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by ALLISON CASEY
Lifestyles Editor
Julia C. Carroll and Corey E. Houlian perform Wednesday Nov. 12 at 8 p.m. in Blue Ridge Ballroom of Plemmons Student Union as part of the Second Class Citizen Tour.
Sponsored by TransAction and Multicultural Student Development, the tour aims to raise awareness for queer issues through music.
“I think they’ll be well received,” Michal J. Duffy, president of TransAction and senior Spanish major, said. “ Carroll
Carroll, whose roots are in rock and hip -hop, is musically influenced
by Ani DiFranco, Indigo Girls, Aerosmith and Queen Latifah.
“My
music I call hard folk, mostly because at some point I had to give it a
genre,” Carroll said. “It’s angsty folk rock, I would strum a lot
harder than a lot of kumbaya folk artists.”
Over the years, Carroll has shifted to a more singer-songwriter type style.
Houlihan performs hip-hop influenced spoken word poetry.
“Some
people picture beatniks, or something. It’s very diverse, it’s not your
run of the mill poetry reading,” Carroll said. “Corey even more than
me, a lot of her writing has to do with activism and justice and things
of that nature.”
The
shows usually involve both artists playing and performing guitar and
percussion with each other as well as their solo pieces.
One of
Houlihan’s pieces is called “What If?” and turns the table on hate
crimes, asking if queer people began committing hate crime towards
straight people.
“They have a unique perspective,” Duffy said. “They can really touch people here, really make a connection.”
The tour
began in Washington D.C. and the artists perform largely on college
campuses, often asking the queer activist group to support the tour.
“Their presence is an act of activism,” she said.
Though the group spent the beginning of the tour in D.C. during the election, Carroll said it was a convenient coincidence.
“We’ve
only had two nights [on the tour]. We’ve performed in Pennsylvania and
Virginia and the kids there really seemed to like it,” Carroll said.
“Hopefully they’ll take something away from the experience even if its
just ‘we had a great time.’”
College campuses are excellent places for this type of tour because people are finding their identity, she said.
“A lot
of them have the activist mentality,” she said. “Folks are finding
their identity, put themselves out there. We’re just trying to do our
part.”
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