Surrounded by the brown wooden shelves in Perry Library, student groups Southwest Asian and North African Student Union (SWANA) and WCFM hosted an open mic night on Friday evening. Students were free to perform music of any genre or origin, with just one requirement: no English.
“WCFM does a lot of open mic nights, so I had an idea to do one that was not in English, where people [could] sing songs either from their culture or from another,” said SWANA Co-President Leila Ruser ’27. Performance pieces ranged from Spanish pop folk songs like “Hasta la Raíz” by Natalia Lafourcade to timeless Persian classics like “Soltane Ghalbha” by Aref.
SWANA and WCFM worked together to make the event a social middle ground between a party and an academic event, Ruser explained. “I think [we] need more fun, cultural events because we have a lot of talks, and then on the other side of that we have a lot of parties, but there’s not a lot of in-between stuff,” she said. “So I was thinking it would be cool to do an event that’s more formal than a party but less educational than a talk, and people just listen to music that they wouldn’t have otherwise listened to.”
Jose Diaz ’29, a performer at the open mic, explained the importance of hosting events around campus for multilingual students. “Singing is a really important part of my life — I’ve always sang,” he said. “Spanish is my first language, so it’s easier for me [to sing in] than English. I just feel like every opportunity to sing is so important, and that’s why I chose to perform, since there are only so many of those.”
Although the performers were limited in numbers, the audience greatly appreciated the event. “It was really cool,” Michelle Yang ’28 said after attending the open mic. “Since I know some Spanish, it was great to see the artists perform, and I loved following along with the lyrics. There’s something really cool about people sharing something from their own language because sometimes things can’t really be translated into English, but you can hear the emotion through the music.”
Every performance was followed by hearty applause and cheers from the audience. “I loved Jose’s performance, since I’m sure people who didn’t really know Spanish could also feel what he was saying just from his voice, which was very emotional,” Yang continued.
WCFM recorded the show to broadcast later on-air, allowing the performances to reach the wider College and Town communities. WCFM has been hosting open mic nights more regularly this semester, and this was their first collaboration with SWANA.
According to Ruser, SWANA has taken an increasingly active and involved approach to hosting events over the past two years, since the club was reinvigorated. “My freshman year, [SWANA] got revived,” she explained, “And then I became co-president, with the other Laila [Idbraim ’27] last year, my sophomore year. So we’ve been really more active this year and last year.”
SWANA hopes to keep organizing similar multicultural events to encourage students to engage with cultures and languages beyond their own and to provide space for more students to perform. “I think we could do something like this every semester even … [and] I wish that more people [would] sign up to perform,” Ruser said.
