“The men in my family, going back generations, have always just been musicians, and that’s been kind of passed down to me,” Wes Spiro explains about his affinity for music. Growing up, Wes never had any formal singing training, but he often played music with his father, a professional folk guitar player, and began to develop his own voice and sound through this constant exposure. And he watched a whole lot of “Sister Act” movies. “There’s this scene where Lauryn Hill sits at the piano and sings ‘His Eyes on the Sparrow,’ and that’s my favorite scene in any movie ever. And from there I just became obsessed with this black gospel tradition.” This obsession found a productive outlet when Wes saw a performance by The Inspiration, a predominantly African–American a cappella group, at his freshman year convocation. “They stepped out on stage and just started snapping, and they sang Cece Winans [a famous gospel singer], I think; I was just so floored by it, and I decided that was something that I had to try.”
Since that night, Wes has been exploring a number of musical avenues. From performing with The Inspiration (which he did from freshman year until this past semester) to posting covers on YouTube to experimenting with his own sound, he’s finally on his way to discovering who he is as a musician. An important place where that develops, though, is his effort to create more open spaces for independent musicians to perform at Penn. “I feel like a lot of big–named events at Penn are kind of like ‘featuring this a cappella group’ or ‘featuring this dance group.’ There’s a sort of negative stigma with your event if you have an individual performer that’s not associated with a Penn performing group.” To remedy this, Wes worked with St. Elmo to start the Speakeasy, a benefit event where only Penn–independent acts can perform. “It’s kind of a niche on campus,” he says. “A lot of people feel comfortable performing there that don’t feel comfortable performing other places.” A third Speakeasy happened on Oct. 16, and, ultimately, that kind of place where individual artist can come out of the woodwork is what Spiro thinks music should be all about. “The more you put yourself out there in your videos and public performances, the more you find other kids that are also talented, and I just hope that in the future there’s more collaborations between these kids, including myself.” As for Wes, his music has been evolving from the singer–songwriter variety to a more big band–based, jazzy sound; a number of songs are in the works, but he’s still “waiting for the right people that could really do something special with his music.” Until he finds those people, though, you’ll have to catch him at future campus performances and on YouTube.
