Music can play an important role in student life, whether by teaching, listening or playing. Pursuing a degree in music, playing in the marching band or forming a band with other students are all outlets for students to express themselves through music.
For Band Director Steven Hendricks, teaching music has spanned 40 years of his career, 30 of which were at the high school level.
“At the college level it’s even more exciting, I think, because I have a much more one-on-one relationship with their individual growth as musicians,” Hendricks said. “I get to watch that individual progress through the process of those juries every single semester and other things. That’s been a real treat at the college level is to watch just that individual growth.”
Getting a student musician to grow to the level they have to be at to reach excellence is important to Hendricks.
“I don’t live in a world of mediocrity, so if you can’t go with me and you want to be mediocre, find the door. But through that we instill, hopefully, that spirit of excellence that can permeate all the way through their whole life and everything that they do,” Hendricks said.
A student’s passion for music can carry them on to other pursuits after graduation. Hendricks hopes that what students take away from his program are, “lifelong friendships” and “that they leave loving music.”
People who are not pursuing musical degrees can still feel an effect from music, and let it shape their identity. For music performance minor student Madeline Nelson, music in one word could be described as “essential.”
“I’ve always been a huge fan of music, but I started really getting into it when I was about 14 or 15,” Nelson said. “I feel like without music, my life would lack so much vitality and color and warmth; lots of things that I consider essential.”
Nelson said music for her can be a way to make new friends on campus and connect with others.
“I think it’s helped me make friends, actually. That’s how I’ve met a lot of my friends is through a pursuit of music,” Nelson said.
As a violinist who has honed her skills over the years, her connection to classical music in particular has deepened.
“I’ve gotten a lot more exposure as I’ve become better and better to more well-known composers and other works within certain genres, like Baroque period, classical period, because they’re all connected in the same technically musical way … I’m probably one of the youngest people listening to it, but I don’t care,” Nelson said.
She also feels it culturally enriches campus life, particularly at events.
“As far as … whenever they have even just tables in the Union building and stuff, they often use music just to either be playing or to draw people in or to bring people together. I think that’s the main reason it’s played at activities and stuff like that,” Nelson said.
Music has the potential to be a powerful connector at these events. If there is a song playing that two or more students mutually enjoy, it could potentially strike up a conversation and allow them to learn more about each other.
According to Nelson however, there’s a difference between just having background music on compared to actively listening and “letting it absorb through your pores like a bath bomb.” This is how she discovered some of her favorite, most sonically pleasing instruments.
“That’s how I picked out the violin, the electric guitar. Just like, wow, I love that sound. I love hearing that sound, and I want to make it myself,” Nelson said.
Over at KWCR Wildcat Radio, music is more than a means of instrumental expression. For Music Archivist Rachael Daughters, there’s a clearly outlined directive.
“Our mission statement is: a student-run organization that’s focused on uplifting diverse voices,” Daughters said.
One of her main goals is to have students pass by and stop in the hall.
“They’ll be like, ‘Wow! This song is really good!’. They’ll Shazam it or whatever. That’s my ultimate goal. That’s what I want,” Daughters said.
Daughter would describe KWCR and other college run radio as, “a bunch of freaks”.
“We go to a conference every year and you meet the weirdest freaking people because college radio attracts just the freaks of nature, I guess. But you can always trust that they’re going to be playing something good. And that’s what I like about the station,” Daughters said.
College radio, and to an extent the music it plays, is also something sentimental to Daughters.
“I grew up hearing stories about my dad and his time at the radio station that he worked on in the Bay Area. I was just so enamored with his stories that I wanted to be a part of something like that … I think for a lot of people it’s ‘Oh, I need a Comm credit,’ then it becomes so much more because … I think the draw of it is you can be a freak here, if that makes sense.” Daughters said.
This mixture of self-expression all in one place allows for college radio to be summed up in one word according to Daughters as “community”.
“That’s what I found here. And that’s what I love about it, is that I found my little community of freaks … it was a very isolated situation before I joined the radio station, and I found some of my best friends, and I found my partner here, and I found the best freaks and also some of the worst freaks, but that’s something I absolutely love about the station is the stories that it tells and the people I get to meet because of it,” Daughters said.
Every time a student tunes in to KWCR, they are hearing the self-expression of a community of people who came together for their shared love of music. Through any medium and by all measures, music is an integral part of campus culture at Weber State University.
