When Communication senior Ella Silvestri hosted a boiler room featuring a few student DJs in her basement last spring, she had no idea there would be a line out the door. Now the Local Mojo vice president, she said she could tell students were looking for more opportunities to hear live music.
“We got three student DJs, and it ended up being a great turnout,” she said. “People had a great time. From then on, we were like, okay, we’re just gonna full send this and keep throwing these shows.”
At that point, Local Mojo was just a group of people who played in student bands or wanted to hear more live music.
Local Mojo co-president and Weinberg senior Max Garon founded the Northwestern chapter with Weinberg junior Jack Hartfelder last year. Garon noticed that there was a lack of opportunity for student musicians to perform and form bands on campus and wanted to change that, he said.
Hartfelder and Garon reached out to Local Mojo last year about creating a Northwestern chapter and hosted their first event in March.
“I saw such an abundance of talent with so little community around it at Northwestern when it comes to music,” he said. “A lot of that comes from my own experiences – difficulty finding bands, difficulty finding shows to go to, difficulty finding people to play with.”
Undergraduates at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst created Local Mojo to promote student artists and organize events for live music produced and performed by students.
Since then, Local Mojo has expanded to create 10 student music communities across the country, from Boston to the University of Southern California.
Silvestri said their budget is small, mostly cobbled together from occasional ticketed events or merch sales. The platform’s goal is to be able to compensate artists and photographers in future events, she said.
Communication senior Anoushka Dasgupta is the lead singer for the student band The Fingerprints, which had its first performance at an event organized by Local Mojo.
The organization put on Rock at the Rock, which brought lineup student bands out to play at the Rock on Sept 20. For Dasgupta, it wasn’t just an opportunity to perform –– The event was how she met the musicians that would form The Fingerprints.
“I wouldn’t have met them if I wasn’t helping Local Mojo with their event in the first place,” she said. “We ended up really liking how we sounded, so then we just decided that after the first event that we played at, we’re just gonna keep playing together.”
Since then, The Fingerprints has played at numerous concerts hosted by Local Mojo, including an outdoor set for homecoming weekend.
While she is excited to get more involved in event planning for Local Mojo, Dasgupta also wants to keep performing on stage, she said.
“You can see the immediate feedback,” she said. “People are excited, people are cheering… It’s really invigorating.”
Local Mojo is hoping to put on a new event called MojoFest in May, which would feature hours of music on the shores of Lake Michigan. They are also planning to bring more Chicago bands to campus to put on free concerts for students.
Garon said the platform is always looking for ways to bring free live music to bigger audiences.
“I love seeing how the student body reacts to it and the musicians react to it,” he said. “That’s kind of what I get out of it, and the reason that I’m kind of so motivated to be involved and keep it going, it’s just really the community.”
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