CONSERVATORY

Benefit Concert Supports Syria and Türkiye After Earthquake

Lyric Anderson Senior Staff Writer

On Feb. 6, Türkiye and Syria were devastated by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake, the largest the region had seen since 1939. Over 18 million people have been affected by the disaster, with over 55,000 dead and millions displaced from their homes.

Conservatory and College musicians have found a way to utilize their skills to make a difference in the form of benefit concerts.

Oberlin’s last two benefit concerts were produced by The Musikos Collective, an Oberlin-based, student-run organization founded by double-degree third-year Daniel Knapp, double-degree second-year Diana Reed, and double-degree third-year Aaron Lieberman. Last year, Musikos put on the Ukraine Benefit Concert, and on March 31 this year, the Syria and Türkiye Benefit Concert.

“We founded Musikos originally as just a sort of concert series platform,” Knapp said. “Then it kind of evolved more into a presenting organization, and this school year we’ve presented 13 concerts. I think the Syria and Türkiye Benefit Concert was one of the best successes in that regard.”

The concert took place at the Oberlin First United Methodist Church, featuring a large array of student performers across disciplines. Among these performances were compositions from the Western classical canon, Turkish and Anatolian folk songs, and an improvisational jazz piece. One of the performers was College fourth-year Özüm Pamukçu, a multi-disciplinary vocalist and international student from Türkiye.

“At first I was hurt by the political and racial connotations of people at Oberlin not speaking about this,” Pamukçu said. “Then I heard about this concert happening and was like, ‘I need to do it.’ Oberlin has international students from Türkiye, and personally, I just want to feel supported.”

The College sent an email expressing condolences, though students felt this was not enough. Still, many students felt motivated to take action, which is exactly

Marley Howard

Jazz Vocalist, Artist, Activist

what Musikos and the other musicians did.

“I think it’s really cool that the school is set up to give us the opportunity to make concerts like this,” Knapp said. “This is something that we would’ve done anyway.”

Most of the pieces performed were chosen with the intention of empathizing with those affected by the crisis. Not only does this encourage listeners to take out their checkbooks, but it helped both the performers and listeners better understand Turkish and Syrian culture, making the issue seem more personal and less distant.

“My group performed a composition called ‘Vazgeçtim’ by Ara Dinkjian, an Armenian-American composer,” Pamukçu said. “It’s a very sad tune that was kind of appropriate for the occasion. It’s about giving up on a loved one, and a lot of people had to give up on their friends and families.”

In the Syria and Türkiye Benefit Concert, Musikos raised over a thousand dollars for three different non-profits including UNICEF and AKUT Search and Rescue Association, which are based in Türkiye, specifically targeting relief efforts for earthquake victims.

Another factor for producing any benefit concert is making it happen while the issue at hand is still actively being talked about and reported on. With a catastrophic, global event such as the Syria and Türkiye earthquake, the media as a whole tends to hyperfixate on it for a brief period of time, before moving on to the next hot topic.

“There is a timeliness to it,” Reed said. “But I think that’s also a testament to how quickly people at Oberlin are able to come out to support a cause.”

Despite taking place over a month after the earthquake, there were 30 individual performers, divided into 13 groups.

“Benefit concerts give us something tangible to do,” Reed said. “If we can make music together, raise money, keep inspiring hope and make sure that they know that they’re not alone, I think that’s one of the most powerful things that we can do.”

Delaney Fox Conservatory Editor

Marley Howard is a third-year Conservatory student majoring in Jazz Voice and minoring in Studio Art. She incorporates protest and activism into her art. Her mediums include singing, poetry, printmaking, charcoal, ceramics, and paint.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How were you introduced to protest music?

There was always a lot of music around the house growing up. My dad listened to a lot of reggae — a lot of Bob Marley, my namesake. A lot of Bob Marley’s music is protest music, so I was aware of it at a young age. Also, growing up biracial, my identity wasn’t something that was ignored. I knew I was Black, I knew I was born Black, I knew I was staying Black. My dad was like, “Life is unfair. You are going to get used to it.” So that was also kind of around me from a young age, and then I think it started getting incorporated into my music. I realized I had a knack for finding more obscure songs about these things that I related to in some way. Nina Simone was also played a lot in my house growing up, and she also performed a lot of protest music. She and Billie Holiday, who sang “Strange Fruit,” which is about the lynching of Black people in the South, really got me into jazz — or Black American Music, the more correct term. It wasn’t until I was about 17 or 18 when I started to experience very harsh or blatant racism, sexism, misogyny, and harm in ways that I hadn’t experienced growing up. So then I really dove into protest music, and I found a lot of power in listening to it and singing it.

