Musical and poetic expressions were given at an open mic night held at the Fireside Room, hosted by club MAIZE on Feb. 21.
Wednesday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. Bakersfield College students began to sign in for “A Night of Ambience and Chaos” where students and non-students can share and express their poetry, music, films, artwork, or photos.
This event is held every other week, which starts at 5 p.m. and ends at 8 p.m.
More than 35 people showed up to the open mic.
The majority of the performances were poems written by the person who was presenting them.
Michael Donald Zu Zoh Lopez, art history major, read six poems in total, mostly expressing his everyday life.
“I encourage people to go because it really opens our mind and inspires people to write down their thoughts of the world around them,” said Lopez.
Reggie Juban Visico, computer engineering major, brought along nine of his friends to support the open mic. Visico brought his guitar and performed the song “Bohemian Rhapsody” by the musical band Queen and included an old song he wrote himself.
“Oh, yeah, it’s groovy,” said Visico after he was asked about what he thought about the event.
The poems had personal feelings and the few that were musical performances such as Visico playing his guitar, Sideways a hip-hop writer, and Safe Sounds Crew a beat boxing group.
The first open mic was held on Feb. 7 and approximately 40 people attended. Due to the limited time of two hours, some performances were cut short.
President of MAIZE Carlos Gomez, psychology major, helped in the open mic because the activities in BC are hard to find.
“It’s not hard to do the paper work, but finding the people is more of a challenge,” said Gomez.
The average rating of the first open mic was a 3.5 out of 5 and a 4.5 out of 5 for the second open mic.
“I think that anything that MAIZE does is for the good of the people,” said Gomez.
MAIZE’s next open mic will be on March 7 in the Fireside Room.
“There’s something that could be given by every club on campus, and this is our grain of sand,” said Gomez.