The call of music

THE CALL OF

MUSIC! BY RYA AYSWA HY MURT

We explore the live music scene in Education City – where the students play, what they hope for and how they reconcile their love for music with the rigors of academics – and how Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s Student Center, in the process of fostering a universitywide community, is making music a memorable part of the campus life experience.

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Students performing at various Education City events.

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or Prince George Abraham, student intern with the Campus Life team at the HBKU Student Center, the opportunity is ripe to shape the experience he himself would love to have. “I am a musician myself. I play the guitar, keys, drums and bass and am part of both a professional and amateur band. So I was keen to incorporate my interests in the programs we do, and the Student Center lets me do that.”

Thus was born events like Tea Time and Artists for Change (coordinated by his colleague and Georgetown University student Aleesha Suleman). “Tea Time is an opportunity for students from all the campuses to come together and lounge, chill and have Karak and soufflé with live acoustic music playing in the background. We had a lot of students come up and perform one to two hours of music. Often we try to introduce new themes and bring in an element of music appreciation by exposing the audience to new genres. We used to hold it every two weeks in the Majlis at the Student Centre and usually 100-200 people would attend. So there’s definitely no lack of interest,” Prince says.

The changes in class timings this semester meant that they had to tone these activities down to once a month and the attendance has fallen as well. “Education is time-demanding and it’s not that easy to hold too many programs,” he says.

But at the same time, there is a lot of excitement among students for these sorts of events, Campus Life Coordinator Hessa Al Mohannadi says. “What’s lacking is a platform to do these on a regular basis.” But this is where the HBKU Student Centre steps in and the potential is immense. The team there works around the clock to churn out exciting concepts that’ll unite students from across the branch campuses to give them that big university experience. Prince lists them out.

“International Fest, Movember, Big Fat Quiz, Desi night 4.0, Leadershape, Coffee Conversations...” and there is more in the works with music poised to get its due.

“We are definitely planning to do more music programs next semester,” Hessa says.

“We are thinking of bringing in professional teachers (guitar/piano/drums) for students who wish to learn or want to improve their skills. With the Blackbox Theater at core, we want to create a nurturing environment for the arts – music, theater and dance. “The theater, with its great acoustics and two pianos, can be reserved for use by any student from any of the campuses. “Everyday a few people go up to the piano and practice,” Prince says.

The Student Center is also building connections with outside entities like Doha Players who are “very supportive of the idea of building a community at Education City”. “We worked with them to host a play here. They are keen to volunteer to perform and teach the students but that’s still in the works,”

Hessa says.

But even before the Student Center was formalized and started hosting these events, individual campuses have been creating and sustaining the culture of music - albeit inconsistently. Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar’s (WCMC-Q) Coffee House, Georgetown’s and Northwestern’s Open Mic Nights, Carnegie Mellon University - Qatar’s Masquerade Ball – they all provide students with the much needed platform to showcase their talents. Few and far between as these events are, they are also often exclusive to the students and faculty of the said universities.

Other campuses could be part of the audience, but they aren’t invited to participate.

“Coffee House is one of Education City’s oldest traditions; I think WCM-Q has been hosting it for the last eight or nine years,” Hessa says. “When they started out, the student population was very small, so it was open to everyone at that time. And that practice continued. But some of the newer programs are exclusive. For example, Georgetown

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University Qatar’s (GU-Q) Open Mic Night is for their students only.” This is understandable as the logistics of organizing an EC-wide event is massive and besides, the Student Center has already taken on the task of “giving every student opportunities to work with everyone else from all the branch campuses”.

Apart from these, many universities also have their own music clubs and, often, a dedicated space where they can practice and perform. While the student affairs offices fund and lend advice and a helping hand whenever needed, these entities are almost completely student-led, Hessa says. “Many of these clubs were initiated by students, who were musicians themselves, looking to work together. They decide on the activities, events and the structure the organization,” she says.

Prince himself used to be part of CMU-Q’s music club and was even president for a year.

“For the first two years, we were sponsored

by Student Affairs, who gave us a small spacewith speakers, guitars and other equipment. We started representing the college in various cultural events around EC,” he remembers.

“MUSIC DEFINES US” Josia Schlögl is WCM-Q’s Music Club’s current president. The guitar player and vocalist who loves playing acoustic version sof rock songs, says he joined the club during his initial days when he chanced upon their stall at one of the college events.”It’s not the most formal one,” he says, talking about the club.

“But it serves its purpose – helping people interested in music stay in touch and keeping them informed about events around EC.” Many students at Cornell were avid pianists and couldn’t practise so the club petitioned to have an electric piano installed in campus.

