Springfest Grows Up

When it comes to Springfest, student organizers Justin H. Haan ’05 and Jack P. McCambridge ’06 are a lot of things. Modest is not one of them.

In their discussion of their expectations for this weekend, the term “unprecedented” comes up repeatedly, as do “wonderful,” “unbelievable” and “out-of-this-world.”

By coupling the 11th annual Springfest in the same weekend with a concert by rap superstar Busta Rhymes, the two may have found a way to draw the troubled tradition into maturity.

“This could be the hugest concert in Harvard history, and in the history of the concert commission,” says Haan, director of the Harvard Concert Commission. “There’s a potential for a lot of people to come…We’ve been informed that it’s somewhat unprecedented in the city of Cambridge to have an outdoor show like this.”

To give some idea of the scope of their ambition, Haan, who is a Crimson executive, and McCambridge, the chair of the Underegraduate Council’s Student Life Committee, hope to draw 7,000 people to this concert. The last major concert on campus—by pop-rock band Guster last November—drew only 1,800.

The concert also seeks to appease the widely held conception that Springfest’s focus has drifted too far away from undergraduates. By holding this concert in the same weekend as Springfest, the organizers say they hope to shift the balance back in the direction of students.

The concert, scheduled for tonight at 9 p.m., will also feature a rap freestyle battle inspired by the movie 8 Mile, and performances by student poetry group the Spoken Word Society and rising campus rap stars Tha League.

Springfest, scheduled for noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday, will be largely similar to last year’s event, featuring carnival games and rides, student group sponsored booths, and a Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) barbeque.

“Springfest brings out a lot of people that work within the University with students, and, to me, it’s certainly a reasonable and desirable thing as a community-building event,” says McCambridge. “Some students will say that it’s the wrong focus, but I think the balance to that can be this kind of a concert event…I think that’s a wonderful balance to strike within this type of a weekend and that was part of the motivation behind the decision to do [the concert] this weekend.”

MAKING MUSIC

Perhaps no area of Springfest’s past has been more troubled than efforts to bring a big-name musical group to perform.

Tight budgets have led to some strange choices in the past. Artists who have performed at Springfest range from bands well past their peak, like the Violent Femmes in 1999, to novelty acts, like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy in 2000, to downright bewildering choices, like God Street Wine in 1997.

The last band to perform at Springfest, the Verve Pipe, was paid $15,000 in 2002. Still running on the fumes of their minor hit from 1996, “The Freshman,” the Verve Pipe understandably failed to please many students.

2002 was also the first year that University President Lawrence H. Summers co-sponsored Springfest. At the time, controversy arose over whether Summers had limited the council’s choices to family-friendly artists.

“I think [the Verve Pipe] was what he would allow from the available choices,” McCambridge says. “Which is fine. It was his first entry into Springfest and we completely understand his hesitance, but it’s evolved from there.”

Last year, the council decided to forego bringing a band to Springfest altogether, opting to put student bands on stage.

Holding the concert separately from the actual Springfest this year allowed the organizers a wider range of selections.

“One reason that we decided to go with the Friday night is that it gives us a little more leeway because, as we’re all aware, Springfest is a family friendly environment,” Haan says. “So this gives us more leeway in terms of what kinds of artists we can have come perform.”

McCambridge added, “[At Springfest] Busta might have introduced a few words that people didn’t know.”

The organizers decided at the outset that they would bring a hip-hop performer to campus, hoping to bring a group more attuned to the campus zeitgeist.

“We limited our options to only hip-hop and rap groups because we really feel that this is the genre of music that is relevant for today’s student body,” Haan says. “We think someone like Busta Rhymes has a really wide appeal to a large part of the student body.”

Summers is still effectively co-sponsoring the concert. This year Springfest will be completely funded by the University, allowing the council to focus its funds on paying Busta.

The council will be paying Busta $40,000 for the concert, $10,000 less than his asking price. The council was able to pull off the financial coup by taking advantage of the fact that Busta already had a concert scheduled at Keane State College in New Hampshire tomorrow night, meaning that his transportation costs will be small.

“We didn’t lowball him, we just gave him a price that incorporated that knowledge,” McCambridge says.

The University will also cover the production costs for the concert, which McCambridge and Haan estimate to be $25,000 to $30,000.

