I walk into Cambridge Queen’s Head just as The Intrinsics take the stage. I’ve never seen Queen’s Head, located in the basement of Harvard’s Memorial Hall, so packed before. The crowd cheers enthusiastically as the soul-funk band, composed entirely of Harvard students, erupts into an energetic rendition of The Beatles’ “Day Tripper.” I am one of few audience members dancing carelessly in the back; everyone else is packed closely in front of the stage, eagerly soaking in this all-too-rare opportunity to hear live music on campus.
The Intrinsics is not the only band playing at Queen’s Head tonight—they are joined by four other student-led music groups in Battle for Yardfest. The five groups are competing for the opportunity to open for Jessie J at Harvard’s annual spring concert, Yardfest. Put on by the College Events Board (CEB), the event provides student musicians with a well-known performance venue on a mid-semester spring evening.
While each group differs dramatically in style and feel—their professed genres range from rap to 90s rock—they are united in their quest to pursue non-classical music at Harvard. This pursuit is anything but easy. Harvard’s music department is an excellent resource for students interested in jazz, classical, and even electro-acoustical music. In addition, well-established a cappella groups and choirs provide ample opportunities for vocalists, but there is very little institutional support for musicians interested in pursuing less-traditional genres.
Some of this is due to the fact that in many ways, music is not particularly amenable to institutionalization. Miles Hewitt ‘17, guitarist for the solars, is interested in pursuing music professionally, but he recognizes that there is little he can do to guarantee his success. “There’s a lot more ambiguity about what the future holds for a musician”, Hewitt notes, in comparison to more established career paths such as medicine or law. Music’s resistance to structure is relevant even to students only interested in music as an extracurricular. Pranav Krishnan ‘16, the guitarist for Black Tie Affair, says that while a band might move towards institutionalization by trying to make itself intergenerational, these attempts are largely unsuccessful and “sporadic interactions are what actually works.” All three bands with which Krishnan has been involved during his undergraduate career have been born of chance meetings and spontaneous jam sessions.
The lack of structure inherent to music is exacerbated by the fact that Harvard’s culture itself is not entirely conducive to pursuing non-traditional music. As a rule, Harvard students like structure, as evidenced by the popularity of competitive comp processes among student organizations and the intensely pre-professional atmosphere on campus. Most students plan their academic and extracurricular experience carefully around their anticipated career path. But when, as with music, this path is not defined and the extracurricular opportunities that do exist are highly unstructured, students have to work especially hard to try to succeed, with success on campus never guaranteed to translate into a professional context.
Despite these difficulties, Harvard does have some resources for aspiring musicians, most of which have been created by Harvard students themselves. Battle for Yardfest is one example of such a resource. Because there’s no existing infrastructure connecting musicians to one another or to the larger student body, Harvard’s music groups generally have low visibility. CEB member Kevin Xiong notes that this lack of campus presence makes it difficult for students to connect with musicians, but Battle for Yardfest makes this search a little bit easier. The CEB event not only provides a centrally-located venue through which student musicians can perform, but it also introduces Harvard’s student body to a variety of these musicians.
Harvard musicians also have access to the Quad Sound, a recording studio operated entirely by Harvard students. Matt Sheets ’15 is a member of Quad Sound and has worked extensively over the past two years to update the studio’s equipment and rebuild it as an organization. Quad Sound is one of very few spaces on campus available to student musicians, and since its renovation (which was completed in the fall of 2013), it has received session requests from a variety of musicians, including bands, solo singers, and even musical casts. The studio also offers an opportunity for students to become more engaged in sound engineering itself. Approximately 30 students are currently working towards completing the studio’s “non-competitive comp,” says Sheets, during which Quad Sound members provide “compers” with the tools necessary to run a recording session. The studio’s goal, according to Sheets, is to create a recording space for musicians in which they can collaborate with the sound engineers.
There are additional changes that could further facilitate pursuing non-classical music at Harvard. “The pressure is really on the students to book and perform gigs––which is fine,” Sheets notes, but this pressure might be alleviated by more formalized networking opportunities for musicians on campus. Xiong agrees, citing the Office of Career Services’ first formal music event as an example of such an opportunity. The event, which took place on March 25, was packed with people, according to Xiong, demonstrating that there is real interest in this sort of event.
There is also a general lack of practice and performance space for bands, something that the Quad Sound’s reorganization has begun to ameliorate. The renovations taking place in the Smith Campus Center, along with upperclassman house renovations, also reflect an emphasis on creating such spaces. While finding places to play used to be difficult, Krishnan reflects that it has gotten better in the three years that he’s been involved in Harvard’s music scene. Beyond the physical construction of practice space, musicians would also benefit from having a designated student-performance venue. This would both ease the process of booking gigs and increase groups’ visibility by providing a consistent destination where students can experience on-campus musicians.
When you think of rock bands or rap groups or funk music, you probably don’t think of Harvard. Realistically, this won’t be changing anytime soon. But thanks to events like Battle for Yardfest and the reorganization of spaces such as Quad Sound, student musicians are optimistic about the future of non-classical music at Harvard. And as I dance to The Intrinsics’ rendition of some Michael Jackson song (whose name I’ve never been able to remember), I feel pretty optimistic too.
Image Credit: Mark Staples