Zige Wang takes on the WSLC Showcase

For her fourth and final year at Sarah Lawrence College, Zige Wang continues to conquer her fears.  Before college, Wang had never written a song or performed in front of a crowd. Now, she’s singing original songs about her fears to an intimate crowd of fellow students. Sarah Lawrence has been Wang’s musical safety net since her sophomore year, when she first reached out to WSLC, Sarah Lawrence’s College Radio Station.

“ I sent them music sophomore year, and then a few weeks, few months later, they reached out to me, ‘Do you wanna play this show?’ And so it was a really easy process to get involved into music here. It is organized because we’re on a college campus,” Wang shares. From that moment on, it has been a continuous uphill growing season for the young songwriter and performer, from classroom to stage to radio station.

Zige Wang arrived at Sarah Lawrence’s Campus in New York all the way from Minnesota, and began to craft her original music. She had always been a singer, but the songwriting was just beginning: “The first song I fully wrote was freshman year of college.” Wang’s vocal talent was built on years of singing through childhood. “When I was a kid, I was very obsessed with singing to myself.  I would sing on the bus a lot. And I think a lot of people found that annoying on the bus. One person told me to shut up one time, fair enough, I was whispering into the window, thinking no one could hear me.” Despite the noise, Wang never surrendered.

In her second year in college, Wang’s songwriting became a part of her curriculum. “Sophomore year, I had a class where part of my project for that class, Ethnological Temptations with Una Chung,” Wang says that this freeform class allowed her to further develop her own process for writing original music. “I would sit in a closet a lot and just not really sing anything real, just feel how I was feeling at the moment and try to replicate what that felt like.” Now, Wang understood what it would take to compose a self-written song, and the best was yet to come.

Once Wang identified her inspiration for lyrics, it was time to put the pen to paper. This meant translating her thoughts to prose, which forced Wang to take her time through the process. “ A challenge for me is to try to describe how I’m feeling without just naming that feeling, or saying it in a way that is close to your body, without being too physical. It’s a challenge to figure out how to describe emotions that are close to the body without being too physical with the words,” Wang states.

The meaning of each of Wang’s lyrics is delicately tended, and placed alongside guitar chords and mellow vocals with a purpose: “I want to be more intentional with my words. I think Sarah Lawrence has really helped me figure out what that means for myself—being a part of WSLC has been another, SLC Music Fest, and some other shows on campus.” These shows have become a regular routine for Wang’s musical education. Now, her lyrics bounce through eardrums at the college radio station where it all began.

On October 25, Zige Wang performed three original songs at WSLC’s newly renovated and relocated studio. The studio was previously located in Bates—the same multi-story building that contains a dining hall, classrooms, several offices, and other club meeting spaces. Now, WSLC broadcasts from the HUB, a much smaller and cozier spot in the center of Sarah Lawrence’s Campus.

The three original songs, “Henry,” “Sweet J,” and “Someone Knows Me By Your Name,” are all about Wang’s experiences, joys, and fears regarding her past, present, and future relationships.  The first song performed, “Henry,” Wang coined as one of her favorite songs she has written thus far. The lyrics, “ it’s a seed I think I left here. Henry, Small, but pounding. How rude for it to be.   Covered by red, and wet from rain. I felt it waltz through the plains.  The frost touched the grass, and the sun turned it to dew. I’m left with your breath stuck to my teeth,” came from Wang’s personal journal. “I’ve noticed a lot of my favorite songwriters recommend writing every day,” she shared, inspired by her favorite songwriters such as Angel Olsen and Julie Byrne.

Next, Wang bared lyrics about her friend Jackie, the song titled “Sweet J.” Wang found herself changing the song after falling frightened to the possibility of the friendship changing once the two split ways to go to college, “The first part used to be different, and now I don’t like that type of songwriting, so I changed it  to just describe the feeling—which was possibly forgotten.” Wang was afraid of being forgotten by her friend, so she froze the feeling into melody and verses. Now their friendship thrives beyond the physical vicinity the two once shared, but in notes of longing and affection hundreds of miles away.

Songwriting relieves Wang of the uneasiness of going through the seasons as a young artist navigating friendship and romance. Zige Wang’s lyrics are uplifted by her soft and smooth vocals, accompanied by the strums of the guitar and gentle head sways. Whether they originate from a journal, closet, or a bus stop, each word fills a verse, chorus, or bridge to the soundtrack of Wang’s deepest thoughts.

Wang’s passion for music, although, is not career-driven, “I think music in the future will look more like something I did with my past time. Something that I’ll do with my free time, more than something that I want to pursue as a career.” While singing and writing will always figure into her life, the idea of choice and creativity being diminished in the process contradicts Wang as an artist. “The goal is to maybe record and release some things, just to have a memento of what I’ve done these past three, few years.”

Zige Wang’s portfolio so far is a time capsule; her cartography of coming-of-age and overcoming anxiety as a student of color is almost finished. Until then, Wang continues to broadcast her truth: the admission of the fear to let go, but doing it anyway, between guitar frets and behind a microphone.