This article originally appeared in the Off-Script print issue, in stands November 2025. It has not been updated and some information may be out of date.
Music is more than just the soundtrack of our lives. It’s the gateway to the inner window of the soul. Love for music can be channeled into communion and community when students seek out and contribute to live music venues and record shops.
Students must support Salt Lake City’s vibrant music scene so that more people can color their lives with music’s prismatic brush.
Lots to love about Libby
The arts at the University of Utah are in serious danger. Recent budget cuts threaten the musical experiences we have come to cherish, but students can fight back by keeping the arts relevant through their attendance.
One of the biggest issues for Dr. Josiah Boornazian, director of jazz studies at the U, has been educating people about what the arts have to offer. “People are just not even aware of the amazing caliber of faculty and students that we have here and all of the amazing things that they’re doing,” Boornazian said. “A lot of it’s just a communication problem.”
Student engagement keeps the music department afloat and incentivizes administrators to hire the very best professors and clinicians. That is why students must attend musical events on campus.
“Supporting and sustaining the arts costs money, and they often cost more money than they bring in,” Boornazian said. “Everybody should be all in on supporting all [our] events so that it benefits the students, the university, and the Utah arts community in general.” The U itself offers a musical charcuterie to pick from, including the Melomaniacs music listening club, weekly country swing dancing and special guests at Kingsbury Hall. Students need to vote with their wallets and their time if they want the College of Fine Arts to continue to succeed.
Music sounds better with you
Fully appreciating music means engaging with it physically. Vinyl records, CDs and even cassette tapes, though long since technologically outmoded, provide the tangible “skeleton” that music gives a soul. Randy’s Record Shop in downtown Salt Lake has served the community for more than four decades and is considered historic as one of America’s definitive remaining record stores.
Records are not just bought with money but with the currency of connection. Rebecca Greenberg, retail manager at Randy’s Records, described vinyl’s significance in terms of its impact. “In an era where we’re not used to physical things in our hands, there’s something that connects you more to an album or an artist or a song when you get to hold that album art in your hand, put it on, [and] handle it with care,” Greenberg said. “There’s a certain warmth to [vinyl] you can’t get through streaming.”
The physical act of purchasing and listening to music encourages intentional listening. Active listening also doubles as a cathartic exercise when you must slow down, flip through dusty discs, and listen to an album start to finish. Records become cultural artifacts around which culture and community flourish as record shops like Randy’s become de facto gathering spaces.
“You can get recommendations from someone that’s not a digital algorithm, which is just a much more human experience,” Greenberg said. “[Bringing music] into your real life and taking it off of an online platform is a catalyst for connection even beyond music and art.”
Lose yourself to dance
Vinyl’s musical “warmth” extends beyond the turntable and into the city’s live music scene. Downtown SLC houses several jazz bars where Jazz Studies Piano Performance major Derek Coombs comes to let off steam. “Salt Lake has a surprisingly strong music scene, [and] the sign of a good, healthy music scene, specifically jazz, is a lot of jams,” Coombs said. “You can find jazz almost every night of the week.”
Listening to live music has proven emotional and social benefits. A 2024 study by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology found that listening to live music mediates positive psychological outcomes in university students and cultivates “collective effervescence,” a shared sense of social and emotional connection. As French house trio Stardust put it, “the music sounds better with you.”
“[Live music] is a unique opportunity to engage with something that’s organic and real and to make connections that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to,” Coombs said. “I think there’s something innately human about humans wanting to see other humans make art.”
Salt Lake City follows Daft Punk’s admonition to “let the music of your life give life back to music.” All U students should revisit the music they love, and the people who make it, in our little desert city.
