As a Friday night with UTSC musical collective Organized Sound unfolds, the feeling of uncertainty never quite goes away. In fact, not knowing what’s happening is exactly what these musicians are about.
“We used to just chill around, beat-box, and make some rhymes,” drummer Mazin Osman recalls. “Then one time, the freestyle lasted for like fifteen minutes, and the idea just popped up. We were like, ‘Why don’t we bring a violin or a piano and just improvise’?”
The idea gelled in September, and the group has been meeting in Studio A of the Arts and Administration building at UTSC every Friday night.
The art of freestyling is a classic ingredient to hip-hop music, but in the bling-bling era, it is a skill near the verge of extinction. Despite their hip-hop influence, though, the collective mixes many genres of music.
“There are so many different styles-Rahul’s into playing rock, and [violinist] Fahad [Qureshi] likes classical,” explained Andre Vashist, the head of the outfit. “You can rhyme to any style of music.”
The Studio A sessions are musical
experiments. Everything from a saxophone to a whistle has been used, and once someone even brought in a traditional Afghani instrument.
Yet Organized Sound’s creative endeavors have not exactly been welcomed by university administration. Technically, Studio A is off-limits to the group, and that makes members like Vashist frustrated.
“If professors can use these rooms, why can’t students? The school puts so much emphasis on academic instruction, it’s ridiculous,” he said.
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