An hour before the sold out concert was scheduled to begin, people had already begun lining up outside of Webster Hall to see A Tribe Called Quest.
It was Friday night, the eve of Prospectives' Weekend and The First Annual Intercollegiate Conference of the Afro-American Society. The crowd was a diverse group of students: from the College, from other colleges that participated in the conference and from local and far ranging high schools.
The student security team, dressed in bright yellow t-shirts and scattered throughout the hall, seemed like an unnecessary precaution for such an event.
Dartmouth's own World Music Percussion Ensemble, a talented group of 17 students and a lead drummer, filled the hall with their pounding drum rhythms for the first forty minutes.
During some of their songs two female dancers graced the stage with traditional African movements, feeding off the beat of the drummers. Dressed in African-print fabrics and in bare feet, the dancers offered the audience a visual image that reflected the crescendoing music of the drums.
The ensemble, although an excellent group of drummers, also pushed their welcome. They suffered the inevitable fate of every opening band: the audience enjoyed them during the first of their songs, but showed their restlessness and anticipation for the main event. The reading of a long poem in between their songs contributed to the anxiety of the crowd.
Unfortunately, even after the drummers finished up there was another half-hour wait before Q-Tip, Phife Dog and DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad made their entrance.
While the stage was cleared of drums and set up for Tribe's performance, two DJs who had been up in the balcony area playing beat and scratching as background music before the concert began, tried to kill time. They played music and talked to the audience, trying to keep everyone from getting too bored during the seemingly endless lag time.
Finally Tribe came out, Q-Tip with an old t-shirt, running shoes and his pants pushed up to his knees; Phife dog with a baseball cap, shorts, and a Vassar sweatshirt. They looked like students after a week of midterms.
Even after the long wait, they managed to get the audience hyped up during their songs. They worked hard for audience participation by making everyone join in the singing. The audience really got into it and the hall boomed with the heavy bass background beat and the synchronized voices of the audience.
During the songs, the audience was active. Those on the floor danced and sang along when they knew the words, and a lot of people seated in the balcony area were inspired to stand up and dance. But in between songs, instead of maintaining the same level of energy, the audience would quiet down.
After playing for only 45 minutes, the rappers said their goodbyes and left the stage. The audience cheered for just over a minute in anticipation of an encore, but they never got it. Finally, they simply gave up, figuring Q-Tip and Phife dog weren't coming back.
What most people couldn't see from the floor area was DJ Ali crouching down behind his mixing table out of sight, waiting for Q-Tip and Phife Dog to be cheered back on. But they never reappeared because the audience simply did not work hard enough.
Afterwards, many expressed their disappointment in the brevity of the performance. But in reality, it was the audience's lack of enthusiasm which cut the concert short. The audience got no more than it earned. Entertainers aren't going to play an encore unless they feel the audience really wants them back. A Tribe Called Quest was unfortunately faced with an audience at Webster that enjoyed them, but was not willing or able to fully express it.