“The student council got us one,” he says.

Located at a strange little nook in the university building, their music space is not the most ideal, Josia feels. “But it’s there and we can go whenever we want to practice.” Or at least, he hopes. Because for students to take some time out for music can be difficult. “The older

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ARTISTS FOR CHANGE Conceptualized during Leadershape 2013, Artists for Change is a platform to reveal your passion to the community and to the world. “We are trying to incorporate creative expression and social change and give the HBKU community a platform to discuss the various social issues they feel strongly about. This idea is not something that is new, since artists the world over have used their specific art to communicate social messages; they draw their inspiration from the society.

Whether, it be a specific cause or organization that is trying to make a difference, we try to support them while we support and encourage the various talents our fellow students possess. We hope that when people express themselves in whatever medium, it serves as a cathartic, and at the same time allows them to find other people who have similar concerns,” Aleesha says. The team has already put together two events this semester – an Open Mic Night and a Poetry Night. “On the Open Mic Night we got a number of different performers; singers, pianists, guitarists and in-between the performances, we added short speeches by leaders of organizations within EC that are doing humanitarian-based work.

For example, we had Akhuwat-e-Awam, HBKU Charity Trust and HBKU Cares.

Despite leaving the theme open for the Open Mic Night, the performers all focused on the theme of Change,” she smiles. And all the while, working quietly in the background, the platform is morphing into a central meeting point for various musicians, allowing them to form new bonds and support each other at different performances and work together on new projects, exactly the thing Education City had been lacking for so long.

Clockwise from left: Josia Schlögl, Adam Abou-gad and Prince Greorge Abraham

medical students are especially very busy.

They have different priorities. The pre-meds are a little more regular though,” he says.

Atul Menon used to be part of Georgetown’s music club as well and laments about nothing much happening there due to general lack of interest. The Carnatic trained vocalist-cum-guitarist-cum-pianist however does use the university’s studio to record music for his two-member-band Agrata; his childhood friend and TAMU-Q graduate Srikanth Srinivasan makes up the other half.

Prince is excited about the new crop of students revitalizing these music clubs and, in turn, the live music scene in the campus.

“A lot of Northwestern freshmen are musicians,” he says. “And they also have a really cool music club.” So we catch up with communications freshman Adam Abou-gad who has been playing the piano since he was five.

This progressive rock enthusiast who learnt to play the drums and guitar in his eight grade and started recording his songs a couple of years ago, has only been in campus for a semester but has already performed at several events like NU’s Open Mic Night, International Fest and Artists for Change, and says he is looking forward to performing at the next Tea Time. And although he has signed up for NU’s Music Society, he says he isn’t very aware of what’s going on.

It is not surprising, therefore, that despite the existence of these clubs and the large number of students who have signed up for these, the band culture is conspicuous by its absence. Josia says that it’s very difficult to bring people together, even within the same campus, and have them commit to practice regularly. “It’s easier to play by yourself; there is less preparation involved,” he shrugs. Adam also notes that though the idea of collaboration is something that interests a lot of people and there is a lot of talk about it, nothing much happens in the direction.

Aleesha sums it up nicely when she says “that the music clubs in some universities are more productive than others in terms of how often they will meet up and practice so that they can perform wherever needed. I think that this drive has to come from the students because we do have all the resources (“like the Blackbox Theater in the Student Center”) available to us as students if we really want to do something.”

IN A NUTSHELL So the interest is there and so are the resources, all that is required is a little push.

Which is something the Student Center with its “amazing social media and PR sav”(Prince says matter-of-factly) is more than equipped to take care of. While music clubs have only

sporadically, if at all, managed to bring together students interested in music, the Student Center with its dedicated team of employees is single-minded in doing exactly that. And their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. Josia admits that “the Student Center is doing a good job in trying to understand academic commitments and structure events around this.”

On the larger scale, the lack of a live music culture in Doha in general (and the subsequent lack of a proper music industry) can be the reason why this is slow in percolating into student life. “Maybe if that starts happening, it’ll start becoming a bit part of the culture here too,” Josia says. He envisions people sitting around and singing a la Central Park.

It’s interesting he mentions this because earlier Prince had told us this: “Last night something happened that I haven’t seen in a long time. Some 10-15 of my friends and I were sitting outside Residences Halls, someone brought a guitar and we were singing till 2 a.m. We thought we’d be asked to keep it down because of the finals but instead more and more people came and sat for a while to listen and some even joined in.”

Maybe in Doha’s case, the osmosis will happen outwards, starting with Education City.

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