R&B and hip-hop artist ELHAE will perform at Studzinski Recital Hall tomorrow night in the first collaborative show put on by the African-American Society (Af-Am) and WBOR, Bowdoin’s campus radio station.
This concert is a part of Black History Month programming.
“We’re hoping to be able to draw a lot of people from different parts of the campus to get together and try some new music out,” said WBOR’s concert director Nick Benson ’17, who co-planned the event.
The choice to hold the performance in Studzinski was both a practical and atmospheric one: it has an almost 300-person capacity and the auditorium lends itself to a more calmer, more controlled setting.
“At this point, [my music is] very melodic, chords-driven. I love dark chords and very ambiance, vibe-y tracks on top of hard hitting drums,” said ELHAE, which stands for “Every Life Has An Ending,” in a phone interview with the Orient.
“ELHAE is a slower type of music. It’s not fast paced or anything, it is a little more R&B, so I think there will be good vibes,” said Af-Am minister of public relations Lydia Godo-Solo ’17.
Although Studzinski generally hosts classical and jazz concerts, the auditorium was designed to accommodate various music styles. Depending on the performance, curtains can be deployed to absorb sound reflection and shape the response of the room.
“For instance, for something like ELHAE’s performance, which will be a little more percussive—and it’s contemporary music styling—we tend to dampen the reverberation of the room,” said Chris Watkinson, adjunct lecturer in music and recital hall technical director.
In terms of a visual aesthetic, artists perform on a bare stage with minimal light and backdrops. This contributes to the small, intimate feeling of the auditorium.
“We try to let the artist present themselves in their own right as best they can,” said Watkinson.
For ELHAE, this means performing what he knows best: songs from his first album, “Aura,” which he released as an EP in 2015.
“Nine times out of 10 that’s where a lot of people have heard me from,” said ELHAE.
He also plans to perform a few songs from his most recent album, “All Have Fallen,” which debuted last March.
ELHAE compared the process of writing songs to his childhood hobby of coloring.
“When I was a child, I used to have my coloring books and I would trace the lines first with a crayon and then once I had the lines perfect, that’s when I would go in and color in the picture,” said ELHAE.
For him, tracing the picture is equivalent to murmuring in the studio. Once he develops a melody from that murmur, he begins to write the lyrics. The lyrics are him coloring in his picture.
ELHAE grew up in Georgia and has always been interested in pursuing music—both his mother and grandmother sang in church choirs. He began writing songs when he was 12 and then started working in the studio a few years later.
“I always knew that I was going to do something with music. I didn’t know what it was going to be—either behind the scenes or in front of the camera,” said ELHAE. “I had no idea, but turns out I’m in front of the camera.”
Following a successful release of “Aura,” ELHAE plans to debut the sequel, “Aura II,” at the end of this month. Ultimately, ELHAE hopes that people will be able to relate to his music and connect with the personal situations he talks about in his songs.
“Helping people through my music is what I’m here to do,” he said. “So hopefully making that on a bigger scale, a grander scale—getting the music heard globally is the end goal.”
ELHAE will perform tomorrow in Studzinski Recital Hall at 8 p.m. Tickets are free and available at the door.