Rock et Roll
Ever since Vampire Weekend’s 2007 self-titled LP bounced off the blogs and ricocheted into the vernacular of preps, alts, self-aware emos, and my father, the ivy-league-campus-as-band-incubator has been cemented in our collective consciousness. Upon arriving at Yale, I found myself looking far and wide for acoustic guitars in the grass and echoes of synthesizers past dawn. If Columbia University could produce Ezra and Rostam, then surely Yale — the artsy ivy — would be prime with internal rhymes, baroque pop, and soft rock. But, amidst the string quartets and chorus lines, I found little of the rock-obsessed, three-chord choirs that I anticipated.
My fixation on college as the place where classics were read, hammocks swung, and bands formed was not unfounded, however: the history of popular music in the last half-century — especially alternative music — is intertwined with the college campus. The Strokes formed at NYU, where Julian Casablancas and Albert Hammond, Jr. cut demos in a dorm room. Talking Heads, the experimental, trailblazing group that shaped new wave and punk music in the 1980s, met as art students at the Rhode Island School of Design, eventually moving into a shared loft in New York post-graduation. And who can forget your mom’s favorite band when she’s wine drunk, R.E.M? They literally coined the term “college rock” in the early 1980s, gaining initial fame through college radio at University of Georgia, Athens.
With Yale’s track record, it is quite easy to find a slew of stars in almost every industry. We all know the actors and actresses, composers and presidents, but finding a Yalie who’s topped the Billboard 100 chart? That one’s not so easy. Yale does not have a pantheon of popular musician alumni — especially in the 21st century — but we do have one. Dirty Projectors — a trailblazing indie band based in Brooklyn — is headed by David Longstreth, YC ’05, who studied Art and Music here at Yale. Even he, however, only finished his degree years after dropping out during his Sophomore fall, citing Yale’s “lack of an indie scene” as the reason for his initial departure. Not a good look. Yale did make a guest appearance, however, on the track “Off Science Hill,” from his 2003 album, The Glad Fact. Of course, things have changed since the early 2000s, and the Yale indie music scene of today, though small, is a burgeoning community.
While a handful of groups and solo artists grace Yale’s stages frequently, students are hard pressed to name more than two or three bands off the top of their heads (myself included). For an institution of this size and creative potential, there are surprisingly few independent groups. And while a lack of chart-toppers is expected, even casual bands are in short supply. It is possible to bunk up in a practice room, bang out a few chords, and — one or two visits to rhymezone.com later — cough out a song, right? And if you play together, you’re a band! Right? The reality is much more complicated, and the Yale experience further complicates this complication. Let’s look at a few.
School Spirit
The first hurdle that independent music at Yale encounters happens before students even arrive. Few students planning to pursue popular music are attracted to Yale for its classically-oriented music program. While majors and non-majors alike participate in a miasma of activities in the performing arts at Yale, you would be hard pressed to find a theater production without a single Theater Studies major in it. There’s a certain congruity between what you’re study and what you do outside the classroom. The same cannot be said for performers at 216, likely majoring in something meta. The Yale College Department of Music’s website, in describing their curriculum, reads:
[The] Department of Music offers a full-scale, humanities-oriented program in the composition, history, and theory of music that is intended to provide an extensive background in the art form for students who will go on to professional careers as composers, performers, or scholars, or who may enter fields in which a solid grounding in music is essential, such as arts management, cognitive psychology, music production, publishing, or world music.
I’m sorry, but do you see the words “sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll” anywhere in that description? (I even tried CTRL-F to no avail). The Yale Department of Music is proud of their classically-oriented program. With a focus on the traditional, the program lacks classes on recording processes or the music industry, unlike competitive music programs at schools like NYU Tisch’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. NYU’s program, in its core music curriculum, offers a slew of courses such as, “Engineering the Record” and “The Business of Music: Industry Essentials.” They also offer a series of “Topics” courses, with entire classes devoted to individual artists: J Dilla, Talking Heads, Prince, and Nirvana, to name a few. Of course, comparing Tisch and Yale is not a normative assessment of the latter’s curriculum, but it is no mystery to see why those dead set on a career in recorded music would flock to more contemporary programs. Charlie Romano, SM ’19, spoke of his experience songwriting in the music major, saying, “I really only got to hone my craft in a musical theater context. I know of other classes where you might get to write ‘songs’ instead of pieces, but that hasn’t been my experience really.” However, songwriting isn’t completely absent from the curriculum. Sofía Campoamor, ES ’19+1, the first woman Whiffenpoof, has been able to carve a path through the music major as a songwriter: “I’ve been able to integrate writing music into my academic life at Yale, by taking composition courses where I’ve had the freedom to work on my songwriting alongside assigned chamber or film music projects.” While the Music Department serves those oriented towards musical theater and classical music, those of us seriously pursuing a career in popular music will just have to wait patiently for the college seminar, “The Art of Songwriting,” to come back.
