As part of the Music Month celebration in Columbia, the city will participate in Make Music Day on Wednesday. Hosted by One Columbia, Rice Music House and WXRY FM, the event aims to celebrate music in all forms and hopes to actively encourage the general public to participate and create their own music.
Music Month kicked off a few weeks ago with First Thursday and the WXRY Music Crawl, a free event that featured over 30 live acts across a two block stretch of Columbia's Main Street.
Make Music Day is an annual event that takes place on the summer solstice in over 750 locations worldwide. Ashleigh Lancaster, a representative from One Columbia, noted some of the event highlights.
"There will be a few featured events, but the goal of Make Music Day is to create as many impromptu concerts as possible in our city," Lancaster said. "Coffee shops, neighborhood parks and more will be hosting local musicians throughout the day. The hope is that people encounter these impromptu concerts over the course of their normal day. The idea that you can fill a whole city with performances like that is really exciting. It makes the streets feel so alive."
In addition to the free pop-up concerts throughout the city, Make Music Day also allows anyone to create music through mass appeals.
"We have 50 free harmonicas to give away, we'll have ukuleles for people to borrow and play on site and we'll also be teaching bucket drumming," Lancaster said.
The mass appeals are open to all levels of skill and will take place at the pocket park at the corner of Main and Lady Street from 6 to 7:45 p.m.