Musicians Bren Joy and redveil took to the AfterHours stage in the Curry Student Center Feb. 5 for the first night of the Black Music Matters Festival, an event organized by Northeastern Council for University Programs, or CUP, Northeastern Black Student Association, NU Live Music Association, Green Line Records, Tastemakers Magazine and WRBB Radio. 

With seven student organizations behind the event, individuals like Brandon Korn, the CUP operations chair, united to make the two-day festival designed to celebrate Black music and elevate Black artists a reality. 

“I really appreciate that so many clubs on campus have worked together to put on an event of this magnitude,” said Korn, a second-year combined business administration and mathematics major. 

In the hours leading up to the first performance, cohorts of students belonging to clubs that brought the festival to life filtered into AfterHours. Volunteering students wheeled instruments through the building, ran speakers and soundboards past the stage and shooed the AfterHours Starbucks patrons out of the room before the show could begin. 

Justyna Stukin, a fourth-year behavioral neuroscience major and small concerts chair of CUP, caught wind of plans for the festival from Green Line Records and WRBB in summer 2021 and jumped at the chance to get involved. 

“It’s not easy to coordinate with that many people, but all of us wanted to make it work so bad that the energy was just really great through the whole thing,” Stukin said.

After months of careful planning and cooperation, the AfterHours doors opened before the first show at 7 p.m. to a mass of students who gathered outside in below-freezing temperatures, anticipating live musical performances at Northeastern for another year after the pandemic introduced hurdles to in-person gatherings. 

“Anytime there’s anything happening music-wise, I always want to come out and support,” said Kadijah Bah, a first-year sociology major and DJ at WRBB. “Especially because I know the different organizations put a lot into it.”

Longtime fans and newcomers alike flocked to the stage for the first act of the festival, 17-year-old rapper redveil from Maryland. 

“I haven’t listened to redveil’s music, but I also like to go to concerts and discover artists,” Bah said.

The Black Music Matters Festival featured several artists for fans to see and music lovers to discover. Bren Joy and redveil preceded IDK with Cakeswagg on Feb. 6 to make up the complete roster of the two-night event.

“It was really just a starting moment for me just as a musician,” redveil told the crowd during his set, referencing his first album that he released at 14 years old. “It’s a project that’s going to be important for me for the rest of my life.”

redveil’s songwriting and enigmatic delivery of his music left an energetic, excited crowd ready for the second act of the festival, Bren Joy. The Nashville-based artist brought intimate lyricism that felt straight from a diary page onstage, performing the hit songs he released after studying at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, as a vocal major. 

From redveil’s acapella delivery of his song “Brother’s Keeper” that shares his grief and anger growing up against the face of police brutality to the soaring, youthful spirit of Joy’s “Henny in the Hamptons,” both performers took the crowd through the turbulence of coming of age in searing portraits of their lives.

As the authors behind their own work, the pair set an autobiographical tone for the rest of the Black Music Matters Festival. 

As Northeastern’s campus dives into honoring Black History Month during February, organizers behind the two-day festival hope that audiences will leave the venue with a greater appreciation for Black artistry in music — and perhaps a new artist to follow and support.

“I just really want to highlight that it is Black History Month,” Stukin said. “And the point of this was really to spotlight Black music, especially local Black music.’’