The Undergraduate Student Government (USG) teased the Back to the Brook concert in a video posted to their YouTube channel, sbusg, on Monday, Oct. 1.

The video, titled “SBU ON Ep. 1: Wolfieland 2018,” recapped the carnival hosted by USG earlier this semester on Sept. 15, and mentioned the annual concert at the end. The interviewer asked Vice President of Student Life, Kojo Danso, “What’s up with Back to the Brook,” but he ran away from the camera before answering. A graphic flashed “Back to the Brook Vol. I, Back to the Brook Vol. II” to close out the video.

Last year, the Back to the Brook artist was announced on their Facebook page before the fall semester began. Six weeks into the semester this year, students are still left in the dark about who the artists will be.

Danso said USG is aware of student curiosity about Back to the Brook, and the office of VP of Communications has been responding to students’ comments on social media. USG decided to tease Back to the Brook in the SBU ON video to put an end to rumors that the concert may be cancelled.

“Our media team thought that would be one of the coolest ways to let students know that something is coming out, because there has been a lot of questions about it on our Facebook and Instagram,” Danso said.

He explained that instead of one concert in the fall semester, USG will organize multiple concerts of different genres.

“Both [Back to the Brook and Brookfest] are always the same genre and that is not the best way to diversify,” Danso said. “Some students may not feel comfortable with it being diversified but at the end of the day not everybody enjoys the same music.”

The headliners of the past five Stony Brook Concerts organized by USG were rappers, but some of the openers were EDM and pop artists.  

More concerts may mean the artists are not as popular as past Stony Brook concert performers, such as Future and Post Malone, who headlined Brookfest in 2016 and Back to the Brook last fall respectively. Danso says that having lesser known artists may make for a better show.

“[Last spring] we had 21 Savage, A-Boogie and Jay Critch, who seemed to be less known artists, but students enjoyed their performances way more than 21 Savage,” Danso said. “At the end of day, sometimes having a big name doesn’t mean you’re a good performer per se. Having a small concert doesn’t mean that the artist would be bad.”

Danso says USG will announce the artists in the upcoming week.