577 Records
Federico Ughi
Interview
If you take care of music, music takes care of you
We were lucky enough to have a chance to sit down and talk with drummer Federico Ughi, co-founder, along with Daniel Carter, of 577 Records in New York City. Since starting the label in 2001, 577 Records has released hundreds of titles, focusing primarily on free jazz, but also moving into electronic music and collaborations with Indie rock artists such as Thurston Moore and Kid Millions.
But in the beginning, there were just two artists, Ughi and Carter, putting out their own record out of necessity. What started out as a series of house shows in their apartment at 577 Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn grew into something much larger, a community of like-minded friends and artists, who together have built up a remarkable discography which stands as tall as any other independent jazz label out there. Jokingly self-referred to as “the underground of the underground”, 577 Records has grown to be much more well respected than that. One only needs to hear one of the albums they have released to understand this.
Their connection to both their artists and to their community is real and it’s almost as if it’s not just Federico and Daniel’s label, it’s everyone who has ever connected with them on a spiritual level’s label. That’s how strong the sense of community is.
The label started the New York Forward Festival in 2015 to celebrate the 70th birthday of Daniel Carter, but it has since grown globally with shows taking place in both Africa and Europe. On the eve of the start of the 2026 New York Forward Festival, which runs in Brooklyn from September 25-27, we look back at the start of the label with Ughi, their guiding philosophy, their commitment to community. We also discuss the origins of the festival, what we can expect to see this year, and a few upcoming projects that the label has coming up.
Federico, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to In&OutJAZZ ! Take us back to 2001, talk about the origins of the label, and also, what made you decide not just to document your own music and collaborations, but what interested you in working with other artists?
You know, the whole label idea started with me and Daniel Carter needing a CD for our very first tour, so that’s the reason why we started the label, because we didn’t have the time to put together some kind of package to send to other labels. It was going to take too long and it was April, May and we had gigs scheduled in June. So we only had a month. So I told Dan, I said, man, we have let’s just self-release the record, and let’s call it 577 Records like the the address of the apartment where we were doing house shows. On the first Saturday of the month in the afternoon it was really low key. But you know this New York is crazy and people would come, not a lot of people, but people would come regularly, so we started getting musicians to, you know, perform. It wasn’t just me and Daniel sometimes it was Steve Dalachinsky, an amazing character from downtown, like really beautiful, beautiful friend and he was involved and then all the younger artists got involved. So, it was natural you know, it started as a community, but it is a community. So, it’s not just about me, maybe it’s about Daniel in a way. It’s a way to celebrate Daniel. But you know, we started releasing our friends. We released a duo that I had with Steve Dalachinsky, but the first album was my duo with Daniel. Then I did a solo album and this just started unfolding and people started asking to be on the label. You know, it’s really a collective. I don’t perceive it as my label. I don’t want it to be my label.
I’ve been doing all the organizing, the pragmatic stuff, because Daniel hates that, but it’s really, I perceive this as Dan, maybe Daniel Carter’s label, because he doesn’t want any credit.
He’s been always so nice and I met so many musicians through him I always say if you if you go to New York and you want to know what’s going to happen in 10 years, go talk to Daniel because he meets all the musicians before, even before they arrive in here. He knows all the young kids.
He is the is the gateway to know what’s going to happen in the future because he, you know, he meets everybody. Everybody goes to Daniel first. So, it’s a great source of information, of inspiration and Daniel is my second father. I really consider him really, not just a friend, but just, I admire him as a very intelligent person, like really a sophisticated thinker, like an intellectual, a philosopher, a poet. So, you know, you’re familiar with Daniel Carter, but you’ve got to hang out with Daniel, man. Go and see him playing live. Go and talk to him because, for me, I perceive him as a different level of human, superhuman.
I’ve spent the past week or so really diving into the 577 discography, and that’s one of the things I kind of noticed about Daniel without really knowing much about him, is that his playing sounds like the way you’re describing him, very welcoming, very philosophical, but very human. Does that make sense at all?
He likes to put the word welcome in his title. I don’t know if you noticed there’s a lot of things with welcome because it’s the beautiful thing about Daniel, which became the philosophy of the label, but started with Daniel, is this idea of inclusion and not exclusion, which is, I think that’s the basis for improvised music.
The fact that it’s something that you really do with other people and it doesn’t really matter with your background, it could be an indie rock background, could be a classical background, could be a jazz background, could be a no background, people that can’t play at all, but this idea of the fact that you are together and you are responsible, all of us are responsible for what comes up. And I’m terrible at this, but I always translate this into politics. I think about the world in the same way, we are in this together and we are responsible for making a connection and to behave in a certain way to just make things better.