Time after Time
To assume, however, that all the musicians who use picks instead of bows are somewhere else would be a mistake. Yale still has a vanguard of musicians dedicated to writing, recording, and performing original music outside the classroom. Whereas dedication and talent are of no shortage, there’s one crucial yet limited resource here at Yale: time. Much like schoolmates, bandmates are predicated on a sense of camaraderie and a deep commitment to a communal life. Rehearsals, writing sessions, recording sessions, gigs, travelling, touring, signing autographs, press releases, co-coordinating speeches for your Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame induction — the life of a serious band is one of serious commitment. The Beatles’ infamous 10,000 hours in Hamburg required a complete uprooting of their lives: their families, friends, and careers were all exchanged for seedy dance halls a country-and-a-half away. Of course, not everyone is shooting for the stars, but even a casual group can prove difficult to coordinate.
The musicians I talked to almost unanimously agreed that conflicting schedules and a smorgasbord of commitments are the biggest obstacles to forming bands at Yale. Noah Gershenson, DC ’21, a member of student band January, explained, “It’s hard to be in a band at Yale because even though everyone in the band loves playing music and is dedicated to their instrument, we’re still students first. Busy schedules of schoolwork, extracurriculars, and jobs make finding practice time that can accommodate everyone nearly impossible, especially for a band with as many members as mine.” In a community where scheduling a meal requires a Gcal, accountant, and a degree in data science, it is no wonder why getting a band together at Yale often proves difficult.
However, plenty of activities at Yale require massive amounts of coordination: sketch comedy, improv, theater productions, sports teams, clubs. What makes band practice different? To put it bluntly: you can’t put a band on a resumé. Because bands are distinctly unstructured and independent, people find it hard to commit time to something that is purely for enjoyment. Sounds like Yale, doesn’t it? The members of Sargasso put it frankly, noting that the biggest obstacle their band has faced is “everyone being busy.” Bassist Maria Campos Saadi, BF ’20, reflected on the band’s origins, recalling that, “Before [Sargasso] recorded and had anything really solid, the time that I was spending with [the band] was kind of my leisure time, now I feel productive when I’m with them whereas before I felt very happy, but sort of guilty in my subconscious — like I wasn’t doing work.” Sargasso keyboardist and guitarist Soledad Tejada, DC ’20, added, “I also think that it’s [because of] academics, but it’s also structured extracurriculars… there’s no structure [with a band] — so it’s really driven by you coordinating yourself with other people’s schedules…we didn’t think we were going to record an EP, and Noah [Goodman, BF ’21, the frontman of Sargasso] did push us, and you need to have someone really pushing and having it be the main thing. Like when are we going to practice, how are we going to have a show, things like that.” Without a board, elections, Dwight Hall funding, or lemming-like “please unsubscribe me” email chains, what else is to keep a band afloat amidst the toils of Yale academic life other than an undying commitment to rock and roll?
This Must Be the Place
Even if you do get a band together, finding a place a place to put it is another problem. Yale College is proud of its facilities, and deservedly so; however, for student groups looking to rehearse, navigating residential colleges’ practice rooms can prove to be tricky. While every college has a practice room or two with a piano, not all facilities are created equal. Large spaces for band rehearsal are harder to come by. Beyond the space itself, practice rooms rarely guarantee access to drum kits, amps, or microphones. Chaz Okada, BK ’21, guitarist of January, described to me the difficulty of rehearsing with his band, “For example, the Berkeley music room is large and has a piano, but there are no drums, and the space is right next to a suite, so it is not ideal for band practice — which can get loud. You have to know someone in a residential college that has decent practice rooms, like Davenport-Pierson or Morse-Stiles if you want access to a good space. However, those spaces are limited and tend to be booked a lot.”
