Updated as of 7:50 p.m. on Feb. 10 to include ENN Radio link.
Belk Library turned into a stage to celebrate Black musicians with student performers on Feb. 7 at its Tiny Shelf concert series. This was the second event in the Center for Race, Ethnicity, and Diversity Education’s Black History Month calendar, following the Black History Month Kickoff.
The Tiny Shelf concert, inspired by NPR’s Tiny Desk series, was hosted by Elon’s campus radio WSOE 89.3 and the CREDE. Four groups were featured during the event, along with Black Student Union’s co-vice president and emcee senior Kashawn Myers testing audience members on Grammy Trivia focusing on Black musicians during transitions.
WSOE’s production director freshman Amalia Zucker helped with the event in collaboration with Belk Library, creating space for musicians to perform in a typically quiet area.
“I think there’s so much love infused in it regardless of the message you’re bringing across. It’s wordless – even a tune is wordless. It goes beyond language,” Zucker said.
Black Student Union’s co-vice president and emcee senior Kashawn Myers tests audience members on Grammy Trivia focusing on Black musicians during transitions on Feb. 7 at the Black History Month Tiny Shelf performance.
Elon University Jazz Studies students performed “Alabama” by John Coltrane, a memorial to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing on Sept.15, 1963. Four African-American girls – their ages ranging from 11- to 14-years-old – were killed in the attack by the Ku Klux Klan in Birmingham, Alabama.
Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” was sung out by sophomore lead singer Maya Spencer performing with her band Yards Davis. The song was also dedicated to the bombing, as well as the racially motivated murders of 14-year-old Emmett Till and civil rights activist Medgar Evers. “Mississipi Goddam” was Simone’s first civil rights song, written in less than an hour.
Limitless, Elon’s hip-hop performance group, featured two artists for the night. Rapper and junior Nailah Ware performed two original songs, “La La” and “Bounce.” Musician and senior Chris Murphy performed original songs that touched on topics prevalent in Black communities, like poverty, race, success, power and the history of plantation work in the U.S.
“Being Black and making music to me, nowadays, I think that it’s important,” Murphy said. “You’re using that to tell a different type of story. I want to show a different side of Black music.”
Mentions of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Kendrick Lamar and other influential Black figures were heard within Murphy’s pieces. Since starting to perform at 10-years-old, Murphy has wanted to change the narrative of typical “Black music" which he thinks people see as “gangster rap or money, sex, drugs.”
“What I want to bring to Black music is a feeling of openness,” Murphy said. “You don’t have to be one way to be Black in music.”
Elon’s only Black a cappella group, Melanated Melodies, brought power to its performance as they sang “Black Woman” by Danielle Brooks. They closed out the night with “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan, a nod to the CREDE’s theme for Black History Month, “This Is How We Do It: Honoring Blackness Through Influence, Innovation, and Legacy.”
The CREDE will continue to host events all month until the Black Solidarity Conference, with the next event being the “Black Table Talk: Legacy in Motion” on Feb. 12 at McKinnon Hall. All students, faculty, staff and community members are welcome to attend.