Students came together on Saturday for a full day of local music and burritos at the WUSC Jamboree.
The jamboree, which took place at El Burrito, was the grand finale to WUSC’s fundraiser week and featured a large variety of local musicians.
“This is our big event we do at the end and it usually draws in the biggest crowd,” said Chelsea Morris, WUSC music director and third-year German and linguistics student. “We charge admission for an all-day event where you get to see local artists, a lot of whom are students of the university.”
Morris said that the money raised during the Jamboree and the other fundraiser week events goes toward the licensing fees of the station so they can continue broadcasting.
The jamboree started off with Paper Shoes, a mellow-sounding shoegaze band that uses a violin to accompany the guitar, bass and drums, which makes for a unique and calming sound. The band performed a heartfelt set and made jokes with the crowd, kicking off the day on a good note.
Lead singer and guitarist for Paper Shoes and international business student Andres Perez enjoys the creative and emotional expression of songwriting and playing shows.
“When people write songs you know they are writing about their innermost feelings — things that they’re experiencing — and I think a lot of the enjoyment of music, and the enjoyment of any art, is seeing how other people enjoy and connect to it,” Perez said. “It’s a good time to share what I’m feeling lately.”
Perez said he performed for several years on his own as a solo acoustic artist but over the last few months he has added the band’s violinist, drummer and bassist to the group. Perez will be performing a small acoustic set at the upcoming Indie South Crafts Fair.
Following Paper Shoes were sets by Mario McClean, a local acoustic artist with a powerful voice, and Alarm Drum, a local indie rock group with synth and mellow vocals.
One of the sets that attendees were most looking forward to was Prince Rupert’s wild blending of indie rock, rap and spoken word.
“I’m excited for Prince Rupert because he was actually the music director when I was a freshman and he was one of the people that got me really involved with the station,” Morris said.
Though the wind tried its best to slow down Prince Rupert’s show by blowing away papers and knocking over speakers, Rupert trudged through it and delivered his highly anticipated performance.
When the sun went down, the bombastic and high-energy punk band Fratmouth turned the jamboree upside down.
Fratmouth performed inside a circle of people on benches and thrashed around in masks screaming and kicking each other. There was not a dull moment in the performance, as the vocalist ran around to each person in the circle screaming, the guitarist ditched his real instrument for a Guitar Hero controller and the drummer ended the set by wrestling the vocalist to the ground.
Many of the bands and artists that performed were part of the Scenario Collective, an art group who aims to enrich the artistic and musical community in Columbia. One of Scenario Collective’s musicians, second-year marketing student Anissa Armaly, enjoys the ways that music reaches out to people's emotions.
“I’ve always thought of music as something that surpasses all physiological barriers that we have,” Armaly said.
Armaly grew up playing classical piano because her mom told her to, but eventually stopped this formal training in order to pursue her own artistic endeavors. She began recording her own cover songs and was eventually noticed by Scenario. Now Armaly is performing with the group and further delving into the local music scene with her own contributions.
“Local music is actually some of the shiniest gems you can find, so if anyone is on the border, please dive into local arts and music and I think you will be pleasantly surprised at the quality,” Armaly said.