Artists of Charlottesville’s O Records took over the second floor of Boylan Heights April 10 for their spring semester showcase. Student musicians took the stage to perform original work and classic covers to an overflowing crowd of bar-goers and friends.
A table set-up, handing out programs and selling CDs, alluded to the operation behind the scenes. O Records, originally called Olupanya Records until the name was shortened several years ago, was founded in 2003 and provides a platform for student musicians to meet, perform and collaborate on several different projects. The group’s chief endeavor is to produce an annual mixtape and stage a showcase each semester meant to highlight the current crop of talent involved.
O Records started as a primarily hip-hop-focused group, but has since expanded to include singer-songwriter, rock and pop acts. Second-year College student Matthew Leon, an O Records producer and musician, described his experience, saying that he has “loved every minute of being part of the group” while describing his fellow musicians as “incredible.”
After the showcase, The Cavalier Daily sat down with O Records head Wes Bonelli, a second-year College student, to discuss the group, both as it currently operates as well as what fans can expect in the future.
Arts & Entertainment: What would you say are the goals of O Records? Your AtUVA page said getting together student musicians to produce, perform and write. Could you speak to that?
Wes Bonelli: It’s a great network just to meet up with musicians and to meet people to potentially start projects with. It really facilitates stuff like that and also just as a pipeline for people to get original music that they have out there. We put out a mixtape every year. The mixtape consist of normally 8-10 different songs, originals that come from within the organization that have been proposed and are reviewed and gotten together and recorded. That’s a great process and we’re going to be doing that every semester instead of every year, which is great because it gives people more of a chance. Other than that, we sort of connect people with live performance opportunities around Charlottesville and around Grounds. And also it’s a community of people and music.
A&E: You mentioned going through the organization with [original songs]. What is the process for a student with an original song? Is there a creative development structure in place?
WB: We keep it pretty free form and up to the songwriters and song leaders. What we do is, at the beginning of each semester, we accept song proposals both for the mixtape and for the showcase. Once those go through, a song leader will send out word within the group with what kind of instrumentation they’re looking for and people will respond and groups sort of just form slowly. It depends on the songwriter, but it can be a collaborative process with the whole group or some people come in with a lot of direction and it really varies. It’s all based on the person whose original work it is.
A&E: Could you speak about your specific role in the organization? How about the different roles available for students?
WB: When we hold auditions, we describe it as for musicians, for producers [and] for graphic designers, because we do a lot of work with that as well. And also for management roles as well. People can fulfill one or more of those roles — it depends on what they’re looking for really. It’s pretty flexible. My role is to basically make sure stuff happens and gets done like it’s supposed to. [It’s] lots of communicating with people more than anything else.
A&E: You said O Records started as a hip hop organization. At least from last night, there was a lot of variety in what was performed. How would you describe the current musical make up of O Records and is it something that shifts [over time]?
WB: It is super dynamic and it’s all based on who is in the organization at any one point. Like I said, it all began as primarily hip hop but over the years it’s diversified and expanded a lot and now we have singer-songwriter acts, we have electronic music producers. It runs the gamut, like last night. We have jazz. It’s all dependent on who’s in the organization at one time
A&E: Any upcoming events for the rest of the semester?
WB: We just started partnering with Open Grounds on the corner putting on a biweekly open mic on Thursday nights and opening it to the public as well as UVA students and O Records. We’re hoping that becomes a recurring opportunity for people to come and share their stuff. That will keep going on, we had great attendance the first time and the second so I have high hopes for that.
A&E: What is in the pipeline for the fall?
WB: The showcase and mixtape. O Records is also super valuable for people looking to form bands and to start playing around in Charlottesville and UVA if they want to. It’s acted as a springboard for several different bands. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Erin and the Wildfire [or] my own band the Smiling Islanders. It’s a great opportunity, and we want to offer that to anyone who’s interested.
Partnering with other organizations for events has been a large part of what we’ve done in the past [and] what we do now, and I’d like to see our scope expand even further. Opportunities like that are great because they offer O Records artists the chance to perform, along with the chance for us to build relationships with a wide variety of different groups and provide music for them when they need it.
Again, the main function is to put out the mixtape and showcase and to offer independent artists that same opportunity. It’s a fun group of people and a great community.
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