What started as an effort to capture beauty, turned into a container for grief as electronic music duo KarmaVioletta approached the making of their song “Humanity”–the fourth track from HIGH FREQUENCY Volume 2.
“I started the initial idea on a plane looking out the window during sunset feeling like, “I want to capture this emotion somehow.” I made the soundscape, and then we wrote the rest of the song this weekend,” says Karma.
“The past week, we’ve had a ton of emotions about things happening on the global scale,” says Violetta. “We tend to put our emotions into our music, and kind of process in that way.”
The brainchild of Miami-based artists Karma.wav and Violetta, KarmaVioletta often serves as a vehicle for catharsis for the musical duo and couple. A focus on shared humanity has always been core to their message and music, and their latest song is no different. “It’s a reminder that there is some continuity between us,” says Karma. “We're all one species.”
“Maybe we're just hopeful dreamers, but we believe in humanity, and we dream of a time that there's peace on our planet,” says Violetta.
While Karma and Violetta investigate the role of artists in moments such as this, they say their intention is not to oversimplify or minimize, but rather to offer a childlike expression of wishing things were different. “Music and art is childlike. It's coming from an element of play and there is a naivete to it. So from that perspective, it's like that inner child perceiving this much conflict for the first time.” says Karma.
Both Karma and Violetta grew up around music, and look to it now as a form of grounding. Born in Vancouver, growing up in Kaui and Miami in a musical family, Karma learned drums at age three and later picked up guitar, piano, singing, songwriting, production, and DJing eventually launching his solo project Karma.wav.
Violetta was born in Germany and raised in Russia and has been singing as long as she can remember. Her mother taught piano–an instrument she later learned alongside guitar–but for many years something held her back from writing her own music.
“Seven years ago or so I moved to Miami and had this huge breakthrough. I started doing a lot of inner work and going to sound healings and meditations. In a meditation, I had a flashback of myself as a little girl, and my mom was talking to my teacher. I overheard my teacher say, “Oh, she's not creative. She's more analytical,’” says Violetta. “My whole life, I told myself, “I'm not creative.” I had that limiting belief, and it wasn't even mine. It was a teacher who put that on me. When that came up, I was like, “No, I am shifting this narrative.” I started singing to myself as an affirmation: “I am creative. I am creative.” That was when my life changed. I started songwriting, and melodies and lyrics just started coming to me.”
Embracing her newly unblocked creativity, Violetta started a jewelry company and embarked on her musical journey as a solo artist, songwriter and DJ.
In 2019, After meeting through mutual friends while on a boat in Miami, Karma and Violetta quickly became friends and started dating a few months later. Their shared musical passions naturally lead to the pair making music together, so much so they decided to start their own project as the duo KarmaVioletta. Five years later, they’re engaged and still making music together and can be found performing live at Miami clubs and burner parties (Burning Man offshoots).
The duo also runs their own metalabel, wavWRLD, as part of their ongoing efforts to build a more sustainable pathway for artists through web3.
wavWRLD runs various experiments like their project wavGame–an interactive “Collect to Connect” gamified model–where the winning collector scored a one-on-one live concert with TK, the artist of the collector’s choice.
Up next for wavWRLD is wavCURATE, a curation experiment connecting curators across multiple minting platforms to create a multiplayer playlist in an attempt to incentivize a higher correlation between music quality and mints and rewarding curators.
Interested in the potential of community and technology, KarmaVioletta says centering the ecosystem rather than individual pursuits gives them purpose. They wish to prioritize a larger collective’s goals while also celebrating self expression and the uniqueness of every artist and collector in the space. Whether in web3, their Burning Man community, or in their music, this ethos underpins their efforts and perspective.
Holding on to the power of shared humanity, KarmaVioletta maintains hope for a better future.
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Collect Music NFTs from HIGH FREQUENCY Volume 2. “Humanity” is the fourth track to be released from HIGH FREQUENCY Volume 2. “Humanity” is dropping via Sound at 2pm PST on October 19, 2023.
Collect and add HIGH FREQUENCY writing NFTs to your digital library.
Article by Wallace Morgan for HIGH FREQUENCY, NOISE’s weekly newsletter. Subscribe for more.