A Portal into Detroit’s music

Whatupdoe, welcome to our new space - Paramita.xyz - our digital portal into Detroit's music and culture.

It is a space for people to fall in love with the music and people of our city.

When Paramita was incepted in 2014, we held space in an abandoned house with no hot water, speaker wires taped to the floor and no budget in Detroit’s historic West Village neighbourhood.

After three transformative years in our original location on Detroit’s East Side, Paramita Sound had the opportunity in 2019 to reclaim the legendary downtown 1515 Broadway space that had formerly been a central hub for the local Detroit arts community since the mid-1980s.

The presence of our physical space will continue to pay homage to its historic 1515 origins of facilitating expression in addition to our core principle of fostering generational connections. But were excited to evolve and have always planned to extend the boundaries of where Paramita exists.

The last months have been spent peeling back the layers of the previous seven years of work. This profound look at ourselves has brought us to the future of Paramita. A portal into the heart and soul of Detroit’s music scene. Here we will broadcast sounds and stories that have and continue to shape the landscape of this music mecca known as Detroit. The portal gives our community the ability to share, learn and commune regardless of physical coordinates.

The power of Detroit’s music comes from its breadth, its history of decadence, and its effervescent future. Experienced elders and the raw talent of our youth continue to create undeniable energy of resiliency, joy, aggression and hope in a city too often known to leave their own behind. Deep shared experiences, reclaiming narratives, holding spaces to gather, and supporting our own are essential to elevating Detroit’s musical influence. It is a priority to create more opportunities for Detroit’s creative communities to monetize their own culture. We aim to help support the spread of our city’s influence to the world as bridge builders, not gatekeepers.

The portal will live stream performances, house archive sets played in our 1515 space, share stories old and new of Detroit's musical influence and provide a curated selection of vinyl.

Access to the portal will always be free, and contributors will always be paid. The purpose of the space is to create reciprocal relationships between music communities, generations, businesses and brands so that each stimulates strength in the other. Music is our focus and love because it honours the past and fosters the present, it heals us, nurtures us, and we want to share its powers with others.

The process of building this project has been deeply reflective, thoughtful, challenging and inspiring. It wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our community and their feedback and the creative team that has produced this work.

But there are some special shout outs due. First, thank you to Constance & Kris, Sam, Monica, Ash & Jon, Sally, Umar, Broccoli, Garrett and Nyambura for the long conversation that helped us gain an important understanding of how our community see us.

Huge thanks to the team at You vs Jesus - Kikko; your guiding vision got us here; Andrew and Josh, your talents have been invaluable. Lucas from Estudio Buena Suerte, you are a magician with code. Alicia, thank you for your guidance and support always. Zach, you have been here from the beginning, the tireless work you have put into creating our visual credibility over the years has been vital to our success. And to Sarah, your presence in the development of this portal over the past 20 months has been nothing short of essential, thanks love.

We can’t wait to see what you all think of our new space, and we hope it brings you as much joy as it has for us making it.

Drey 🖤