48-hour Band: Building Community One Note at a Time
Tyson Lewis | April 7, 2022
Quinn Bonney
Chloe Walters performing a song about going to the dentist.
On Thursday, March 24, the 48-hour Band concert of the spring semester was announced. That night, there was a meeting where members of the Warren Wilson community put their names into a hat. The names were drawn to create groups of five, and these groups had 48 hours to come up with a performance.
Elias Goldstein, a musician and senior, sent out the initial email announcing the event.
“I was an assistant organizer. Declan gets the credit for bringing 48-hour to WWC, and Mac got the party permit and everything,” Goldstein said. “I’m hoping to see people coming together and expressing themselves in whatever crazy or authentic — whatever way is most authentic to the person. I hope that they feel comfortable doing that here.”
Declan King, senior, organizer, and host of 48-hour Bands, explained what the event meant to them.
“I think collaboration runs entirely perpendicularly to the dominant oppressive culture of the US which is competition,” King said. “If we can find ways to safely and healthily collaborate with one another, it reinforces a sense of individual power among a group of people.”
On the night of the performances, it was colder than expected, so the show was moved from the Amphitheater to Bryson gym.
King started the concert at 7:47 p.m. by picking a name of one band out of a hat. First was the group Muzzy & The Moochers. However, they needed a projector for their performance, so another name was picked from the hat while the projector was set up.
The second group picked, the dental-themed band, Floss, also needed a projector for their performance. On the third pick, 48-hour Band finally commenced with Chaz The Giraffe.
Chaz The Giraffe started the night of performances with a puppet show and sketch about a person finding their identity as a giraffe. Of course, Chaz was immediately taken hostage and put into a cage. Luckily for him, however, the sun and moon narrator changed him into a star.
Following this performance was Muzzy & The Moochers. It was a multimedia story with live music and poetry recitation as the Muzzy animation was projected onto the wall behind the stage. This performance was bookended by audience participation.
Quinn Bonney
Students dancing and performing.
Up next was Floss, a multi-genre musical theater group telling the story of their protagonist going to a sadistic dentist. It started with ska and cartoons of the inside of a person’s mouth being projected. They finished their performance with a hardcore song as the protagonist visited the dentist.
Lander Sartin, a musician and first year, gave their feelings as a newcomer to performing on the WWC campus in the group Floss.
“This is my first performance since high school, actually,” Sartin said. “I’m really pumped about it; it's invigorating for sure. I went to the first practice the other night, and I was stoked. It gave me so much energy just to be in that setting with those people.”
And then there was City Pasta, a band at the intersection of Jesus, pasta and Sodexo. They went on stage in white and off-white clothing to sing about pasta at Gladfelter while simultaneously criticizing Sodexo. To top it off, they also threw dry pasta into the audience.
Second to last were the B-51’s who momentarily took a step into the avant-garde with their instruments. After which, the instruments were put down and they used the speakers to play their progenitor band, The B-52’s, Love Shack.
The final group to play were The Rocks Featuring Anything For Public Appeal. They succeeded. The band was a chugging rock group and the instrumentalists traded their instruments throughout their songs. Under a projection of the duel scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, they traded solos.
Ilaria Roma, a first-year, remarked that the 48-hour Band brought her to a campus concert unlike any of the other concerts.
“My friends were performing so I came for them,” Roma said. “It feels more approachable because it doesn't feel like I need to know the band before. It just felt like I could pop in if I wanted to.”
Approachability was a built-in aspect of 48-hour Band, open for anyone to perform.
“I think this is one of the more supportive events that I've seen on Warren Wilson,” Goldstien said. “It feels way more inclusive than just a bunch of straight dudes getting up there and fucking jamming as hard as they can. I’m complicit in that myself in certain ways.”
Where did 48-Hour Band come from? Lead organizer King had the answer.
“I come from Brattleboro, Vermont and theres a lot of really amazing and creative queers there and theres this artist collective I love to visit,” King said. “They were talking about a 24-hour band, and I was so stoked to be a part of it, but I moved away from home just in time to not be a part of it. I needed that in my life and I thought, ‘what better community than Warren Wilson?’”
After the night of bands performing, with instruments on stage, the crowd was invited to go onto the stage to jam. The Rocks Featuring Anything For Public Appeal ended their performance at 9:40 and for roughly a half an hour, anyone in the audience could play the instruments.