As soon as visitors entered the Hamilton Lugar School on Friday evening, they were met with catchy Latin music. Inside the vast atrium, students and residents swayed and danced enthusiastically, filling the space with energy and rhythm.
Friday marked the fifth running of the Hamilton Lugar Music Festival. The event came from a desire to build community among IU students and faculty after the pandemic.
The festival is built around music from a diverse range of cultures. Sampson Lotven, senior associate director of student success and associate director of the HLS Living-Learning Center, said he wanted to center the festival around music because he believes it’s one of the most effective ways people build community.
“I had the idea to build a music festival as an end-of-the-year celebration that would bridge a lot of different constituencies,” Lotven said.
Putting the event together, Lotven said, is a continual process throughout the school year. Lotven said he looks to connect with international musicians and local bands while planning the event.
Funding from the Hamilton Lugar School is critical in organizing the music festival, particularly for paying artists. However, Lotven said this year has been a little more difficult because of cuts to federal Title VI funding for international and foreign language education.
“The funding situation has meant that everyone still wants to stay involved and contribute a little, and we’ve had to move some things around to prioritize what was important to us even without quite as much funding as in past years,” Lotven said.
The event featured artists including La Salsoteca, the Indiana Slavic Choir, Dan Kusaya and DJ Kulow. Lotven invited La Salsoteca, a band that performs salsa and other Latin dance music, after seeing the group perform in Bryan Park and being impressed by their energy.
The Indiana Slavic Choir also performed, bringing a range of Eastern and Southern European folk singing traditions to the festival. The group includes many people from around Bloomington including undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, staff and retired staff.
Zimbabwean artist Dan Kusaya blended Afrobeats with the traditional Zimbabwean music of the mbira at the festival.
DJ Kulow, a radio personality and DJ at WFHB, added a more electronic and less traditional element to the lineup.
The festival drew around 30 attendees, most of them Bloomington residents, who danced along throughout the event.
Heysol Buitrago, an IU staff member, said she heard about the event from La Salsoteca’s pianist and IU faculty member, Sergio Ospina Romero, and through the event email. She attended with David Buitrago, another Bloomington resident.
“We love music,” David Buitrago said.
Mana Reza, another Bloomington resident, said the event was her and her husband’s third time attending the festival and that every time Romero performs, they plan to be there dancing.
“For me, it’s exciting to see students performing on stage,” Reza said. “They always have great music, and there are always great artists here. It feels like I’m feeding my soul by listening to the music, dancing and letting myself be free.”
