Looking Back at the Success of an Inaugural Student-Run Music Festival

Epileptic strobe lights. Hazy smoke. Reggae keyboardists swayed in time to Jamaican-inspired beats, their dreadlocks tapping the floor. Swarms of strangers nodded their heads in collective appreciation for the circular rhythms, the stage mesmerizing enough to still the requisite flash of selfies for the larger psychedelic lights overhead.

It was all in a weekend's work at DashPop, a music festival hosted by a Wake Forest University class from March 27-29 to promote great music and connection between the somewhat isolated student campus and the rest of Winston-Salem, including Winston-Salem State University and University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Throughout the course of the weekend, 30 bands played at 9 venues, including Ziggy's and The Garage downtown.

The festival, headed by Wake Forest Communication professor Len Neighbors, garnered local and national talent, including headliner 9^th Wonder, a record producer to Beyonce, Jay-Z, Ludacris and Destiny's Child, in addition to other bands like Tribal Seeds, Fury and the Sound, and up-and-coming Winston-Salem act The Fella Conglomerate.

In order to bring together a diverse demographic, “We had a desire to appeal to multiple audiences,” Neighbors said. “We didn't want any show to be the same as any other.”

Christina Baddar, a senior in Neighbors' class, echoed this sentiment: “We wanted to learn how to better connect to the city, how Wake Forest could connect better and get to know the city better.”

The class helped garner the largest audience possible by making DashPop a cross-genre extravaganza that covered hip-hop to reggae to scream-o. Another equalizer was the ticket price, intentionally capped at 30 dollars to bring a diverse crowd.

Neighbors, who has extensive music festival experience in Athens, Georgia, said one of the weekend's surprises was that “All of the bands showed up! Everyone was quite professional.”

And about two thousand people came to listen to the professionals, Neighbors said, pleased with the festival's flagship year, which garnered only “coffee money” but broke even (an entrepreneurial success in his eyes). 

The festival also succeeded in drawing students and young professionals from different regions of Winston-Salem. Neighbors, however, is drawn to the music festival as a genre:

“The idea of a music festival is that you consume a lot of music in a short period of time. That you purposefully put yourself in a position to see things you don't know about. There's accidental discovery and serendipity [in that],” he said.

The Fella Conglomerate, a band of Wake Forest graduates who performed on that Saturday night, were drawn in on this serendipitous ride. Charles Ramsey and Maya Cole took the stage in Ziggy's Tavern, swaying to electronic instrumentation and singing live R & B vocals. Described as “soul collaborators” on their Facebook page, the duo sang circuitous and catchy tunes about love and loss. 

Grant Livesay, a Winston-Salem local, pre-recorded The Fella Conglomerate instrumentation, playing piano, drums, bass and guitar among others. Ramsey, one of Fella Conglomerate's vocalists, says the band's goals are simple:

“Let it have depth. Let it mean something.”

Neighbors was pleased with its actualization at DashPop.

“I saw a garage band on Saturday night, just cello and guitar, and it made my whole weekend. It was folkpunk—just rowdy and had lots of sharp edges.  You felt that music as much as you heard it. That's what I'm always looking for.”