Miriam Martine Camara will serve as Senior Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs of Encore Recordings, while Tawny Thompson, appointed at the same time, will serve as Vice President of Finance and Controller.
Encore Recordings is an independent music company being launched in November 2021 by Joie Manda, a respected music industry card-carrying executive vice president of Interscope, president of Def Jam Records and executive vice president of urban music for Warner Bros. Records, where he signed Rick Ross’ (Wale, Meek Mill), Jill Scott and Common to the Maybach Music Group.
Commenting on his appointment, Miriam Camara said: “I am excited to be working alongside Joie and the Encore team to build an organisation that will surely shake up the conventions of the music business. Tawny and I, as two black women, are occupying a space usually reserved for men, and typically white men. It’s really beautiful and forward-thinking that Joie is moving the culture and the business into the future in this way. We are building an artist’s paradise, and I am ready to get to work.”
Daughter of a Guinean father and a Haitian mother,Miriam Martine Camara, 34, has a 10-year career at Warner Music Group (WMG), where she held positions at Atlantic Records and Warner Records.
At Warner Records, Miriam Camara was Senior Manager, Business and Legal Affairs. She was part of the legal team for artists such as Cardi B, Saweetie, NLE Choppa and Wale.
Part of her pleasure and her work, it is explained, was to have a front row seat to Warner’s artist development from the start. For example, it is learnt, after closing the deal for artist Jane Chika Oranika, she saw the 24-year-old rap prodigy nominated for a Grammy in the Best New Artist category.
New member of the Grammy Awards Academy
Miriam Camara is also a member of the Recording Academy (class of 2021), the academy that organises the Grammy Awards. Like all of the members, she was selected on the basis of her outstanding contributions to the music community. The new members will participate in the process of the next GRAMMY Awards, originally scheduled for January 31, 2022 at the STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, but which have been postponed due to the current coronavirus pandemic.
In addition, Miriam Camara is currently working on a biopic produced by her family’s production company about rapper Shyheim the Rugged Child, the youngest member affiliated with the famous rap group Wu-Tang Clan.
Tribute to Mory Kanté
In May 2020, when the famous Guinean artist Mory Kanté passed away, Miriam Camara paid tribute to him on social networks. “My dad introduced me to Mory Kanté when I was 8 & trying to explain the “cool” of my Guinean heritage to friends who swore I was Ghanaian and just didn’t know how to say it… While “Yeke Yeke” didn’t tear up Staten Island like freestyle music did (& still does) no matter how many times I played it for my friends, I was proud when my electric griot would be in pictures with greats like Salif Keita & Youssou NDour while I thumbed through issues of Paris Match (my childhood was very different ok!) Rest In Peace to one of the forefathers of the music industry’s globalization. #africatotheworld #morykante,” she wrote on her Instagram account.
