This column is a tribute to an Oberlin tradition. It is a tribute to organs and organ players, to drunk ’Sco-bies and raunchy musicians, to classical music and sketch comedy and to the fearless perception that these disparate parts someow, put together, form a whole.
The Friday Night Organ Pumps at Oberlin have, since their founding over a decade ago, combined classical music, comedy and obscenity, abstinence and sex. An entity like none other, these monthly midnight concerts are proof once again that Oberlin treats arts a little differently. The story of the Friday Night Organ Pump, at least in the public eye, is a tale of creativity, carpe diem and entrepreneurship that would make any Harvard student green with envy.

In the beginning
It was a setup that would make today’s Obies cringe: the hapless ’Sco, 10 years ago, charging entry to anyone who came before midnight. This policy had the expected effect: a long line of eager party-philes lined up at 11:45 waiting for the ’Sco to go free. On Friday nights, this line was especially long, stretching far out the doors of Wilder and around toward Finney Chapel. For two audience-hungry organ students, who watched this unfold week after week, it seemed like an awfully large crowd.
Oberlin alumni Erik Suter (OC ’95), Michael Paul Lizotte (OC ’93) and others met and decided that ’Sco-hungry Obies would be the natural audience for a classical organ concert — 1780s style. Determined and without thought of failure, they organized the first Oberlin Organ Pump in the spring of 1992 – not for Con students, or for even college musicians, but for an audience of Obies who, just minutes before, had been waiting to enter the ’Sco’s dance floor.
Now, it should be said that these late-night concerts are like no other classical music events on campus, or in the country. Many of the stunts that have been pulled over the years border on the obscene. But let’s get back into the thick of things.
Condoms. That’s what the unexpecting audience got during the first ever Organ Pump. Yet, as Suter, now organist at the National Cathedral said, “Throwing condoms off the stage was probably the tamest pump we did.” In the following months and years came more daring ploys that had faculty and students scratching their heads in wonder: the drag pump, the strip-tease pump, the improv pump, the marching band pump and, yes, the one and only Mary Poppins pump. It was this mixture of sexual innuendo, unbridled mischief, classical music and, most of all, curiosity, that drew crowds of drunken and stoned Obies to these first performances. And while the location and performers have changed in the last decade, the Organ Pump remains the same. It is a daring mixture of classical music and stand-up comedy, drowned in a vat of creativity and sex.
Several years ago, the ’Sco finally came to terms with its inane admission policy. But the real spectacle still goes on. Pump, pump, pumping.

The Juicy Details

Now, it should be explained that, while the etymology of the phrase “organ pump” came from the minds of college students, the name itself is no stretch of the truth. Without giving away the secrets of Finney’s 1.9 million piece of furniture, the basics behind an organ are simple: big pumps called billows push air through pipes of assorted lengths, producing, like wind over a bottle-top, various sounds and pitches. To start the organ is, in the electrical age, to turn on a switch for the billows. But going back to the days before motorized billows, as in Bach’s era , there was always a hired hand on duty to, in a way of speaking, pump the organ.
Given that Organ Pump, as a word, has absolutely no sexual connotations and comes at the highly-academic hour of midnight, it should be no surprise that the crowds range from Harkness blue-heads to Conservatory faculty members. It is truly a universal event, attracting from the Con and the College, the campus and the town.
“I think it’s great,” Conservatory Organ Professor, David Boe said. "If you can get 300-400 people to come out to an organ concert, that’s great. I go to many myself.”
This is about an event that has spurred musicians to come virtually naked and throw condoms into the audience. This is about a concert that put up publicity posters during Parent’s Weekend one year so risqué they were publicly condemned by Dean Sayles of the Conservatory. Strangely, this was also about an event that Oberlin Organ Department Head Haskell Thomson has performed in twice and sponsored yet criticized for crossing the boundaries of good taste.
So, the bottom line is, organists are desperate to sell their instrument. It’s okay though, because they’ve done a remarkable job. What reason is there not to go to an Organ Pump?
The tradition lives on.

The Pump

The Organ Pump is a Conservatory function (read: it has the Con logo on the program and is staffed with tuxedoed ushers), but in truth, it is student-organized with no faculty supervision or censorship. The organ students themselves decide who plays what on the program and control, through the Organ Pump Committee of Oberlin, how the concerts should be run.
In the tradition of the Pump, there is a MC who must also be an organ student and also adept in the particulars of stand-up comedy. While there are only about 20 organ majors at Oberlin (and about 200 in the entire country), the Organ Pump has never been MC-less — a testament to a loyal fan base and a monarchial-like progression in the organ family that always has someone waiting in the wings to succeed their graduated parent.
Junior David Sinden took over the Pump a year ago from the departed Ben Schaeffer (OC ’01) and will run it until he graduates and another takes his place. Even with all of the changes in tenure over the years, things still remain pretty much the same. After half-an-hour of organ music and Sinden’s shrewd, lewd jokes, Finney’s lights dim and the entire audience crawls their way onto the stage, drunk and stoned, tired and happy. The final player of that evening sits at the keyboard above, as the crowd lies on the hardwood floor and snuggles against the world’s largest instrument – the organ. When the lights go out, the music begins.
The Organ Pump tradition lives on.