Focusing on independent and alternative art, music, film, and writing, ThenItMustBeTrue is an online magazine featuring unfiltered interviews with today's most original and inspiring creators, providing unparalleled access for artists, journalists and fans alike. We especially work to promote artists who are working to make the world a better place by promoting justice, community, conservation, freedom, opportunity and peace.

Furthermore, we believe the essence of journalism is contained in five basic questions: who, what, when, where and why. It is this essence that we seek to bring back to reporting on music, film, and art, steering away from sensationalism or mudslinging. We exist for creativity's sake.

What?

A resource for artists' voices to be heard without anathema, brevity, censorship, derision, extravagance, filtering, generality, homogeny, insult, jest, kitsch, lies, misquoting, narcissism, ostentation, pretense, qualms, repetition, snobbery, triteness, uproar, vanity, waste, xenophobia, yacking or zealotry. In other words, it is a forum of respect for the artist, the audience, and the journalist valuing an artist’s integrity and work without insult to them or the reader.

Why?

It is time that a space was provided for untainted and unfettered interviews with the artists behind the music and visual media that are defining our time. Where it’s not corporate interest, but the interest of the artists and fans that is at heart. Where what’s most important is ensuring that what the artist says is what ends up on the page, and not editing those thoughts to death. Where the input of the artists providing content is what matters most, so those contributors feel they can communicate directly with their audience and potential audiences without fearing the tongue-twisting and roadblocks encountered at typical mass media outlets.

We are journalists who no longer will tolerate the commercial restraints, low standards and limited expression of mass media outlets. With a great respect for the artists we approach, we present ThenItMustBeTrue as the means by which artists can be recognized, fans can be appreciated, and writers can do their job.

When?

Now.

Where?

Right here

Who?

Founder & Editor: Lisa Y. Garibay — Lisa Y. Garibay was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, attended Amherst College in Massachusetts, and currently lives in Los Angeles. Garibay's writing on music, film and Latino culture appears regularly in Dazed & Confused Magazine, Filmmaker Magazine, Mean Street Magazine, SOMA Magazine, What's Up El Paso, and Film Independent's FIND magazine. For her journalism, Garibay was recognized by the prestigious Sundance Institute with an Arts Writing Fellowship in 2001.

Garibay is also an award-winning independent film producer. Robbing Peter, her producing debut, world premiered in narrative competition at the 2004 Los Angeles Film Festival and went on to receive four 2005 Independent Spirit Award nominations including one for the John Cassavetes Award, given to the producer(s) of the Best Feature Under $500,000. Garibay also served as Music Supervisor on Robbing Peter, securing the first-ever original film score by legendary rocker Alejandro Escovedo.

In 2003, Garibay's feature script All For One was selected to participate in the first-ever NALIP/New York Latino Film Festival Latino Writers Lab, where it secured representation by ICM. For the past four years, Garibay has been producing and directing the documentary Sisters y Santos, which focuses on the complexity of issues comprising culture and violence along the U.S-Mexico border.

In 2004, Garibay partnered with noted indie film consultant Peter Broderick to create FilmsToSeeBeforeYouVote.org. She is also is the founder of CineMás, a non-profit initiative linking film with education and community development, and co-founder of Grassroots Screening, which aims to connect social issues films with activist organizations and niche audiences to affect change. She owes her vocation to a healthy obsession with The Beatles and A Hard Day’s Night.


Co-Editor, Photography/Visual Reviews: Aleks Garibay — Fueled by a life-long passion for music and film, Garibay has been shooting music and film-related photography for the past six years. Personal highlights have included shooting live performances of bands such as Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie, Radiohead, Ministry, Cafe Tacuba and Kinky, as well as profiles of artists such as Pedro Almodovar and Gustavo Santaolalla. Garibay's work has appeared in TIME, Q, Spin, Soma and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. For more samples of Garibay's work, visit her online portfolio. (Jerome Dillon)

Technical/Web Design, Editing: Joseph Whitcher — An insatiable music fan and collector since he was a wee lad, Whitcher spends his free time going to shows, record shopping and trying to figure out what he's going to do with his collection once he runs out of room for it. A photographer and web designer, Whitcher is also an occasional contributor of record reviews to www.citizenrobot.com.


Contributing Writers:

Michelle Felix — At 17, Los Angeles native Felix began studies at California Institute of the Arts, which incidentally never flourished into a graphic design career because she spent all her spare time in the music department. At 23 she graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in Literature, a minor in Journalism, and a burning desire for Pop Tarts. This desire, complete with a balanced breakfast, followed her all the way to Melbourne, Australia some years later where she currently wonders what the fugue happened to good music. (Jon Brion, Graeme Revell)

Bert Garibay — Bert is a musician with Last of The Blacksmiths, living and working in San Francisco. (Hella)

Brett Schaffner — Reincarnated as an anglophile with an obsessive compulsion to build the best music collection ever, Schaffner often finds himself in front of his towering library muttering, “More”. His fondness for numbers and polysyllabic language has contributed to the endeavors of logic, eloquent prose, and engaging dialogue. Other activities which consternate and amuse his friends include avoiding vitriol, arrangement of aesthetically pleasing spreadsheets, and looking for the ultimate in German cuisine. (Neil Hannon 2003, Neil Hannon 2004)

ThenItMustBeTrue was awarded a 2001 Arts Writing Fellowship from the Sundance Institute