Heart Lake Records is radically disrupting a gatekeeper’s industry by handing over the blueprints

Heart Lake Records co-founders Francesca Nocera (Sun Sun) and Ayo Leilani (Witch Prophet) have reimagined what a grassroots record label can be. Photo by OkayMotion.

“Isn’t there like a proverb about teaching someone to fish instead of just giving them fish or something?” 

Ayo Leilani and Francesca Nocera are speaking over the phone from their farm in Caledon when Nocera defaults to aphorism.

“It’s better to give someone the skills so they can have more power in whatever they need to do.”

Also known by her DJ/producer/fashion designer alias Sun Sun, in 2020 her production work on Leilani’s Witch Prophet album DNA Activation helped earn the record a spot on the short list for the 2020 Polaris Music Prize – a profile the pair is eager to share with the community of talent they work with. 

Having spent a decade disrupting Toronto’s hip-hop underground producing events and signal boosting talent with 88 Days of Fortune, in 2019, the couple and frequent collaborators pulled the plug on that collective, packed up their home in Toronto, and relocated to a farmhouse on 50 acres of forest and wetland reserve in Caledon, starting Heart Lake Records from scratch. 

Formed with the same impetus to foster a protective space for emerging queer, gender diverse, and BIPOC talent that drove 88 Days, Leilani describes the new undertaking as more of a metamorphosis than a shift of focus.

“It was definitely the goal of 88 Days of Fortune to turn into a record label, Leilani explains. “But it really came into fruition with me and Sun Sun as we physically built the house we’re living in. If we can physically build this building, we can build a business that is sustainable and successful.”

Abandoned for nearly 20 years, the two-storey farmhouse was a total gut job. Turning to videos and online tutorials for instruction, they ripped out all the walls and rebuilt the space from just the framing – new electrical, new plumbing, new walls, new floors. Leilani and Nocera live on the second floor, and they plan on opening the main floor to artists, musicians, and writers as a studio space for residencies. They’ve also established a vegetable garden and have visions of converting the shell of an old barn into a greenhouse and second residency space. 

Dubbing the farm Strega Villa (Italian for “witch house”) the entire revitalisation effort is documented in detail by an Instagram account the pair set up for the property.

That open-source self-reliance and intentional lifestyle also informs their work with Heart Lake, where Leilani and Nocera emphasize mentorship and resource sharing over contracts.

In addition to the residency opportunities, they eventually plan on opening up some of the property for concerts and an outdoor music festival when the coronavirus pandemic is just a memory.

“It’s just harder to interact with people, so that kind of stuff we just put on the back-burner for a little bit,” Nocera says. “But we’re finding new ways to interact.”

For now, their focus is on linking talent to resources.

In June 2020, Heart Lake launched a GoFundMe campaign with a $50,000 target, pledging to distribute $3000-$5000 of the total funds raised amongst up to 10 2SQTBIPOC women, non-binary, and gender non-conforming artists and allies creating music on the hip-hop, R&B, and soul music spectrums. But in addition to funding costs associated with releasing and promoting music, they also emphasize skill sharing, offering grant writing sessions and six weeks of virtual video mentorship with industry members, focusing on everything from everyday administrative duties to synchronization licensing.

“You don’t know that stuff unless somebody tells you,” Leilani explains. “You’re not gonna know you should have an assets folder with everything, all your pictures, lyrics to your songs, your metadata for your mp3s; register your songs on SOCAN.”

For Leilani, where Heart Lake Records stands out is in that open book orientation, a positioning that threatens to eliminate industry gatekeepers by exposing them for what they are. 

“The industry is like that. Most people don’t want you to know their jobs. Because then you can do it yourself. But that’s not what we want.” Leilani says. “We want to know that the artists that we work with at least have that ground to stand on so that when they are in places with people who not necessarily have their best interest in their heart, they’ll know.”

As they work towards their fundraising goal, Leilani and Nocera are reviewing funding applicants and actively reaching out “to people who we know don’t go out of their way to ask for help but at the same time definitely deserve it.”

Looking ahead, Leilani and Nocera say the label has new albums on the way from Yasmine, Above Top Secret, and Sun Sun, while Witch Propet has a folk EP planned for the summer and another album in the works for next year, while a video for “Tesfay,” a song off DNA Activation, is the only Canadian video nominated at SXSW’s Film Festival’s music video competition this year, competing against videos by FKA twigs, Run the Jewels, and Mary J. Blige, amongst others.

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They’re also keeping an eye on the digital events landscape and seeking out opportunities to connect talent to funds, and this Saturday, Heart Lake Records co-curates Long Winter, bringing artists like Yasmine, Rosie Monday, and Lillian Blue Makin to this month’s interactive digital iteration of the event.

“To be able to create assets for three artists is really a way that we’re trying to continue to get funding to artists without necessarily just being about Heart Lake, Heart Lake,” Leilani enthuses. “How are there ways to get people this funding now without signing contracts or things like that? That’s what Heart Lake is about. We will help you.”

Heart Lake Records presents Yasmine, Rosie Monday, and Lilian Blue Makin as part of Long Winter TV on Saturday, Feb. 27, 2021. 8pm Toronto time. PWYC. Event link.

Support the Heart Lake Records GoFundMe here.