WEST LONG BRANCH — Some of the biggest names in music have come out of the Jersey Shore, and there’s about to be plenty more.
Monmouth University held an Oct. 10 launch event and celebration to announce its new affiliation with the Los Angelesbased GRAMMY Museum. The affiliation provides the school with access to the GRAMMY Museum for educational purposes and unique student internship opportunities.
“We’ll use this opportunity to enrich our programs and offerings to students, alumni and to the community,” said Joe Rapolla, chair of the Department of Music and Theatre Arts. “This department has grown significantly over the last few semesters — grown not only in the number of students taking classes here, but grown with regard to an updated curriculum, which is more in line with the current [music] business environment.”
Monmouth is the only university affiliate of the GRAMMY Museum on the East Coast. The other educational affiliates include the University of Southern California, Oregon State University and Delta State University, Mississippi.
GRAMMY Museum Director and Monmouth alumnus Bob Santelli, who facilitated the partnership, said he is excited to see the future of the music industry being led by young people.
“We hear all the horror stories about the music industry now, but what’s happening is there’s a change, a seismic change that’s about to occur as people my age and baby boomers begin to leave the leadership roles in the music business culture,” he said. “That opens the door for so many new ideas and so many young faces to come in and take over.”
Santelli said that when he first came to Monmouth University in 1969, the school was a very different place.
“What I found at Monmouth was the opportunity to find myself, creatively, and also to grow into a young man that I desperately needed to do at the time,” he said. “But for me, in terms of my career, being a [music] writer at [student newspaper] The Outlook, and helping to produce concerts here, and getting to listen to Bruce Springsteen before anyone knew him … all of these things inspired me to say, ‘What I want to do is, I want a life in music.’ ”
Students in the school’s music industry program were also excited about the university’s new affiliation and the opportunities it could open up for them.
“It looks really good [for my career],” said sophomore Dave DePaola, who aspires to have a job in music marketing after graduating. “I can tell people that I went to a school that had an affiliation with the GRAMMY.”
Junior Natalie Zeller, who wowed the crowd with covers of Lorde’s “Royals” and Sara Bareilles’ “Brave,” said she came into the music industry program at the right time.
“I honestly think it’s incredible,” she said of the school’s new affiliation. “Especially coming from someone who watches the GRAMMYS every single year … and to have my college be affiliated with something like that is just absolutely incredible, and it just shows the hard work that we have done to further our program.”
Zeller is one of the founders of the school’s student-run record label Blue Hawk Records.
“I’ve done a bunch of different stuff oncampus, off-campus,” she said. “I’m pretty well-rounded already [in the music industry], and I still have this year and next year left, so I can’t even really imagine what else is in store for me.”