What kind of things do you listen for when you’re listening to some of this music that gets sent to you? And how do you decide what is going to be on the label? Is there something that you pick up on and maybe subconsciously or maybe instinctually that you may not even be able to put it into words?
I think the label is, the idea of the label is inclusion. We don’t want to be an exclusive label like a snob or a niche brand, the idea is really to get people involved and to talk to everybody. We like to listen. When people send a recording, I like to listen to everything. It’s not because someone looks a certain way or plays a certain way or is branded or is boxed into a certain genre. I think music is fantastic, all of it. It’s just, I think, honest music, something beautiful, something that inspires beauty. I mean, we all want to celebrate beauty. You know what I mean? In terms of what we want to see around us. I mean, I think that’s the idea. That’s the idea. And also obviously, like as I said it’s a collective, like for example if there’s a musician that comes up, someone that is involved in our collective and one day they comes up with a terrible album, I would release it, because they are part of the community and I trust the artists here. This has never happened to me, but I just imagine we’re working with someone over the years and one day, which happens often, artists change direction. The classic example is drummer Gerald Cleaver who has been on ECM and playing with all these known jazz names, and one day he contacted us and said, listen, guys, I got this album. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know where I can send it because it’s something completely different. It’s electronic music. I mean, we loved it. We listened to it and was like, this is fantastic, we have to release it. But Gerald came to us because I think the idea of following musicians throughout their career, means that sometimes, they decide to do something completely different. And I think that’s a big part of it.
Daniel calls us “the underground of the underground.” This is underground music, this is free jazz and we are the underground of the underground and nobody knows the label.
The fact that the focus is on spirituality. The focus is on connection, is on community. The focus is on people. We celebrate with people, musicians before products. That’s the idea. It’s never about just an album. It’s always about the path to creativity. I’m a vinyl guy, a lot of vinyl, but this is just object and stuff. I believe this, we aspire to something higher than that.
You have an aesthetic and value that they can trust, right? If album has your label name on it, you know that it’s going to be something interesting that they’re probably going to want to hear. People know, if they’re a fan of music on the label, they can trust that everything you release is all going to be interesting at the very least and something of value.
We care. That’s the thing. We care about what we released. We need a connection with the artist. We had a personal connection because of this, the spin, a path, a journey together. There are always all kinds of artists from all over the world. They contact us with these albums they created. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, you know what I mean? I want to talk to the musicians. I want to create that connection and, and sometimes we talk to each other, and the album is great. It’s cool, but maybe you don’t click. Sometimes it’s not meant to be. What you hear in our catalog is because something clicked, something special clicked. It’s more than just the music, although that’s a big part of it. It’s kind of what you were talking about before. It’s the community and it’s the connection that has to be there as well, which kind of goes back to the beginning and the concerts in the apartment.
How do you juggle all these different roles that you have as a musician and as the label and as a father and, and a husband? Have you ever hit a point where you’re like, I must give up something because it’s too much or have you never hit that point?
Many times. I mean, there’s been moments throughout the label that there was no money and it was just not happening and we didn’t release anything for months. I don’t think years, but there’s always at least one or two things a year. I should go back and look at the chronology of this. There’s been moments where I was starting to shut everything down and forget about it. But then I was, as I was saying, there’s always something that comes up. There’s always someone or there’s a distributor that buys some old stuff,a box of CDs that is in the basement. And we managed to make some money to do something else. Sometimes there was money and we did CDs, sometimes there was more money, we did vinyl. Sometimes there was someone who gave us money and we did an artist residency for a month. We invited people from all over the world to apply and we selected musicians and we run these crazy projects where we do four weeks. Each week there’s a different mentor.
Let’s talk about your business strategy as far as how do you figure out what you are going to press format wise, how many copies to press of everything because it seems like you do a lot of things in in lower numbers, which is good because as you know, nobody wants to have a bunch of inventory sitting around that isn’t going to sell because you can sell through and then put that money towards the next thing. But what’s the strategy behind that? How do you know?
Well, we made that mistake before and we pressed too many copies. We still have a lot of, you know, inventory.
Managing that inventory and storage has sunk so many indie labels.
