TO THE EDITOR:
When I flipped to the back page of The Daily Tar Heel last Friday and found an article making the case that Chapel Hill needed a music festival, I thought to myself, “that sounds mighty familiar.”
That’s because about 18 months ago, I thought the exact same thing and decided to do something about it. What came out of a year’s worth of planning and hard work by about five students was ConvergeNC Music Festival. ConvergeNC took place for the first time this past April in the Bell Tower Amphitheater and played host to nine different acts over the course of nine hours.
The festival’s aim is to present a broad range of ideas about what Southern music is and what constitutes the Southern identity. From blues to hip-hop, old-time to psych rock, our aim is never to exclude music but always to include the incredibly diverse sounds of the American South.
The festival also aims to bring together students, faculty, community members, businesses, academic departments and more, not just from the University or Chapel Hill, but also from Carrboro, Durham, Raleigh and beyond.
ConvergeNC is an annual event and we hope it will become something students look forward to each and every beautiful spring in Chapel Hill.
But the fact that an article like the one that appeared last Friday was written means we still have work to do. We need to spread the word and continue to grow ConvergeNC into the music festival Chapel Hill deserves. We can’t wait until ConvergeNC 2014 this spring, and we hope you are as excited about Chapel Hill’s music festival as we are.
Gabe Chess ’15
ConvergeNC
