Meet Popular Music student Ephraim Masudi - AKA Ghetto Orange

In this interview, Popular Music student, Ephraim Masudi discusses how he founded his music night, Orange Fest, as well how he stays creative at Falmouth and what he hopes to do after university.

My name is Ephraim, AKA Ghetto Orange  - that's my musical name. I'm studying Popular Music BA(Hons) in the year 2023.

Before coming to university, I was producing and rapping and writing songs and playing drums.

I came to university, I wanted to get better at all those things. So every single day I made a track, which is crazy. I did that for the whole of first year, so in total, I think I have 200 and something songs just stored on my hard drive because I was doing that every day.

But by second year, you know, I was able to start doing shows and by third year, I'm doing a really big show for 600 people.

If you don't make something happen, it won't happen. There are people here that after university will go on to do amazing things and you want to be a part of that. And if you're part of the beginning, you're more likely to be a part of the end as well.

Having a new fresh way of doing things is really good, so expanding and working with those people is very useful.

For myself, I've produced a bunch of music videos, we've done art pieces, we've done, photography, we've done, you know, little booklets - I've been in a couple newspapers as well, but that's all been from students from different areas. So making a really good project does not come from just staying within your bubble, expanding out and using the different departments that Falmouth has is really good and you can create amazing, amazing works.

What inspires my work is just trying to do things that other people haven't done but through my eyes. I like my shows to be high and impactful and everyone really engaging with the crowd - I'll jump in the crowd sometimes and jump around as well.

What inspired my work is just trying to give people something that they've never experienced before or seen before.

Orange Fest was an idea that I've had for a while but I properly implemented it halfway through my second year. I finally started doing shows right after Corona was lifted - a massive show, it was amazing, it sold out, people going crazy and we're like "yo we got to do this again!".

But obviously, you know, as artists you usually wait to get booked by people to do shows and I was like, no I'm not, I don't want to wait for that. I want to put on my own shows. So I started up Orange Fest as a way to put on more musical events centred around Hip Hop and R&B because a lot of people love that. A lot of people want that, you just don't get it down in Cornwall. Especially the students, they're from all over places in the UK and abroad as well and that music is very prominent.