ROBERT NEITHART / News Editor —-
Denison’s student radio station, The Doobie Radio, hosted its second annual Doobie Takeover this past weekend, featuring student organizations including the Denison Asian Student Union (DASU), the Denison International Student Union (DISA), Denison Outlook, and Sigma Lambda Gamma.
The event ran from Saturday to Sunday, featuring set lists curated by each organization along with the addition of live acoustic numbers performed by Maya Blackmon ‘26, from Outlook.
Doobie Takeover was started in the 22-23 academic year, with the initial idea for the event coming from finance director Henry Gamble ‘24. The event serves as a means to promote collaboration among the radio station and other campus organizations.
“The Doobie can sometimes be seen as standalone and exclusive, so we did this to work with groups on campus who hadn’t previously collaborated with the Doobie,” Gamble said.
This year’s takeover featured a diverse array of musical genres from participating organizations. Outlook, Denion’s LGBTQ+ community, played songs from a number of queer artists.
When asked about the representation of queer artists in the music industry, Blackmon added, “the music industry is inherently competitive, and in those competitions… white male musicians are going to win and come out on top.”
Going on to explain the lack of representation in specific genres, Blackmon talked about country music, saying, “Artists [can be] underrepresented based on what the genre looks like… it’s harder for [queer musicians] to break through because listeners are so accustomed to this one image and person, and usually that person is never queer.”
Reflecting on ways the music industry and consumers alike can support the voices of queer musicians, Noah Chartier ‘25 said, “I think the biggest thing is looking at the way that music is storytelling, and making sure that the types of stories being told are diverse… not just those telling them.”
Chartier continued, saying “It’s also important to see the stories that are being told. If all those stories are very heteronormative… that’s going to put us back a long way when it comes to queer rights.”
Commenting on the impacts of Takeover, and the importance of cross-organizational collaboration, station manager Grace Han ‘24 said, “People have told us in the past that the Doobie can seem inaccessible at times… but three of our new mentees actually got interested in the Doobie by participating in Takeover.”