Buy music for a cause

Instead of wringing their hands or hitting the streets to protest the current crisis in Sudan, four Wesleyan students used their studies, interests and connections to make a difference. With their benefit album of Afrobeat music “A.S.A.P: The Afrobeat Sudan Relief Project,” which is featured on the front page of the iTunes music store, Eric Herman ’05, Jesse Brenner ’05, David Ahl ’05 and Adam Tuck ’05 aim to raise $100,000 or more to aid Sudanese refugees.

The amount of trust and cooperation these students received from professional artists and corporate executives shows that with the right project and motives people can work together and incite change. Using established relationships with professional artists, new connections with Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s and a groundbreaking contract with Apple, the students have reached beyond campus to raise this substantial amount of money.

Granted every campaign is not as easy to support as helping those escaping from mass murder and forced famine, but a huge amount of pro-bono work between classes and papers went into making this project a reality.

Anyone wishing to affect change can learn from Herman, Brenner, Ahl and Tuck’s success and vision. Activism can take many forms, and given the huge diversity of interests and talents on this campus, it can take many possible directions at Wesleyan.

Though there is a place for extremist activism, “A.S.A.P.” is accessible and available to a wide audience, allowing for a large impact. At the same time, by attaching the music featured on the album—itself, political in nature—to a cause, the students were able to promote and introduce a new style of music to a wide audience. Thus, they have politicized their interests and their studies, a wonderful way to make their lives at the University work in a tangible form.

Learning by example, the first step is for us to buy the album and support this tremendous project. Next, we should consider all the ways in which political change can be achieved, through the arts and other talents. Be it for chalking, gender neutral housing or abortion rights, the possibilities are out there, and with all the activist resources and political connections at Wesleyan, there’s no reason for us not to continue this creativity.