The mission of Labas Music & Arts is to communicate creative works that are embedded in tradition, undeniably personal, and unafraid to openly and radically experiment with the raw materials of expression. This mission speaks to the notion that life is inextricably connected to art, and that one’s experiences both shape and partly determine the nature of an individual’s creative perspective.

It is important to Labas that our endeavors challenge both creative boundaries and the inadequacies of the world we inhabit. Founder and creative director Karl Evangelista draws a straight line between his family’s history in political activism and the “politics of dissent” that prevail in the radical, revolutionary experimental music emanating from all corners of the world. Appropriately, one of Labas’s guiding principles is to envision ways that artists and communities can better society through creativity.

Labas subscribes to the notion that art is, to borrow a term from anti-Apartheid South Africa, a “weapon of struggle.” Our belief in the power of creativity as a mechanism for positive change is enduring, and in the many years to come, we hope to play a role in catalyzing the sort of transformational thought that can lead to stronger, healthier societies.