As students walked up the stairs to the second floor of the Union Wednesday night, they may have heard jazz music coming from the Union Ballroom.
That music came from alumnus Mike Williams, who’s band Live Muzik hosted the 5th Annual BG Stars Multicultural Talent Showcase.
Williams and his three band members played jazz and pop songs like “Holy Grail” by Jay-Z.
As they began to slow down their music and volume the talent show began with hosts Will the Spacekid and Inglish Jones introduced the first performer freshman Jordan Kozar who sang “All Too Well,” by Taylor Swift.
“I wasn’t that nervous, I have performed before and I just love doing it,” Kozar said. “I have been singing for all my life. I picked the guitar because I wanted to add something extra to my voice.”
This year’s talent show was sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Affairs along with the collaboration from the Office of First Year Experience. The event was run by Associate Director of Programs in the Multicultural Affairs Office Sheila Brown. The talent show was a program idea Brown had due to the cancellation of the Dinner Theater they had previously held.
“We wanted this to be part of the welcome week activities,” Brown said. “That is why we held it so early in the year. Once the Dinner Theater went away, we collaborated with First Year experience to put this event together to give people an artistic outlet.”
The auditions were held Aug. 27 and 28 during the opening week of school.
Although the auditions were at the beginning of the school year, 40 people came out to audition for this year’s talent show but with so many auditions this year they had to make some cuts, Brown said.
After the cuts, the talent show still had the highest amount of performers it has ever had with 24 compared to last year’s 18 performers.
“In the past, before we had so much popularity, we did not have to make cuts,” Brown said. “But in the last few years we have had to make cuts because of the popularity of it has grown so much.”
Over 50 percent of the performers were freshman. Brown reached out to many different offices like the Veteran Affairs, International Affairs and LGBT to promote this event so people could show their talent. Promoting through these offices brought in many different talents and cultures to this event which allowed for the diversity that was shown on stage.
“I am very proud of the diversity we had in the show this year,” Brown said.
There were many different talents at the show from singers and belly dancers to poets and even a gospel mime.
The diversity of the talents carried over to the diversity of the performers which is what made the talent show so special, performer Brandon Swope said. Brandon is a senior with a major in chemistry and physics. He performed “Good Girl” by Carrie Underwood.
“It’s nice to see that there aren’t just singers, there are also people who do spoken poetry and a more dramatic arts performance,” Swope said. “It’s great to see all these different talents at Bowling Green come together for one night.”
Performer Adonis Jamison’s talent was being a gospel mime.
Gospel mime is similar to praise dancing but instead of dancing to the music you mime to it and try to express the artist’s feelings through your expressions and body movement, Jamison said.
“I have been doing praise dancing since I was 11,” Jamison said. “I did not pick up the mime part until around January. This is my second time performing this in front of people who are not familiar with it. The first people I performed for the audience thought it was a comedic act but it was more of an inspirational act.”
One twist to the schedule is they did audience participation for those who could not make the audition or did not make the cuts, Brown said.
“I surely would participate if I got called from the audience,” said junior Kiara Esseleman. “I do not know what I would do yet. I would just figure it out in the heat of the moment.”
