Uncovering Emerson's Music Scene
This article is from the FCS fall 2019 issue, read the full magazine here.
Bonnie Parker photographed by Graham Wheeler-Nelson // @f_instagraham
On October fourth, I was added to the Emerson Musician Mafia Facebook page, pulled into a world of musical talent on campus. My knowledge of the supposed “music scene” at Emerson until this point was the under-attended monthly open mics. However, this page was home to a plethora of artists from almost every genre, calling into the void of the Emerson music scene, either to form bands, advertise shows, or put their music out to be heard and critiqued by other musicians. I wanted to know who they were and what their opinions were of the music scene at Emerson. These are their stories, dun dun.
Sophomore Thomas Chadwick arrived on campus last Fall with the dream of playing music. He started the band Sunsetta with fellow sophomores Karthik Ramaswami and Amogh Matthews, who both also posted in the Musician Mafia group looking to play. Chadwick says their name was inspired locally during a trip home on the T.
“I was on the T going over the bridge at the Esplanade and there’s a building on the river called Sunvesta. I was like, yo that sounds pretty sweet. Sunvesta, Sunvesta, Sunsetta. I came up with Sunsetta like that,” explained Chadwick.
When it comes to inspiration and sound, the group says they flow between genres such as pop, garage rock, and R&B, explaining their unique sound as “an alternative indie pop band with punk and R&B influences.”
“My favourite band is The 1975. One of the first things we talked about was how we genuinely love their whole aesthetic of them just doing whatever they want to do and not really caring about sticking to a certain sound. We look to them as an inspiration, but I also really like Tyler and Frank Ocean,” said Ramaswami.
For Chadwick, the inspiration comes from an alternative/hip-hop lens. “My favorite band is Peach Pit, so that’s where we form the guitar-alternative side. I have also been producing music for four years, making hip-hop beats for people as well as pulling elements from psychedelic music.”
While Sunsetta has been heavily involved in the Emerson on-campus music scene, most recently playing alongside Diet Cig at the WECB concert in October, they believe that the presence of Emerson-based bands could be a lot stronger and better supported. “There are a ton of musicians at this school that are very talented but there are very few places to practice, unless you pay money. This school has a mentality that if you want to do music then go to Berklee, and it’s a pain in the ass to even do that,” said Chadwick. “Nobody cares, or maybe it’s that nobody knows about the tiny scene we have here.”
While Sunsetta formed their band during their time at Emerson, Andrew Muccitelli, a junior VMA major, knew he wanted to pursue music from the time he was a toddler. “When I was three years old I saw Cher on TV doing her farewell tour and the theatrics of her live performance, and I knew in that moment, as a literal baby, that this is what I want to do.”
Self-taught on the piano, guitar, and ukulele, Muccitelli began to further pursue music at the age of eleven by posting YouTube covers. “When I was eighteen I put out an album titled Fear of Intimacy under my own name, and I felt like it wasn’t reaching the right people because in everyone’s minds I was this twelve-year-old Justin Beiber-type-YouTube little boy singing Adele,” said Muccitelli. With the idea of changing his sound to experimental alternative rock, he came up with the stage persona Bonnie Parker, an homage to Bonnie and Clyde.
This new persona would allow him to incorporate elements of drag to blend the gender binaries, something that he felt he didn’t see enough of in music.
“I wanted to do something for the LGBTQ community that I wasn’t seeing a lot, so rather than it being a band, I had a vision for it to be an art project with cool visuals, photoshoots, music, and videos,” said Muccitelli. “I wanted to write music for gay people or anybody and give a platform for the experiences of a young, gay person from the suburbs.”
When it comes to inspiration, Muccitelli draws from not only other artists, but his personal life. “I draw inspiration from what I am listening to in that moment because there’s so many artists that have inspired me. When it comes to lyric writing, Fiona Apple is a big one. Visually, I love what Sky Ferreira does in her photoshoots,” explained Muccitelli. “I am also just really inspired by, like, romance and my personal experiences. The music is just so aggressively personal and vulnerable, but I feel like that makes it relatable.”
Under the persona of Bonnie Parker, Muccitelli has since released four songs, dubbing their genre as indie pop. Going forward, however, Muccitelli wants to aim for a more diverse rock sound. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want the sonic palette to be for my debut album as Bonnie Parker, and it's a fuzzy indie rock that you would hear on Puberty 2 by Mitski but with elements of experimental music and electronic music that you could hear on a Sophie song.”
While Bonnie Parker leans to a softer sound, the band Snoozer describes themselves mostly with one word: loud. When junior James Ammirato came to Emerson, he already had a solo project as a singer-songwriter under his belt. “I don’t even wanna say what it was. It was a phase, I got it out and I thought ‘I want to be in a band now because I want to make music that I actually like,’” says Ammirato. When a bassist and a recruited drummer from the BU pep band joined Ammirato, who writes the songs and plays the guitar, in his quest to begin a band, they came to form the current lineup of Snoozer.
As for musical process, Ammirato writes the lyrics and the guitar before it’s brought to the rest of the band to “hash out” their parts for a full song. “The overall sound is rock. I am influenced by a lot of punk, with the whole ethos of that movement and the mindset of a punk band—loud and fast or loud and slow. Just loud stuff in general. The louder the better,” said Ammirato. With loud in mind, the band has come to describe their genre as “running-with-scissors punk.”
“Can we say we carved out our own trail? I don’t know if we can legally say that, but I think that’s what we did,” joked Ammirato. As for their opinion of the music scene at Emerson, they explained that it feels like everyone is disconnected. “A scene implies that there is artists and space. Emerson has a ton of artists and no space,” explains Ammirato. “We have a scene, in terms of there’s a large group of people that play music, but there’s no unity or collaboration.”
Before I began this deep dive into the world of music at Emerson, I was not aware of the amount of bands and genre diversity on campus. While there is clearly no shortage of musical talent at Emerson, the issue seems to lie in the lack of connectivity between the artists and bands. It’s gonna take some unifying to create a true music scene here. Come on Emerson, it’s time.
Tom of Sunsetta photographed by Kristen Cawog // @kristencawog