Open mic night gives students a chance to showcase their talents

The Office of Communiversity hosted the twice-annual open mic night at the Cougar Dome on Friday, Jan. 26. Open mic night gives students get a chance to showcase their gifts and talents each semester.

“Open mic night has definitely become an APU tradition in recent years. There’s a lot of talent on this campus, but there’s not a lot of opportunities for people on the outside of music major programs,” said Lindsay Hopkins, a performing arts intern at the Office of Communiversity. “There’s no difficulty in finding good voices and talents to sign up. The only difficulty is fitting all of them into a small two-hour window.”

Open mic night gives students like Woo Young Lee and Hayden Wagner, both freshman commercial music majors, good practice for their future careers.

“It’s my very first performance, and since this is like practice for my future career, it’s kind of nerve-wracking,” Lee said. Lee hopes to become a recording artist.

Wagner, on the other hand, said that he wanted to just have fun and not put any pressure on this performance.

“We picked some fun songs we think everyone will relate to. The first song is called ‘idk love’ by Jeremy Zucker, and I’ll play some electric guitar chords on that one,” Wagner said. “Our second song is ‘All That Matters’ by Justin Bieber, and we’re singing that acapella, so it might be a little risky singing that without the security of an instrument, but I think it’s a song everybody will know, so they can sing along.”

Returning to open mic night for the second semester in a row is Nick Mesa, a junior commercial music major. Mesa performed at last semester’s open mic night with a friend he often collaborates with, but this semester, he went all out on his first solo performance.

“I’m always nervous before performances. Usually if I’m performing with my friend, we’ll distract each other with memes,” Mesa said. “But since it’s just me tonight, I’m running through my performance in my head to make sure I don’t forget anything.”

Mesa performed another original song this semester called “Drive Me Crazy.”

“I’ve had this one in my repertoire for a while, but I haven’t performed it yet,” Mesa said. “Performing solo is both a good and bad thing, because you’re in control of everything, but then again, there’s not another human there to help you get back on track if you get off beat or something. I’m used to playing with a band, but open mic night is more low-key, so I felt comfortable with a more relaxed, chill vibe.”

Through open mic nights, the Performing Arts department at the Office of Communiversity hopes to create more opportunities for students to engage with their community and showcase their talents.

In addition to hosting open mic nights every semester, the Office of Communiversity also hosts the yearly Amp the Theater concert, Last Bash and Expression Nights, where the community can connect with each other through music and culture in collaboration with different APU departments and organizations.

To promote community and connection, the Office of Communiversity will host a Joshua Tree rock climbing trip next weekend, Feb. 2-4.