What Artist Development Can Learn from Aboriginal Ways of Connecting to Country
Written by Shima Askarzadeh Farahani — October 25, 2025
In A&R, we talk a lot about finding your sound.
But rarely do we talk about finding your ground.
The best artists I’ve worked with — and the ones I’ve studied from afar — share one thing in common: they’re rooted. Not just in genre or branding, but in a deeper understanding of where their creativity comes from. Their art feels in conversation with something larger than themselves — with land, memory, culture, and the invisible threads that hold their story together.
That sense of groundedness is something many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures understand profoundly. Their connection to Country is not symbolic; it’s relational. Country is not a backdrop to human life — it’s a living participant in it. Knowledge, art, and identity emerge through that relationship.
This is not to generalize or simplify the diversity of Indigenous philosophies, but to acknowledge a shared insight: creation is relational, not extractive. And that perspective invites us to rethink what “artist development” really means.
Because what if development isn’t about building up from nothing — but listening down into what’s already there?
The Myth of Discovery
Modern A&R often behaves like a talent mine. We “discover” artists, “extract” hits, and “develop” the next thing — as if creativity were a raw material waiting to be processed. But real artistry doesn’t need discovery; it needs understanding.
When we treat artists like resources instead of relationships, we lose the chance to build something sustainable. An artist isn’t a trend to be optimized — they’re an ecosystem to be understood. Their experiences, environments, and identities are the soil their creativity grows from.
Like Country, artistry has its own cycles — dry spells, growth seasons, quiet regenerations that outsiders mistake for stagnation. The job of A&R isn’t to force bloom out of season, but to recognize timing: when to intervene, and when to stand back.
Listening Before Shaping
Imagine if every A&R conversation started with:
“Where does your sound come from?”
Not as a branding exercise, but as an act of listening.
Artists carry places inside them — hometown streets, family kitchens, cities they both love and resent, silences between languages. These aren’t aesthetic details; they’re creative coordinates. When an artist reconnects to those origins, their work gains coherence — not because it’s calculated, but because it’s alive.
The best creative direction begins with listening, not shaping — hearing where the work wants to go before deciding where it should go.
Grounded Creation
People often ask me how I think of ideas. Saying “they just come to me” sounds mystical, but the reality is much slower and quieter. Creativity grows through years of practice, reflection, and discipline — but it draws life from human experience.
To create something meaningful, you have to slow down and notice how your own rhythms intersect with the world around you. That’s how you begin to see the subtle interconnections that shape expression. Groundedness allows you to release the pressure to perform, and instead respond to what’s already present.
In that sense, creativity is less about control and more about attunement — like a bird gliding with the wind, using what already moves to stay in flight. The craft is in knowing how to align, not how to force direction.
Grounded Development
True artist development mirrors ecological care. It’s not about acceleration; it’s about alignment. The role of A&R, at its best, is stewardship — helping artists stay connected to their creative ecosystems even as the industry pulls them toward constant production.
Indigenous knowledge systems emphasize reciprocity, care, and responsibility to place. That doesn’t mean we can directly translate these teachings into industry frameworks — but we can learn from their ethos. Listening, patience, relationship, renewal.
Other traditions echo similar wisdom. In Chinese feng shui, balance between human activity and environment is essential for harmony. This is not to conflate distinct traditions, but to recognize a shared intuition: creativity thrives in relationship with its surroundings.
Applied to A&R, grounded development might look like this:
Building long-term mentorship rather than short-term output deals.
Supporting creative rest and regeneration, not just release schedules.
Valuing cultural and emotional context as much as commercial potential.
Because music, like Country, is alive.
And if we stop treating it like a commodity, we might start hearing it differently.
Artist development isn’t about discovery — it’s about relationship.
The land listens before it speaks. Maybe A&R should too.
