expenses than regular
paper. It fought the use of the "long box," the wasteful 6"x12"
cardboard packaging which used to surround the actual CD jewelbox package,
designed so retailers could continue to use their old album bins as
vinyl disappeared. The label was the first American company to use the
CD duobox, which holds two disks in a streamlined case, reducing plastic
by 60 percent in volume and 25 percent in weight.
"We are still representing capitalism with a conscience,"
Rahn says. "Nobody is using that term any more, the stock market
is more important."
Because it is a privately held company, Celestial Harmonies
can make decisions because they are right, not because it must maximize
profits for investors.
"We don't have to look at profits as dividends to
be distributed," Rahn declares. "It isn't even a question
of profits, it's more basic than that. Profit is what you have left
after all the bills are paid. Our biggest bill is the manufacturing
costs. Our second biggest bills are the budgets for next year's releases.
We're quite happy to fairly elaborate, fairly expensive projects without
needing to cut corners, and instead of making a cash profit, we create
assets in the warehouse by having so many titles."
Rahn recalls growing up in postwar Germany. "My dream
when I was young was to be a museum director. But I have no academic
credentials, so I could never become a museum director in any event.
So instead I have my music museum."
He has visited 30 countries and lives part of the year
in Australia. His company has recorded in more than 40 countries. "We
like to record it exactly as it sounds," he says. "I believe
that music can not be separated from where it is made. Our basic recordings
are made with an almost documentary attitude, very clean, capturing
the full frequency range using digital technology. Later on we add equalization
and other elements. It's like photography, when you take a picture of
a building. When a photographer prints it, he can do things to the image,
with contrast and color balances or cropping, and yet the building remains
the same."
"Everybody here appreciates that there is a cultural
function, in addition to the business function," Rahn notes. "We
have management by consensus. My work requires a great deal of travel,
which means we have to be in tune and in touch and trust each other.
I hope that I can say people enjoy working here."
Terri Williamson, Rahn's assistant agrees. "It's not
a matter of how many sales, as it is to put out what needs to be heard,"
she says. "He has a very pioneering vision. He's always three jumps
ahead of everybody. We get people to buy a CD because it is a Celestial
Harmonies CD, even if they don't know anything about the music. They
know the quality and they have that trust."
Rahn believes, "Every business operates to exactly
the same rules, whether you sell detergent or music. No one will allow
us to make cheaper phone calls or pay less air freight because we're
particularly sensitive."
He laughs, "I mean, we don't get a break just because
we're enlightened, you know?"
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