Tickets for Coachella sold out in record time this year, but this Friday, Stanford students can attend Snowchella for free. The second annual Snowchella, hosted by Stanford Concert Network, Sigma Nu and Kappa Kappa Gamma, is this Friday at 9:30 p.m. on Sigma Nu’s front lawn.
Playing at this year’s event will be OCD: Moosh + Twist, an up-and-coming rap group from Philadelphia. Though OCD are still high school seniors, they’ve been gaining a lot of exposure on the East Coast and will be talking with major record labels in San Francisco while they’re out west. Their mixtape drops March 7.
“They have a sound similar to Chiddy Bang,” said Joey Mezzatesta ‘12, one of the event’s coordinators. He explained that, like Chiddy Bang, OCD samples popular songs, including “some pretty cool alternative rock music.”
The next performers will be the cleverly named Pance Party, a San Francisco-based DJ group that recently opened for Dada Life in San Francisco.
And headlining the event will be AC Slater, a DJ from Brooklyn who runs his own record label, Trouble and Bass, and has just completed his world tour.
“It should be different from your typical frat party,” Mezzatesta said. “The tempo last year was very active, fun and upbeat. People were really into the music and what was going on.”
“[Snowchella] was very successful last year,” said Abigail Andrews ‘13, another coordinator for the event. “This year, we focused more on publicity and made sure our marketing materials were top notch.”
After Snowchella’s great success last year, drawing in a crowd of roughly a thousand music-loving Stanford students, Sigma Nu and Kappa were eager to bring the event into its second year with a bang. The Stanford Concert Network provided the majority of the funding for the musicians, booking fees, sound equipment and set up, while Sigma Nu provided the venue. Both the fraternity and Kappa provided additional funding for the tent and stage.
Snowchella doesn’t just bring music to campus; it also brings awareness. Like last year’s event, Snowchella 2011 will benefit Support for International Change (SIC), an organization that trains American college students in HIV education and places them in Tanzania’s rural villages. Many Stanford students have spent their summers working with SIC, which offers students committed to global health and rural development issues the opportunity to work with local HIV education workers and Tanzanian university-level students. Applications for working with SIC this summer are open until March 4.
This year, the Snowchella coordinators are working on raising more awareness about SIC by tabling in White Plaza this week, selling t-shirts and products made by HIV support groups in Tanzania. “We’re really making SIC a bigger component of our publicity efforts this year, connecting the cause with Sigma Nu and Kappa,” said Andrews, Kappa philanthropy chair.