5 Cornellians. 6+ months of a global pandemic. Endless hours of brainstorming, writing, creating, and producing music.
“Effective at 5 p.m. today (March 13), we are suspending all classes on the Ithaca campus for three weeks… All undergraduate students and most professional students are strongly encouraged to return as soon as feasible to their permanent home residences.”
President Martha Pollack’s urgent plea for the evacuation of the Ithaca campus came as a surprise to many students, drastically transforming the next six months as they retreated back into the confines of their childhood bedrooms or cramped Collegetown apartments. With a three-week suspension of classes and strict lockdown restrictions, Cornellians were faced with what they always wished they had: all the time in the world. Students, normally over-scheduled with maximum-credit schedules, work commitments, and research labs, suddenly found themselves locked inside with nothing to do but rewatch The Office and bake sourdough. But for five Cornellians, quarantine has brought an unprecedented amount of time to create, produce, and polish new music.
While Cornell fosters far more famous academics and public servants than musicians, various current Cornell students have recently broken into the music scene. For example, Sean Yu ‘23, known professionally as soyybean, boasts a song with more than 61,000 Spotify plays. soyybean, along with Nathan Abel ‘21 (Nathaniel Oku), has used quarantine to redefine his style and focus on music that speaks to him in light of the pandemic. Other Cornell musicians, like Rubin Smith ‘21, better known as rubin, began producing music for the first time in quarantine. “I wanted to explore music creation and I had a lot of time,” rubin said. This surge in musical production mirrors a nationwide trend of channeling pandemic-related emotions into music — a Quarantine DIY musical renaissance, as Rolling Stone describes it.
Cornell musicians exhibit just as much diversity in the genres they span as their alma mater does in major disciplines. Victoria Alkin ‘23’s poppy musical theater-inspired melodies in songs like “Better Left Unsaid” stand in stark contrast to Phil Schofield ‘21 of West St.’s lofi EDM-rap project or soyybean’s dark R&B-hip-hop fusion album, Tomorrow Doesn’t Exist. Yet these musicians exude passion and exquisite attention to the nuanced details of their respective genres. Quarantine has also inspired them to explore new sounds and lyrical focuses as they watch the world spin into an endless positive feedback loop of chaos. rubin emphasized that his synth-heavy sound reflects “dystopian, end of the world vibes” — a sonic reflection of the heavy, uncertain days of quarantine. Oku has written quarantine-inspired lyrics, most notably in his song “Simple Times.” “[This song] is about how I feel like a lot of people feel like they were waiting for [quarantine] to be over for them to go on with their life,” Oku explained.
With social distancing regulations enforced — and the potential of singing to be a super-spreader phenomenon — singers must take extra caution when producing music with people. soyybean noted that while he had more time to write, he struggled with the lack of social interaction during the writing process. “When you’re by yourself, you don’t come up with many creative ideas,” soyybean lamented. Schofield agrees, especially since the other half of his musical duo is 225 miles away at the University of Maryland. Unable to collaborate like he does in normal summers, he has instead directed his energy into refining unfinished tracks to release on his next album, Upstate. On the other hand, although Alkin also misses the lack of human interaction for song inspiration, she has gained more opportunities to collaborate during quarantine. Normally a solo artist, she has since co-written songs with her brother while confined in their house.
Cornellians are all too familiar with feelings of imposter syndrome and expectations to perform their best in the midst of a global pandemic. That’s why music has been an important outlet. “Everything is going to shit, so I might as well express myself,” rubin said, laughing. This period has given students time to write music that resonates deep within the hearts of their peers, according to Alkin, or channel their quarantine-related boredom or anxiety into a “snapshot of the time,” as Oku describes. soyybean said that’s why he wrote his newest single, “Refocus.” Much more mellow than his usual upbeat hip-hop, the song is an open letter to himself about the frustration and loneliness of quarantine. Time seems to be at a stand-still — students joke this year has so far consisted of January, February, and 201-day March — but Cornellians once again continue to push boundaries of innovation and creativity in their personal expression.
You can stream their music here:
soyybean https://open.spotify.com/artist/0Ptqd6bjK9rZUr3Sy9T2Qe?si=rOLlMO_UTsqFDF22zKW3lA
rubin https://rubin.bandcamp.com/
Nathaniel Oku https://open.spotify.com/artist/7pBC4SdUjVgndLGtdt5r7D?si=WRIbka29Rhyk76dfCCAdrg
Victoria Alkin https://open.spotify.com/artist/7ivAkVcTGWXpP7BHC2nQKs?si=8Bd13ZhHQ1ubjSS9FWqMWw
West St. https://open.spotify.com/artist/1yaiG4c43WNVmOmkfQizdM?si=QHJ6csqESxK7_EtUuhIpfA