Busta was the council’s second choice for the concert, behind perennial favorite Wyclef Jean.

Busta is one of the more recognizable rappers around, with a lackadaisical, often humorous rapping style. He began his career with underground darlings Leaders of the New School, with whom he released two albums. As a solo artist he hit it big in 1996 with the spastic “Woo-Hah!! Got You All in Check,” whose oddly disconcerting video found regular rotation on MTV.

His reggae-tinged music has helped him to charm critics and fans alike. He has also appeared in films such as Higher Learning, Finding Forrester and Narc.

Haan and McCambridge say they hope their efforts to secure Busta for the event will help build a precedent of holding a night-time concert in the same weekend as Springfest.

“I think students tend to associate Springfest with that actual day of carnival events,” Haan says. “But we’re looking at it more as a Springfest weekend.”

They credit Associate Deans of the College Judith H. Kidd and Paul J. McLoughlin, II with helping them navigate the intricacies of the planning process and with helping to build the institutional framework to make this into a tradition.

“From an economic and an administrative point of view it’s an event that students can’t do by themselves,” McCambridge says. “It’s not possible, there’s no way that we could deal with parking services, with insurance, with UHS, with HUPD, with the facilities maintenance operations, with transportation, with risk management and the general counsel’s office, with the press office. We have to go to school, too.”

THROUGH THE PAST, DARKLY

Students familiar with the current, family-friendly incarnation of Springfest may be surprised to learn that, in an earlier form, the Springfest menu included alcohol. At the two earliest Springfests and again in 1998, the council provided free beer to student revelers.

In 1998, though, Dean of Students Archie C. Epps, III became concerned that the event was becoming too alcohol-centered.

“We will not allow kegs and have asked the council to present the event in a way which does not feature alcohol because that just sends the wrong message,” Epps told The Crimson at the time.

He required the council to serve its beer in can form, in a small fenced in area, only during lunch. Students wishing to enter the drinking area were screened for age by a professional beverage authorization team. Each student would receive a maximum of two beers.

The battle over alcohol was only one of several conflicts faced by Springfest during its attempts to define itself. Would Springfest be a venue for tipsy students to party and traipse from booth to booth? Epps thought not, and 1998 was the last time beer was served at Springfest.

In 2001, Springfest changed again, this time decisively. Summers, fresh on the job and eager to connect with undergraduates, offered to co-sponsor Springfest with one catch: the event would have to be opened to Harvard faculty and staff along with their families.

Springfest had been struggling to hold the attention of the student body. As early as 1997, shortly after the fourth annual Springfest, The Crimson published an editorial urging the council to revamp the festivities.

“Be more creative,” the editorial said. “A Springfest highlighted by sno-cones, bouncy rides and Harvard Dining Services hamburgers just isn’t worth repeating year after year.”

It became increasingly clear that the council’s pockets were not deep enough to continue to improve Springfest. In 2002, UC President Sujean S. Lee ’03 estimated that the council would only be able to pay a band $5,000 to perform at Springfest. Summers’ offer of co-sponsorship turned out to be too good for the council to turn down.

Students still had misgivings about opening the event to the rest of the Harvard community. Would the presence of families at the event turn Springfest into the Harvard University company picnic?

“This isn’t an inherently bad idea,” wrote former Crimson managing editor Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan ’02 in a column. “But it means that the president and the council have fundamentally changed the nature of Springfest…With this shift, it’s not really a student-focused event any more. That might not be such a big deal, if someone had taken the trouble to really make clear what students stand to gain from Summers co-sponsoring the event in the first place.”

The gain for students turned out to be $20,000 of University money, effectively doubling the budget for the event. Springfest 2002 was widely regarded as a success, despite the unpopularity of the Verve Pipe with students, and created the model that remains more or less in place today.

Tonight’s concert may well be the first year that the promise implicit in Summers’s co-sponsorship comes to fulfillment. Busta is undoubtedly the most popular artist to perform on campus in recent memory. His decidedly non-family-friendly approach may well shift the tenor of Springfest back in the direction of students. Ten years after its start, Springfest may finally have figured things out.

—Staff writer Nathaniel A. Smith can be reached at nsmith@fas.harvard.edu.