Black ties and flowing gowns filled the Memorial Ballroom, ambient jazz soundtracking the night in between displays of student talent that saw audience members cheer, laugh and even belt out show tune classics.
On Friday, Oct. 17, the University of Georgia’s Black Affairs Council (BAC) held their annual Café Soul event. This year’s theme was “sous les lumières de Paris,” and catered by Olive Garden, the Patisserie On Main and Mimi’s Matcha Cafe. The event served as a lively exhibition of Black student talent.
Featuring talent acts that included singing duets, instrumentalists, comedy stand-up and spoken-word poetry, this year’s Café Soul, according to Martin Bong, a management information systems major at UGA and cultural and social programming co-chair for BAC, included a more extensive talent palette than previous years.
Bong, who hosted the night alongside BAC external vice president Arionya Gude, said the purpose of the showcase is to give Black UGA students a platform to step outside their comfort zone. No talent has been denied, with the goal of creating a “comfortable space” that encourages.
“I always think having a showcase to really display Black talent is always going to be very important,” Bong said. “I think there’s cultural elements or cultural relations that Black UGA, or even people of color here at UGA, can also really share and experience. And I feel like that ties into the roots, to the music that we listen to and the music that we choose to sing.”
Among the talent line-up was a whimsical cover of “A Night to Remember” by Laufey and Beabadoobee, performed by Chyra Strong and Kai McMichael. The performance served as a charming, relaxing number in a night of entertainment.
Another performance featured UGA freshman entertainment and media studies major Sydney Hammett, who performed a rousing, soulful cover of “Almost Is Never Enough” by Ariana Grande. Throughout her performance, audience members hummed, swayed and encouraged her to “sing!”
Hammett, who grew up performing, said that she thought Café Soul was the “perfect opportunity” to showcase her talent, as well as an opportunity to meet other singers on campus. For Hammett, workshopping with other performers, a vibe that was “really healthy,” in rehearsals in the days leading up to the showcase helped alleviate nerves.
“I think that really helped with the crowd aspect of it, and then also hearing other acts and hearing their nerves, to make me resonate deeply with them,” Hammett said. “We were all just kind of nervous trying to workshop our songs. We all, for some reason, had lost a little bit of our voice, so it was just really, really helpful and comforting.”
Myles Cutter, a senior entertainment and media studies major at UGA, is a founding member of the band Synata, which provided ambient jazz music for the event during intermission, and echoed Hammett’s sentiments on the helpfulness of community provided by the event in the wider context of BUGA.
“Events like this on campus are the breeding grounds for Black community at UGA,” Cutter said. “It helps you to find that community, those like-minded people. I’m a very jazzy, artful and art-enjoying kind of person. So this type of event in conjunction with these type of people is like home on UGA’s campus.”
Other talent acts performed by students included an acoustic, sentimental performance of Frazey Ford’s “September Fields” by singer and guitarist Zaria Doss, a stand-up routine by Ronald Brown III that saw him dish out reflective anecdotes on being hit twice by a car in a single day and a spoken-word poem by sophomore Sekou Sesay, which transformed his observances about “the girl with the butterfly clip who stood next to me at the ECV bus stop” into an artful meditation on admiration from afar.
Between acts, Bong and Gude engaged with a responsive crowd, performing “vibe checks” that tested the verve of audience members. At one point, the audience were challenged to perform Cynthia Erivo’s infamously challenging vocal riff at the end of “Defying Gravity.”
It was Danita Martin’s first time attending and “thoroughly” enjoying Café Soul. Martin, an accountant and advisor to members of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., including a member who performed in the show, said that she believes events like Café Soul give students an opportunity to show and be exposed to various cultures.
“There were some old songs, some people, some songs I never heard of,” Martin said. “That was an experience for me. I got to hear songs I had never heard of. So I think it’s just a good time to just show your culture.”
As a showcase for Black art, the continued existence of Café Soul is, to people like Olivia Hazelwood, vital. Hazelwood, an international affairs major at UGA and cultural and social programming co-chair for BAC, believes that it is important to continue the exhibition of Black culture through art.
According to Hazelwood, recent national policies around DEI have presented challenges in terms of how BAC presents itself as a group explicitly serving the Black community. Regardless, Hazelwood stressed the importance of Black students knowing there are “people here at UGA that understand them.”
“Just [know] that we are here, we’re present, and you can always come and join and have a home,” Hazelwood said. “Tthere’s always gonna be somewhere to come and you feel like you belong.”
