‘More important than ever before’: 3rd annual Wake Up! music festival returns to KPU in March

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Kwantlen Polytechnic University music instructor Gordon Cobb’s MUSI 3500 course, which puts on the school’s yearly Wake Up! Social Justice Music Festival, serves as a think tank focused on innovating and evolving.

As a political activist for more than 30 years, Cobb says the state of North American politics right now is unprecedented, making the third annual Wake Up! festival on March 13 “more important than ever before.”

“Wake Up!, for the last couple of years, has been kind of a social experiment, a learning experiment, and a teaching experiment,” he says. “This year, it is an action that we are taking to stand up for ourselves as Canadians and also to let our community know that KPU is active and listening, and we’re responding.”

Wake Up! launched in 2023 in collaboration with the Surrey Music Strategy, an initiative with the City of Surrey aimed at supporting the local music economy. Since last year, KPU’s music department has offered a music course to allow students to plan and organize the festival.

“Music artists have historically played a big role in social change and in political action,” Cobb says. “And certainly, the Wake Up! festival that we’re running this year will hopefully do that because it is created, written, and produced by the students in the class, and they come from all different departments in the university.”

This year, three students in the class and a KPU alumnus will be among the performers at the festival.

Kelly Pang has taken the MUSI 3500 course before and was driven to take it again after gaining a behind-the-scenes look at a festival. She says she uses her soft-pop music as a way to show a particular time in her life and reminisce.

Pang will perform two songs at the Wake Up! festival. One is called “August 19” and is about her sister. She says she moved with her mother from Montreal to Vancouver almost 10 years ago, which made her consider how “there are people who you don’t consciously appreciate.”

Her second song is “1AM,” which is a love song she wrote for her boyfriend almost two years ago and marked a time when she realized how she is supposed to be treated.

“I think that was when I realized that maybe, just maybe, there are good guys who will treat me well,” Pang says. “Because, a lot of the time in the past, I … think a lot of men have taken me for granted, mainly because I’ve been so sweet and caring. I think a lot of people don’t necessarily put the effort in to make sure that the other partner is appreciated.”

Pang says the last time she performed was in high school a year before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. While she has previously performed at about five shows, Wake Up! will mark only the second time she has showcased her original music.

“I think after the big pandemic, I became less confident and less brave to put myself out there,” she says. “So I think this will be a really great challenge and a very good opportunity for me to … get a small piece of myself again.”

Damean Rose is another emerging artist and student in the course who will perform his work. Intrigued by the performance aspect of the festival, Rose joined the class in hopes of using it as a gateway to further opportunities in the music industry.

He says he likes to be versatile and dabble in each genre, but much of his work revolves around trap hip-hop with some rock music aspects, such as through the electric guitar.

Rose will be performing an instrumental piece that is a mashup of three popular, high energy songs. While he does not want to give away what these songs are ahead of the festival, he says they are by Travis Scott, The Weeknd, and Chief Keef.

“When I’m performing and I’m playing my own pieces on the guitar — some solos, some backing tracks — I’m just trying to stand out and bring a new element to the performance that I don’t think the others were planning on doing,” Rose says.

He says he has not performed in more than a year, and in the couple times he has in the past, he would be playing the guitar for another artist.

“This will be the first time I’m in the spotlight,” Rose says. “Even though it’s not my songs per se, I’m still the only one on stage leading everything, putting everything together. This is my set, and that’s exciting for me.”

Karina Kovalenko, whose artist name is Karrality, is the third MUSI 3500 student who will be performing at the event. An international student from northern Kazakhstan, Kovalenko wrote her first song at 16, and for the past three years has been releasing music in both Russian and English.

“I’m very excited about Wake Up! as it will be my first time performing my songs on stage,” she said in a press release. “I really like that a lot of different people can relate to my music with their own experiences at points in their lives.”

Chico Zander, whose real name is Tristian Beltran, is a KPU alumnus who will be having his first solo show at the Wake Up! festival, Cobb says.

The all-female, Surrey-based band Dusty Pines, founded by Dusty Chipura, will be opening the show. The class’s service learning assistant Lina Osores, who helps Cobb in running the course, performs bass for the band. She says Dusty Pines will be performing three songs, which fall between rock and punk.

Headlining Wake Up! is “queen of hip hop” Ndidi Cascade, Cobb says. Hip-hop artist Lowkita will also have a set.

“Women rappers are my jam,” Cobb says. “I’ve always loved women’s rap more than men’s rap because it is a completely different perspective and it is almost always through a lens of social justice, because Black women in North America live with so many barriers, and it often comes out in their work.”

For the class, Osores has been applying her skills as an IT diploma student at KPU to work the lighting system for the event with the students.

“Something I really enjoy seeing a lot is the differences that the [students] bring, like just their style and their creativity and individuality will come out with their designs — and I find that really inspiring. It’s nice to see.”

For each song performed, Cobb says his students are also producing backdrop videos, which range from simple lyric videos to featuring the artists themselves against a green screen.

Cobb has also invited Grade 11 and 12 students from schools in Surrey and Langley to attend the festival.

“When I was in high school, I was a young music student. I didn’t really know what the universities in my area were offering as far as music education, and I would have loved an opportunity to go and see a university music festival with students in it and to get a sense of what’s happening in my own neighbourhood.”

Cobb hopes attendees are impressed by the students who helped put the show together and become fans of all the performers.

“If you’re reading this article, and you’re even slightly curious about the Wake Up! Social Justice Music Festival, come and check it out,” he adds.

“You’re not only supporting an initiative at KPU that’s trying to create evening activities for our students, but you’re also supporting an experimental and innovative classroom environment. You’re supporting your local students and local music artists — and we need artists in society.”

Wake Up! is free to attend and takes place on March 13 from 5:00 to 8:00 pm at KPU Surrey’s Cedar Conference Centre. For more information and to get tickets, visit www.wakeupmusicfestival.com.