The politics of residential college affiliation are exacerbated even further with regard to recording music. Though Silliman, Timothy Dwight, Grace Hopper, and Ezra Stiles all have recording studios, they are only accessible to students within those colleges. Moreover, the studios all require special training to gain access in the first place, limiting the population who can use the spaces even further. Bands who lack the extensive equipment required to practice — amps, full drum kits, microphones, cables — or the wherewithal to transport said equipment to an empty practice room often feel disenfranchised. The spaces, however, to students who do have access, like Campoamor, prove extremely useful: “I’ve been really fortunate to have access to the Crescent Underground Recording Studio in Morse-Stiles, where I’ve been able to record my work and work with other student engineers on my music.” Romano, meanwhile is a frequenter of the Silliman studio: “I’ve used it countless times to record for composition seminars and independent music projects.”
Sargasso, recorded their most recent EP, Inlets, in the Timothy Dwight studio over the course of finals week last spring. Tejada,recounted the experience: “Well [Noah was] planning for us to record an EP, but we did Battle of the Bands for Spring Fling, and Noah was like, if we don’t get it, why don’t we record an EP instead? And this was reading week. I was like, yeah right, we’re gonna record an EP, i.e this is not going to happen. And then, we didn’t get it, and the next day we were in the studio.” The band, despite their investment in and use of the space, have since been barred access from the studio after members transferred from the college.
Students in colleges without recording spaces have found creative solutions. One exceptional case of innovation has taken place in Jonathan Edwards. JE-E18 used to be an empty, L-shaped practice room like any other. However, over the course of the last two years, a small group of students have worked tirelessly to convert the unused room into a (nearly) fully-equipped studio space. I sat down with David Townley, JE ’20, one of the founders and managers of the space, to talk about its development. “Dan Rudins [JE ’19+1] and I got the idea my freshman fall [2016], and presented it to HOC Saltzman. Over the course of that year, we ended up settling on a $10,000 budget for the space. Using that budget, we built the space from the ground up. We outfitted the room with bass traps and I worked with professional sound engineers to get it acoustically sound.” The JE studio — of which I am also a frequent user — has brought unprecedented access to recording technology within the college. Townley and Louis DeFelice, JE ’19, the studio’s current managers, are also working on a system to train those interested and develop the studio’s infrastructure to be on par with that of other colleges.
Live! In Concert
Now, even if you did get a band together, and even if you did practice, where to go from there? Yale Radio (WYBC) is the cultural epicenter for the independent music scene at Yale. Aside from their regular programs, the station hosts a live radio program called “Live! From the Moon,” which gives student musicians an opportunity to cut their teeth playing a radio session. WYBC’s “ANTE-Fling” event — a concert at Toad’s Place featuring “WYBC’s favorite established or up-and-coming musicians” — last spring drew over 300 attendants. WYBC provides a forum for fans of music to meet, collaborate, and discuss music both on air and in print.
Apart from WYBC, with regard to concerts, one need not look further than 216 Dwight Street. “216” is the primary venue for independent music at Yale, hosting weekly shows on Friday nights that feature independent artists from in-and-around Yale, and independent musicians at Yale agree. “The fact that a place like 216 can offer a real sound system and in-house drum kit is so inviting to bands that might not know how to put together something totally on their own,” Gershenson from January, told me. 216’s weekly concerts draw crowds in the hundreds, and the Yale indie scene’s growth is indebted to the hard work that venue staff have put in over the last few years to develop that institution.
Beyond 216, however, the live scene is less consistent. Goodman, Sargasso’s frontman, noted, “I do think it is true that there’s not really a music scene here for the kind of music we play. There’s kind of one, a little bit, but its very small, and its basically isolated to 216. In different places, there will be people who have a party and they’ll have a band to play at that party.” While 216 might not constitute an entire “scene,” other venues are increasingly entering the consciousness of the independent music crowd at Yale. Venues like Stella Blues, Koffee?, and the occasional house party are all increasingly featuring acts from Yale students. The New Music Collective, a student organization dedicated to the development of original music, is expanding its outreach and resources to songwriters as well. The effort, headed by Campoamor, aims to provide a network through which musicians can collaborate and perform. Moreover, the potential expansion of the Yale music scene into venues that aren’t exclusively Yale-oriented, like State House and Cafe Nine, could lead to an increased integration of Yale and New Haven music communities, tapping into the immense talent, creativity, and passion that our school and city exhibit. And until the day Yale trades lux et veritas for rock et roll, we’ll always have the Guild of Carillonneurs — at least we can put that on our resumés.
