The Oberlin College Black Musicians’ Guild was founded in 2001 by Martha Newland, OC ’03, and Ivy Newman, OC ’04, to promote and connect Black musicians on campus and in the industry. In addition to sponsoring events like movie nights and community meetings, the organization has brought a wide range of performers to campus, most notably soprano Angela Brown in 2010 and rapper Kendrick Lamar in 2011, to give lectures, masterclasses, and performances.
OCBMG has also provided many performance opportunities for students both on campus and in the larger Oberlin community. A staple of the organization was the halftime performance at the Black History Month fashion show, an opportunity for Black students to work a professional, paid gig. All of this was made possible by the tremendous efforts of students, with institutional support. However, like the fashion show, the activity of OCBMG has fallen off.
Last year OCBMG only succeeded in holding an interest meeting and a few Afrikan Heritage House dinners. This year, even that was lost. At the start of the year, fourth-year Conservatory guitarist Damian Goggans noticed a push from the Black community to revitalize the organization.
“A lot of students come up to me like, ‘What’s happening with this group? I want to be part of it; I want to do these things,’” Goggans said. “So I was like, ‘You know what? I will get it together.’ Then I saw why it wasn’t together in the first place, and I gave up on that idea.”
But why wasn’t it “together in the first place,” especially if the need for the organization has not waned? Third-year double-degree student Chloe Pauyo suggested that it has been a slow process. She has served in multiple positions with OCBMG over the past few years and has watched it dissolve.
“[It’s] mainly due to a mix of poor handling of passing down information and the sheer amount of work a Black Conservatory student has to do,” Pauyo said. “With the lack of its presence, there’s a lack of connection between incoming Black musicians in the Conservatory and older ones and an inability of sharing communication.”
Marley Howard, OC ’24, also recognized the need for community while studying jazz voice at Oberlin.
“Being a Black musician on campus is hard because we’re at a predominantly white institution,” Howard said. “I think it’s all about community. It’s about surrounding yourself with the right people, people who will support you, people who will have your back, people who want to lift you up, people who can give you constructive criticism and hold you accountable, people who can back you up and and still hold you to what they know you are. It’s so important to have that, especially as a young Black artist in this time when there’s so many tragic things going on in the world.”
Howard and Conservatory fourth-year Gabi Allemana responded by founding the Crimson Collective in 2022, a group focused on achieving gender justice and advocacy in Black American Music in the Jazz department and beyond.
“We were trying to work with administration really closely, which we did successfully,” Howard said. “We were bringing in guest artists, which was super important, and we were really trying to teach people the history of Black American Music because there’s so much erasure when it comes to femme and LGBTQIA folks in this music in particular.”
The organization boasted impressive accomplishments in its short history due to the intense passion of its members.
“In its height, wow, I was putting in so many hours to make it work,” Howard said. “We were having guest artists once a month — big guest artists. We had everyone from Samira Joy [and] Terri Lyne Carrington to Madison McFerrin, and it was really such a blessing to be able to bring all those people and have them talk to so many musicians who really needed to hear from people that looked like them or were working on things that they were interested in. At its height, we had about seven people on our team, and everyone had the same goal, which is why it was so successful, because we were all so motivated to make Crimson the best it could be.”
Pauyo was one of the students heavily involved in Crimson Collective. Once Howard graduated, however, she and her peers found the inherited leadership responsibility overwhelming, and the ability to book artists and continue conversations quickly fizzled out.
“It’s really difficult managing the workload, especially for the third- and fourth-years who tend to be put into leadership roles without the proper infrastructure,” Pauyo said. “A large issue with both the organizations is the lack of care put into passing down that information in a way where things can function continuously. … It’s just gotten weaker and weaker due to a mix of not having the proper guide on how to run those meetings or what kind of events are expected.”
But while a guide might be logistically practical, institutional support is everything. Additionally, a formulaic approach may not be the ideal path for the goals of these organizations, especially when, at its heart, the organization is ideologically driven.
“There is no clear outline for how to do this work,” Howard said. “How to run an organization that could turn everything on its head and really change the landscape of culture. … It’s really hard to run an organization of that magnitude and of that weight if everyone is not a hundred percent on the wavelength of collective liberation and wanting to put that same foot forward. Crimson was founded on Black feminist thought, and that was really important to Gabi and I as founders.”
Howard emphasized the importance of student leaders in creating the basis for a meaningful community effort, despite concerns regarding longevity.
