Pleased to meet you. Could you tell us the meaning of the title, IGNITION, and the activities you are into?
IGNITION was established by students who are interested in the hip hop culture and rap music wishing GIST to produce songs and have concerts. Here, you can honestly express what you have in mind while working on songs and develop creativity and confidence through the activities like performing in front of many people.
When was IGNITION most active?
IGNITION is most active when we had a concert as a part of the DGIST Festival. We did covers and also wrote our own songs and had a concert at DGIST. We also had an exchange with DGIST’s hip hop club.
We wonder how you recruit members. We would imagine that the competition is quite high because of its popularity.
Anyone with passion in hip hop can rather freely join us. Originally, we have an interview where the applicants show some rapping and we have a talk with them, but it’s difficult to have interviews now because of COVID-19 so we only check their intention of joining our club when we recruit new members. We basically accepted all students that want to be a part of IGNITION. There is almost no competition. If you like hip hop, you’re in.
To be able to give a hip hop concert, it looks like you must practice a lot. How often and where do you practice?
We usually gather members and set up teams to practice about a month before regular concert or festival. We practice mainly in the room provided for IGNITION or the underground practice room in the new building. In the week before the concert, we do rehearsals in the underground practice room in the new building and exchange feedbacks. We practiced really hard last semester, but now we can’t practice together for the reasons you know, and that’s quite inconvenient.
You must have written many songs (raps) in the club.
Not all of us but most of us write lyrics and compose songs. Doing concerts is one of the purposes of the club but we also make many songs because writing new songs with fellow hip hop lovers is also meaningful. We write most of the songs we perform during the concert. In last year’s regular concert, we reinterpreted and rewrote the song, ‘Transformation,’ and put it on the stage. For the beats, we use open source or buy them. The ‘Symphony Gang’ we performed in the last festival was the one we made with the beat we purchased.
Isn’t it tough to study and rap at the same time?
We have a regular concert each semester and a festival and stadium concert in the second semester. We start practice from about a month before the concert and practice hard a week before. Other than the practice, it doesn’t interfere with our study much. Club activity rather gives us a chance to relieve stress, which is great.
What are the charms and strengths of IGNITION?
We wouldn’t have had a chance to do a hip hop concert if we were not a college club. We can have the experience of doing a concert and making songs freely regardless of our skills. Could there be greater advantage than this? Another charm of IGNITION is that it allows us to listen to our favorite songs and practice together to purely enjoy the music with others that love hip hop.
