Faux-Chella promises to bring a unique lineup to ASU students. Photo by Luu NguyenThe sun beats down on a crowd of thousands. Clustered together, everyone sways their body to the beat of the music. Next to the crowd, another group throws their hands in the air to the electric beat pounding through the ground. Everywhere flower crowns are popping out in the distance and neon-colored clothing contrasts with the dirt on the ground.
The music festival Coachella has grown in popularity over the past few years to the point where festivals across the world attempt to mimic the same free-spirited two weekends of bonding, sun and music.
Resident life senior Hailey Farr rolled around the idea of Coachella as students mentioned the festival during one of her special events class discussions. Her professor asked students what their favorite music festival was. The majority of the students repeated Coachella.
“I thought, ‘This is such a prominent name, what if I did a knock off of it?’” Farr says.
From that moment on, Farr set the stage for ASU's first ever Faux-Chella music festival. Set for Friday, Oct. 3 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., students are invited to attend a free Coachella-inspired music festival at the Barrett Palm Court arranged and performed solely by ASU students.
Farr, the Residential Hall Association (RHA) Director of Programming, sent out a mass email to students at ASU about auditions for the festival. Interested students were instructed to send in no more than a 15-minute video showcasing three songs they would perform at Faux-Chella. RHA received about 100 emails of interest with 50 full submissions.
“I was not expecting this amount of interest in the event,” Farr says. “I thought it was going to be a lot smaller to scale so I was surprised when we had over 100 people interested in performing.”
The set list consists of a vast array of performances, from DJ’s to African Rap to a hearing-impaired performer that’s performing sign language. Faux-Chella also inspired students to get together to create an act solely for the music festival.
“We all love performing,” Zeynep Ayla, bassist for Amplifiers, says. “When we heard of this (Faux-Chella) we all really wanted to get out there and play.”
Amplifiers, consisting of a bassist, drummer, guitarist who sings lead and a guitarist who sings backup was formed only one month ago. Inspired by bands such as Blink 182 and Arctic Monkeys, Amplifiers will be performing a set of covers at the music festival.
Faux-Chella has also attracted longtime ASU performers. TEMPEtations, a co-ed A capella group, were enthused when they heard of the music festival. As per a capella, the group will be relying solely on their voices, combining lyrics and sounds, to create energetic music.
Along with music performances, body artist Ariana Ehuan will be showcasing her talents during the festival. Ehuan will paint students with any design they would like in one section, and in another she will teach students to do body art themselves.
The RHA staff is also working together to create stations for flower-crown making, slam poetry, friendship bracelets and much more.
Reach the writer at mchavan1@asu.edu or via Twitter @manalichavan72.