Squidco, if you know them in North Carolina, they basically keep the inventory. Squidco is a record shop in North Carolina and these guys used to live in New York and they basically help us with the distribution and they have the inventory of the label is like all of the CDs and vinyl. And it’s cheaper over there to do storage. So that’s how we keep all this stuff. But now we do as little as possible. In fact, if musicians want to do more, we ask the musicians to give us some money because, you know I would do, I think 50 CDs or 25 CDs. I press my latest vinyl at 100 copies usually. We do used to do 500, then we came 300 and then 200 and then 100 and I think 100 is great. Squidco is a friend. It’s great because they have a lot of experience as a shop. He always tells me it’s a lot better to have an album sold out, than have copies sitting around.
Oh, absolutely!
You can buy the digital version or maybe they get inspired and that band, that musician next time is going sell more copies. But don’t press too many copies and I’ve learned my lesson, you know. That’s crucial. I mean, sometimes it’s just digital. But I like the product. I’m old school. I grew up with vinyl and CD, so I like to have something in my hands, you know?
How Did Forward Fest Get Started and expand globally and what can we expect this year?
One of the reasons I’ve been devising this system of gigs is to make sure I’m in touch with all my family, you know, because I have some family in Rome, I have some family in Morocco, so I’m trying to just make everybody happy. So instead of going to visit my aunt, I organized something in Tangiers. It’s a system that came up because of necessity, because of family, because of commitments and, umm, trying to combine things as, you know, you can’t just go out of the house, You always have to go out and do at least a couple of things, right?
Very True!
You know, I’m very respectful for music, because through music I met my wife. Because of music, I moved to London first and then I moved to New York. They say if you take care of music, music takes care of you. And that’s been my experience throughout my life and I feel like I shouldn’t mess with it. I never really had a day job. I always pursued organizing and playing music because I’m very respectful. I mean, on a spiritual level, on a personal level. Because of music fans we get donations and we get to do these events, these festivals like mini festivals, we get to do these residencies, we get to print vinyl when there’s no money. I’m not really good at fundraising, to be honest with you, I can’t ask people for money. But somehow when we need money, we get it like gifts from the sky. You know what I mean? It’s sometimes it’s just miracles. I believe in miracles really for sure. I can’t explain it, but somehow we always manage to do these crazy things. I come up with this idea like let’s bring Pat Thomas two times to Morocco, Let’s bring Daniel Carter to Africa, let’s bring him to Morocco. And somehow things always come together in a magical way. And so I don’t want to mess with it. You know, it should be respectful because we’ve done a lot and the whole thing started with nothing.
Francisco Mela is a brother. He started The Sound of Freedom, the residency project and is a great teacher. He teaches at Berkeley. He’s an amazing drummer. I saw him playing the other day in this club in Bushwick and he is going bring his trio to the show. He’s going to do two sets on Sunday the 27th with his quartet. It’s incredible music. I mean this guy’s a genius. I think Francisco Mela is underrated. He played ten years with McCoy Tyner. He is a superstar, he’s incredible.
Leo Genovese is a brother; he is an incredible musician. We became friends. He came to Morocco I think three times, he came to Italy twice. He lives nearby in Brooklyn. He’s going to play a duo at the Forward Festival on Friday the 25th with Daniel. I saw them playing as a duo in Tangier and it was the most beautiful music. They’re going to record this time. They recorded in Tangier too, but they’re going to record again in Brooklyn. The live show, they want to put it out.
oh wow, that would be great. That’s amazing.
Tell me a little bit about the album with your kids, My Face is Dancing
It’s a dream for me. It started just with us turning on the mic and recording a few things. And the material was so good that I decided to put it out. Also, my father was dying and I wanted my father to be on the label. So I put my father on it and it’s easier. He died in January. So I’m so glad he with us in spirit. Everybody’s there. I wanted to do a big family record. I don’t know if anyone is going buy the record. I needed to do it. I wanted to do it. I wanted to have something with them. Who knows what they’re going to be? Maybe they’re going to hate music. They’re going to hate free jazz, so I got them young. Well, they could…. maybe they’re going to take me to courts in twenty years. I don’t know, but that’s great. I think it’s fantastic. I’m glad I did it, it’s a documentary. It’s a documentary. It’s a family.
Federico’s story about recording My Face is Dancing with his children and late father really brings the 577 Records story full circle. What originally started as an urgent need for a CD to take on tour, has grown into a living and breathing community focused on both family and spiritual connection.
As they prepare to kick off this year’s New York Forward Festival, featuring three nights of amazing collaborative music, the label continues to show what can happen when you prioritize connections over commodity. 577 has created a collaborative community where music isn’t product, it’s spiritual. They are without a doubt the warmest and most deeply human avant-garde label in existence.
