Musical collective is a phrase used to describe a group of musicians in which membership is flexible and creative control is shared.Liisa Ladouceur "Collective Souls" '' This Magazine'', November/December 2004. The concept is distinct from that of a traditional band in that musical collectives allow for flexibility in their rosters, and members are free to rotate in and out of the line-up. Collectives may exist in almost any genre of music, although they have been especially prominent in
indie rock
Indie rock is a Music subgenre, subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand in the early to mid-1980s. Although the term was originally used to describe rock music released through independent reco ...
and
hip hop
Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hip- ...
London Musicians Collective
The London Musicians Collective (LMC) is a cultural charity based in London, England devoted to the support and promotion of contemporary, experimental and improvised music.
From its foundation in 1975 until its reorganization in 2009, the LMC or ...
, which is an organization with more general aims and larger membership.
Animal Collective
Animal Collective is an American experimental pop band formed in Baltimore County, Maryland. Its members consist of Avey Tare (David Portner), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Geologist (Brian Weitz), and Deakin (Josh Dibb). The band's work is cha ...
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Anticon
Anticon (often styled as anticon.) was an independent record label based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1998 by seven musicians and manager Baillie Parker. It was collectively owned among six musicians, co-founder Parker, and manag ...
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Arcade Fire
Arcade Fire is a Canadian indie rock band from Montreal, Quebec, consisting of husband and wife Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, alongside Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, and Jeremy Gara. The band's touring line-up includes former core ...
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Archive
An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located.
Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...
Army of the Pharaohs
AOTP logo ''(as seen on In Death Reborn)''
Army of the Pharaohs (most commonly abbreviated as AOTP or A.O.T.P.) is an American underground hip hop collective originating from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, formed by Jedi Mind Tricks founder Vi ...
ASAP Mob
ASAP Mob (stylized as A$AP Mob) is an American hip-hop collective formed in 2006 in Harlem, New York City, that consists of rappers (most of whom carry the "ASAP" moniker; except Da$H and Playboi Carti), record producers, music video directors, ...
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The Band
The Band was a Canadian-American rock music, rock band formed in Toronto, Ontario, in 1957. It consisted of the Canadians Rick Danko (bass, guitar, vocals, fiddle), Garth Hudson (organ, keyboards, accordion, saxophone), Richard Manuel (piano, d ...
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Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution
Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution (BOTAR) is a musical collective including influences from ska, punk, classical, and eastern European music, entirely in an acoustic format including classically trained musicians. It is composed of former ...
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Bankroll Mafia
Bankroll Mafia is an American hip hop collective from Atlanta, Georgia. The collective was formed in 2015, after American rappers T.I., Young Thug and Shad da God began frequently working together. Other Atlanta-based rappers also joined the c ...
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Black Hippy
Black Hippy was an American hip hop supergroupBlack Mountain
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Blocks Recording Club
Blocks Recording Club was a Canadian co-operative of musicians, which served as both a collaborative artist community and a record label for its member artists.Bomb the Music Industry!
Bomb the Music Industry! (commonly abbreviated as Bomb or BtMI!) was an American punk rock musical collective from Baldwin, Nassau County, New York, United States, led by singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Rosenstock.
T ...
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Bran Van 3000
Bran Van 3000 (also known as BV3) is a Canadian alternative rock and hip hop collective from Montreal, Quebec. Founded by James Di Salvio and E.P. Bergen, they collaborated on a number of songs with Stéphane Moraille, Sara Johnston, Steve "Liqu ...
Broken Social Scene
Broken Social Scene is a Canadian indie rock band and musical collective including as few as six and as many as nineteen members, formed by Kevin Drew (vocals, guitar) and Brendan Canning (vocals, bass) in 1999. Alongside Drew and Canning, the ...
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Bugz in the Attic
Bugz in the Attic is a collective of DJs and producers based in West London, who are prominent in broken beat. The collective includes Orin Walters (Afronaut), Paul Dolby (Seiji), Kaidi Tatham, Daz-I-Kue, Alex Phountzi (Neon Phusion), Cliff Sco ...
