Whereas the usual school year at Covenant College features the widely-loved Mountain Affair as an evening of performances arranged concert-like with bright lights and polished acts, this spring held an event with a much different feel.
Thumbnail and photo are by Eden Anyabwile and Covenant College Chapel Department
Covidchella was a wildly fun outdoor event that stepped in for a would-be Mountain Affair. With a festive, even celebratory, air, a little over three hundred students gathered on the Shadowlands soccer field for Repicci's Italian Ice and Gelato, popcorn from the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, and a bit of intense sun exposure that not everyone, unfortunately, accounted for.
For those who may be unfamiliar with the term “Covidchella,” Chaplain Lowe explained it, crediting the origin of the name to a group of Chapel Department staffers. These staffers thought that "Covidchella" would be an appropriate situational spinoff of "Coachella," the outdoor music and arts festival in Indio, California, that was started in the 1990s and typically draws a quarter of a million attendees every spring.
Over the past few weeks, the Chapel Department promoted Covidchella across campus with visually-pleasing, even psychedelic, Covidchella posters designed by Eden Anyabwile ’21. The posters were bright with complementary colors and featured sporadic alien heads. The various iterations of the posters released on campus and in Chapel Department emails draw inspiration from posters of the American rock band The Doors as well as from older Coachella posters. As the big day drew near, band-specific promotional posters, with photography by Lauren Johnson '21, also went up.
Whereas in years past Mountain Affair has typically felt like a talent show, this year's Covidchella was more like a festival. The various acts, featuring rock performances, soloists, and even a sea shanty, were intentionally less-polished than in past years, as performers weren't given the opportunity to practice their acts on the actual set beforehand. As the performances progressed, free Covidchella merch was thrown into a crowd of excited fans moshing in response to intense rock.
While a number of performances on Wednesday were one-off acts arranged by invested students, a number of the gigs featured bands that may be involved in sustained music production for years to come. Chaplain Lowe describes this as "collateral blessing," a way that Mountain Affair offers groups of students the chance to perform their music in a semi-professional setting and perhaps even inspires them to continue to produce music well after the event.One such Covenant band at this year's Mountain Affair was Duke Walt Jr., composed of Jacob Brown '21, John Hooker '21, John Kaufmann '21 and Luke Bolton '22 filling in for Cooper Twit '22.
Mountain Affair, typically a competitive performance, usually involves a panel of judges who choose how to distribute prizes, including a cash prize, to the most impressive and best-loved performers. One facet of this year's Mountain Affair spinoff was that the cash prize was instead given to the East Lake Expression Engine, a music project based at New City Fellowship.
Chaplain Lowe explained that it "felt right" to award the prize money to a ministry so organically connected to Covenant. The Engine is a music ministry of East Lake children and adolescents that has performed at Covenant in years past. In 2018, former Covenant students Sammie Brown '18, Nabil Ince '18, Sara Satterfield '18 and others brought Expression Engine to Covenant's Mountain Affair for a stunning performance.
Covenant's relationship with Expression Engine has been organic and ongoing, placing the music group in an appropriate position for receiving the prize money that allowed Covidchella to take on a festive air rather than a competitive one.
All in all, Covidchella was overwhelmingly well-received among attendees. In a conversation afterward, one attendee even suggested that Covidchella be brought back annually as a way to celebrate the end of the school year and the progression to warmer summer weather.