How do you go about incorporating activism or protest music into your art and performances?

I feel fortunate to be here at Oberlin because you don’t get much pushback. I feel very fortunate to be in the position where I can sing a lot of protest music right now, and no one’s gonna tell me no. So really, it’s just finding the songs that I really connect with or think could be really powerful. It’s a lot of listening — it’ll be three o’clock in the morning, and I’m just listening to song after song from just this one person’s discography, and then it’s like, “Oh, I found something.” It’s not like I look up “best protest songs to sing” or anything like that. With visual art, it’s a slightly different relationship, because I feel like all of my art is inherently political, not that it’s always protesting something, but I think it’s political for me to put Black bodies on an art piece. I don’t draw a lot of white people. It’s just not something I’ve really been interested in doing. I think we’ve all seen enough white people in art, and I’m sure there will be enough people making white people in art. Especially growing up, I don’t think I saw Black people or Black representation in visual art. I also sometimes use text from songs in my art. Sometimes I’ll write things and put it into my art. Sometimes I have a hard time writing because I have so many things I wanna cover. It’s really just a matter of picking the issue and then being like, “Okay, I’m gonna do it and I don’t care what anyone thinks.”

What topics or themes do you discuss in your art?

Generally, I talk about womanhood and what that has looked like for me as a Black woman; mental health and having PTSD, anxiety, and depression; sexual harm and harassment. I can’t make or write about anything I haven’t experienced, so everything that I make is coming from a brutally honest perspective. These are the things that have happened to me and that I’m dealing with, and sometimes they are not pretty or cool. It’s a way of processing, I think.

Can you talk about the statement you made at Jazz Forum last Friday?

I wrote all the words we ever said and sang at that Forum. I was in a vocal quartet, so there were a lot of amazing musicians and we all helped pick the songs.

I feel like I see a lot of white men playing Black American Music, which in and of itself is fine. This music is so important to me and the history of it is so important to me, but sometimes I feel like other people don’t care as much about the history of it, which is sad to watch. It can be really draining week after week to watch that, and so I think when we talked about making a statement, we wanted to say “We are here; we are taking up space.” When is there a chance to really say that to this group of people? There really is no other moment. I guess the statement of the piece and poem is, at least in my life, the people that have helped me get through the most difficult things in my life have mostly been not men — they’ve been women, nonbinary, and trans people that have said, “Okay, we got you.” I wanted to honor that and show that when we are together, we can dismantle things and create a more peaceful place. That’s protest music. We had the band members walk off the stage while we were still speaking the poem, and we put the mics down and kept going with the repeated line. It was a statement. I wanted to make sure everyone was listening.

Why is activism important to your art?

I think we have a society that’s constantly in a capitalist, workaholic state that dampers people’s creativity. Some people’s brains don’t work like that — my brain does not work like that. So I feel like to make art, you are inherently protesting society in that way. I also think protest in art is so important because if no one’s talking about something, you feel like you’re alone when that’s really not the case. If you’re experiencing it, so is the person five feet away from you. And I don’t think it’s meant for everyone to do, but I need to talk about why I am constantly being objectified or hypersexualized, or about sexual assault and how it has impacted me, or how racism has affected me as a mixed person, or how I feel like I am not accepted in any space because of my identity, or my mental health and PTSD. There was once a point in my life where I was like, “Why is no one else talking about it?” It’s so nice to see someone make art about these issues. You feel seen as an individual. I think what’s important to me in my art is that other people see themselves in it.

John Elrod Sports Editor

During her time as a student at Oberlin, Assistant Professor of Sociology Alicia Smith-Tran, OC 10, was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and a member of the women’s basketball team. After graduating, she received an M.A. from Newhouse School at Syracuse University and a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University. She began teaching at Oberlin in 2021 after three years at Texas Christian University, and her research focuses on Black women’s health and sport sociology.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve published several works about race, gender and sport. How did you first become interested in the intersectionality of those topics?

Like a lot of sociologists — and maybe researchers in general — many of my academic interests are rooted in personal experience. Being an athlete most of my life, especially being a Black, biracial woman in sports, shaped my interest in learning more about how our positionalities affect our athletic and fitness experiences and our perceptions of our own bodies. When I was in graduate school, I had an identity crisis of sorts; I had always been active and involved in sports and was always training for something, but suddenly I wasn’t. I started running and after a while I loved it. I did several 5Ks, 10Ks, and half marathons. The sociologist in me could not help but notice how white and homogenous recreational running tends to be. It is also expensive to participate in these events, buy the gear, and embed yourself in “running