Crass
Crass was an English art collective and punk rock band formed in Epping, Essex in 1977 who promoted anarchism as a political ideology, a lifestyle, and a resistance movement. Crass popularized the anarcho-punk movement of the punk subculture, ...
Diggin' in the Crates Crew
The Diggin' in the Crates Crew, commonly known as D.I.T.C., is an American hip hop collective formed in 1992 in New York City. The collective's name derives from the act of seeking out records to sample for production. The collective is compo ...
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Doomtree
Doomtree is an American hip hop collective and record label based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The collective has seven members: Dessa, Cecil Otter, P.O.S, Sims, Mike Mictlan, Paper Tiger, and Lazerbeak. The collective is known for incorpora ...
Dungeon Family
The Dungeon Family were a musical collective based in Atlanta that specialized in Southern hip hop with heavy funk and soul music, soul influences. Members of this collective recorded music, and had their career emerge, from Rico Wade's basement ...
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Godspeed You! Black Emperor (sometimes abbreviated to GY!BE or Godspeed) is a Canadian post-rock collective that originated in Montreal, Quebec in 1994. The group releases recordings through Constellation Records (Canada), Constellation, an in ...
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Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock music, rock band formed in Palo Alto, California, in 1965. Known for their eclectic style that fused elements of rock, blues, jazz, Folk music, folk, country music, country, bluegrass music, bluegrass, roc ...
Hello! Project
is a Japanese musical collective consisting of all female recording artists and groups under Up-Front Promotion, a subsidiary of Up-Front Group. The name was initially used as Michiyo Heike and Morning Musume's fan club name in 1999, but ...
Hieroglyphics
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters.I ...
Jungle
jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past century.
Etymology
The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''jaṅgala'' ...
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Juice Crew
The Juice Crew was an American hip hop collective made up largely of Queensbridge, New York–based artists in the mid-to-late 1980s. Founded by radio DJ Mr. Magic, and housed by Tyrone Williams' record label Cold Chillin' Records, the Juice C ...
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KMFDM
KMFDM (originally Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid, loosely translated by the band as "no pity for the majority") is a multinational industrial rock band from Hamburg led by Sascha Konietzko, who founded the band in 1984 as a performance art proje ...
Les Légions Noires
Les Légions Noires (also known as The Black Legions in English, or simply abbreviated to LLN) was a movement of French underground black metal musicians and their bands, centered mostly around the city of Brest, in Brittany. The bands involved ...
Massive Attack
Massive Attack are an English trip hop collective formed in 1988 in Bristol, England, by Robert Del Naja, Robert "3D" Del Naja, Daddy G, Grant "Daddy G" Marshall, Tricky (musician), Adrian "Tricky" Thaws and Andrew Vowles, Andrew "Mushroom" ...
The Mountain Goats
The Mountain Goats are a United States band formed in Claremont, California, Claremont, California, by singer-songwriter John Darnielle. The band is currently based in Durham, North Carolina, Durham, North Carolina. For many years, the sole me ...
The New Pornographers
The New Pornographers are a Canadian indie rock band, formed in 1997 in Vancouver. Presented as a musical collective and supergroup of singer-songwriters and musicians from multiple projects, the band currently consists of Carl Newman (vocals, ...
Odd Future
Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, better known as Odd Future and often abbreviated as OF or OFWGKTA, was an American alternative hip-hop Musical collective, music collective formed in Los Angeles, California in 2007. The group consisted of rap ...
Parliament-Funkadelic
Parliament-Funkadelic (abbreviated as P-Funk) is an American musical collective, music collective of rotating musicians headed by George Clinton (funk musician), George Clinton, primarily consisting of the funk bands Parliament (band), Parliame ...
Piano Magic
Piano Magic was a musical collective formed in the summer of 1996 by Glen Johnson, Dominic Chennell, and Dick Rance in London, England. Their sound has been described as ambient pop, post-rock, indietronica, dark wave, "arty baroque pop" and "E ...
