Recently the Diversity and Equity Center hosted a “SURC Pit Takeover” in which they showcased a plethora of musicians throughout history, all of whom have made big impacts on black history and music.

“The idea came from a meeting that we had with our director at the DEC. We were talking about different ways we can show appreciation for different aspects of our culture,” Shadae Ingram, a senior exercise science major and member of the CWU Black Student Union (BSU), said. “A lot of the time, other people can grapple on to music, what they’re saying, what the vibe of the song is. So we decided to take over this very public space and fill it with black creativity, black art a black sound.”

Music being used as a tool to educate is not a new idea, and Ingram shared why they believe this concept is so important, and why black creators have to fight so much harder to succeed. “All music has a story, it has a history, and ours is just one that we’re trying to put in the spotlight. All music should matter to the general population, but most of the time if it’s a black creator, if it’s a black creative saying that happened to them, it will never be mainstream until it blows up on TikTok or something, and it gets the rest of America’s white gaze. That’s the difference,” Ingram said.

Lashaya Doty, a junior social services major and member of the CWU BSU, also spoke on the importance of listening to music for education. “When it comes to black culture I feel like we see it always for entertainment, but no one actually wants to sit down and actually listen to what’s being said,” Doty said. “For example with Kendrick’s [Super Bowl] performance. He had a message, and people completely said, ‘Where is it at? I don’t see it.’ When it comes to not just hip hop, but black music, it’s so important for us to be listening and not just dancing along. Because, of course, we can dance to it, but if we’re not listening to what words are being said, or the history that’s being represented in this music, what are we really listening to?” 

Ingram spoke further on the importance of hip-hop as a genre. “People really forget that this genre definitely existed before this time. Hip-hop is a really pivotal part of black culture, and if you’ve been listening to hip-hop and you’re in the culture, you know that it didn’t start with Kendrick Lamar,” Ingram said. “It started years ago, in the 90s, people rapping about freedom, people rapping about how problems were brought into our neighborhoods, and how we’re still going through it. We’re still dealing with the repercussions of chemical warfare in our neighborhoods, bombs are being dropped in our neighborhoods. If you like hip-hop, you listen to ‘Fight The Power,’ listen to ‘The Public Enemy.’ You listen to people that have a message that is freedom.” 

Doty talked about how important artists like Megan Thee Stallion are to musical culture, and how often they are discredited. “She’s [Megan Thee Stallion] definitely a woman empowerment girl, she doesn’t just shake her ass. Her music builds confidence in black women, because she has struggled, and she showed that in her music … We all know her but we need to really listen to her story. She’s really talking to young black girls and saying, ‘You are powerful, you are confident, you are amazing, you are beautiful.’”

Music often has a strong cultural background, and, according to Ingram, one goal of this event was to educate students on the history of a lot of this music which is so deeply tied to black culture and black history. “Music is so important in education and in history, people can learn from the feeling that’s invoked from the song, and that is a lifetime of learning.”

“When colonization was happening, one of the ways that they would subject a person to self-hatred is by what they were saying to them. They were controlling the psyche. We were not allowed to speak, we weren’t allowed to sing. If you did, you were beaten. So when we sing it’s so much more than just a song. It’s a lifetime of pain, a lifetime of fighting and resilience that is heard over an 808, a trap beat,” Ingram said. “The different creations of sounds all mean something, and they all are telling a story … There’s nothing that could replace the amount of learning and the amount of generational information and trauma and wealth that is passed down through the courses of these songs.”

This event was the first of a series of takeovers, which will be happening every Wednesday from 11 a.m. to noon in the SURC Pit.