With Sloughfest quickly approaching, many students are talking about the types of music that will be at Sloughfest and the potential artists. While Sloughfest organizers choose a setlist this year, larger conversations are happening about entire genres of music, specifically country music.

When people think of country music, a variety of different visuals come to mind, such as cowboy boots, love songs, guitars, pickup trucks and more. Of course, there is a lot more to country music than just those few things.

On Oct. 21, country music singer Shania Twain won the Equal Play Award from the Country Music Awards. According to American Songwriter, the Equal Play Award is an award that “recognizes trailblazers who are using their platform to break barriers, speak out against injustices, and challenge the status quo.”

During her speech, Twain talked about inequality within the country music industry and said that she would continue to do her part in trying to fix the inequality. Twain said that everyone deserves equal pay regardless of gender, age or race. She plans to use her upcoming tour, “Queen of Me,” to uplift other artists.

“From an outside perspective, it’s a very binary industry, [and] most songs you think of as standard country songs are a standard love song,” junior and women, gender and sexuality studies major Jules Bendfeldt said.

According to The 19th News, in 2022, men made up 80% of country musicians, women made up 11%, muti-gender groups made up 10%, and nonbinary musicians made up 0%.

When planning Augustana’s music festival Sloughfest for May 6, inclusivity is part of the conversation. Sloughfest is a music festival that is put on for the Augustana students during the last few weeks of the spring semester. There is a lot of planning, time, effort and thinking that goes into creating Sloughfest.

Joshua Van Essen is a senior and one of the Sloughfest co-directors putting Sloughfest together this year.

“We try to pick stuff that appeals to the wider Augustana community. We don’t want to pick genres that are specific to only one group or, if we do, we want to make sure that we have other genres since we have multiple artists,” Van Essen said. “We have others that represent everyone on campus.”

Sloughfest always has several genres and musical artists play, including some of Augustana’s own students. Every year, students are excited to see the new Sloughfest lineup and attend the event, and every year there are changes to Sloughfest as well.

“We’ve put a lot of emphasis on making [Sloughfest] as inclusive as possible, representing everyone on campus,” Van Essen said. “We also are trying to change it so it’s more fun for everyone.”

As each year goes by, Sloughfest seems to become more and more inclusive to the entire Augustana community. Even though Sloughfest works to become more inclusive each year, that does not mean the music industry as a whole, including the county music industry, has become inclusive.

“I just really hope that everyone enjoys it as much as we hope they do and that they see how much hard work and effort goes into it,” Van Essen said.