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The Polyphonic Spree
The Polyphonic Spree is an American choral rock band from Dallas, Texas that was formed in 2000 by singer/songwriter Tim DeLaughter. The band's pop and rock songs are augmented by a large vocal choir, and instruments such as flute, trumpet, ...
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Pro Era
Pro Era (short for Progressive Era) is an American hip-hop Musical collective, collective from Brooklyn, New York (state), New York. The group is a collective of Rapping, rappers and record producers that includes East Coast hip hop, East Coast ...
San Francisco Tape Music Center
The San Francisco Tape Music Center, or SFTMC, was founded in the summer of 1962 by composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick as a collaborative, "non profit corporation developed and maintained" by local composers working with tape recorders ...
Screwed Up Click
The Screwed Up Click (or S.U.C.) is an American hip hop collective based in Houston, Texas, that was led by DJ Screw. Its most notable members include DJ Screw, Big Hawk, Big Mello, Big Moe, Big Pokey, the Botany Boyz, E.S.G., Fat Pat, L ...
SMTOWN
SM Town (stylized in all caps as SMTOWN) is a musical collective for the recording artists under South Korean entertainment company SM Entertainment.
SM Town artists have performed at the annual SM Town Live world tours since the SM Town Live ' ...
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SOB X RBE
SOB X RBE (an acronym of Strictly Only Brothers x Real Boi Entertainment) was an American hip hop group founded in 2016. The group consisted of Slimmy B (Jabbar Brown), Yhung T.O. (Juwon Lee), DaBoii (Wayman Barrow), and Lul G (George Harris). Th ...
Soulquarians
The Soulquarians were a rotating collective of experimental Black music artists active during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Initially formed by singer and multi-instrumentalist D'Angelo, drummer and producer Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, and p ...
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So Solid Crew
So Solid Crew are a British UK garage and hip hop collective originating from Battersea, London, which achieved wide success in the early 2000s. The group consisted of many members, the most notable being Asher D (Ashley Walters), Lisa Ma ...
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Sunburned Hand of the Man
Sunburned Hand of the Man are an experimental rock band from Boston, Massachusetts. They are a loose collective known for their frequent line up changes and large discography released on a variety of labels including Eclipse Records, Thurston ...
Sweatshop Union
Sweatshop Union is a Canadians, Canadian Hip hop music, hip hop collective based in Vancouver, British Columbia, consisting of four politically-minded rap acts — Dirty Circus, Pigeon Hole (band), Pigeon Hole (aka "Creative Minds"), Kyprios and ...
Underground Resistance
Underground Resistance (commonly abbreviated to UR) are an American musical collective from Detroit, Michigan. Producing primarily Detroit techno since 1990 with a grungy four-track musical aesthetic, they are also renowned for their militant ...
The World/Inferno Friendship Society
The World/Inferno Friendship Society (also referred to as World Inferno, or Inferno) was an American band from Brooklyn, New York. Its style merged punk, soul, klezmer and jazz, while its collective membership featured horns, piano and guita ...
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Wu-Tang Clan
Wu-Tang Clan is an American hip hop collective formed in Staten Island, New York City, in 1992. Its members include RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, and, until his death in 2004, O ...
Zodiak Free Arts Lab
The Zodiak Free Arts Lab, sometimes known as the "Zodiak Club" or "Zodiac Club", was a short-lived but highly influential experimental live music venue, founded in the then West Berlin in spring 1968 by German artists/musicians Conrad Schnitzler ( ...
(Berlin)
See also
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Collective
A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an e ...
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Artist collective
An artist collective or art group or artist group is an initiative that is the result of a group of artists working together, usually under their own management, towards shared aims. The aims of an artist collective can include almost anything t ...
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Leaderless resistance
Leaderless resistance, or phantom cell structure, is a social resistance strategy in which small, independent groups ( covert cells), or individuals (a solo cell is called a " lone wolf"), challenge an established institution such as a law, econ ...
– Collectives often share the anarchic streak associated with such entities.