“We used to say we had a dream team and that was beautiful, but people graduate,” Howard said. “People decide to do other things. That makes sense and it happens, but it’s really hard to be one or two people trying to do all the work of an organization like that. You really need solid people, … people who are just so dedicated, because you really do have to put some other things aside, maybe put your personal things aside, to be able to commit. I was doing 20 hours a week working on that organization at its height. Some people might not want to do that and that’s understandable.”
And it’s not only the students that are overwhelmed. Pauyo mentioned that Black faculty in the Conservatory, who are expected to fill mentorship roles, are also stretched thin, limiting the opportunities to elevate Black voices on campus.
“For Black History Month there’s really no programming surrounding Black music or the appreciation of Black musicians, whereas in the College there were so many programs, so many lectures, so many talks,” Pauyo said. “Another part of it is not having enough Black faculty to support our organization. [Assistant Professor of African American and African Diasporic Musics Courtney-Savali] Andrews is one of the few. She was our faculty advisor ,and she’s already stretched to the bone.”
Goggans, for the record, has invested much time in supporting incoming Black students through other organizations like The Brotherhood, a group dedicated to celebrating the experiences of Black men on campus, and as a Resident Assistant of Afrikan Heritage House. He has also conducted academic research on Black composers who write for guitar, culminating in a publication in Notes: the Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association. He is invested in the new music scene, encouraging Black students to compose for his instrument, creating community between Black Conservatory students.
“[Conservatory life is] fun and it’s stressful, and at least for me, having a group like OCBMG or just knowing other Black musicians has been very helpful,” Goggans said. “It can be very lonely because … I’m the only Black person [in my studio], so clearly I’m representing the entirety of my race for this one thing. If I come here and I play the wrong note or I don’t know what the name of this piece is or how to say it correctly, clearly I shouldn’t be playing the guitar. It’s nice to be able to go to someone else and see that they’re going through some similar things and be like, ‘No, you’re supposed to be here.’”
But as we’ve seen across the board, all of this outreach takes its toll.
“For the first part of the year, there was a lot of me taking on all the things, trying to do extra to hold onto the idea of what [Afrikan Heritage House] could have been, but you keep doing that and then you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m also the only one that showed up to this thing or the only one putting this much effort into it,’” Goggans said. “So noticing when you need to take a break and when you’re only holding on to an idea and not reality is really important. … Part of the issue turns into not letting go.”
Goggans is getting ready to let go of Oberlin completely as he continues his studies at the University of Louisville with a focus on music education. Howard said goodbye to campus last year and is now working as a vocalist and visual artist in New York City. She appreciated her time with Crimson and at Oberlin as formative in preparing her for the very different world she is learning to navigate.
“It’s a heavy crown to bear and it’s a lot of work, but it’s so worth it,” Howard said. “I would never take it back for anything. … You grow so much as an individual and as a leader and a musician in that leadership position. You make mistakes. You learn so many things. I think that has also impacted the progression of Crimson because … there’s a lot of pressure and a lot of eyes on you to be a ‘correct activist’ in this time. That’s something I don’t take lightly. … I know my morals and values and the things that I want in my musicians and communities, and I feel like it really gave me a baseline for how I feel about interacting with people. Oberlin really inspired me to read so much and make sure [that] if I’m walking into a space, I’m for collective liberation of everyone in there, because that’s the only way we’re all getting free. … Now, as a band leader and an artist working in New York City, surrounding myself with people I know are for the same things that I am, having all that art administration work from Crimson and everything else has allowed me to get other jobs in that field.”
The practical benefits of Howard’s experience with Crimson have been paralleled by a security in artistic and personal values that were bolstered by her time at Oberlin.
“I’m of the full belief that you need to express yourself as an artist,” Howard said. “Our life is too short to be following what some oppressor has to say about what kind of art you should be making. If it’s what your heart is telling you to be creating and you have support and the inspiration and drive to do that, then you should be doing that.”
And the impact of even the ghosts of these organizations have resounded beyond its past participants. Their significance is still felt on campus, even for those who have not heard of OCBMG or Crimson Collective. The Black community has not ceased to exist because of a bad case of burnout. This sense of solidarity and mentorship present on campus is integral to the Conservatory experience at Oberlin. What is lost is the institutional support available to expand the opportunities and legacies of these would-be organizations.
“It definitely is a cycle,” Goggans said. “It’s nice: Now that I’m a senior, I can kind of see some of those cycles repeating already. They got it. I don’t have to worry about it because even though it looks this way now, I know that in a year or two they’re going to get it together.”
