The University of Kentucky boomwhacker club, known as the BOOMCats, hosted their 2024 fall performance at the Cornerstone ESports Lounge.

The BOOMCats performed many songs at their semesterly performance, including the UK Fight Song, On, On, U of K! on Thursday, Nov. 21.

Zachary Huwalt, BOOMCats president, started the club after a creative arts living learning program (LLP) event in Holmes Hall called “Jam your jammies.” 

“I have a big passion for boomwhackers, I have been playing them since high school, and when I brought them to college I wanted to continue that,” Huwalt said.

Brianna Saunders, the treasurer of the organization, said the biggest appeal of BOOMCats to her is the ability to transition from high school musical hobbies like band, to then going to college and still having an outlet to play music. 

“It is a fun club you can be a part of, but still be able to make music and be creative,” Saunders said. 

Jojo Verrett Jr. plays for the club and arranged a rendition of  “Hot To Go” by Chappell Roan to be played during the performance. 

“When I arrange a song, I listen to it a bunch. Then, I go to a website called Hook Peering, which shows you a lot of the chords and the breakdown of the song,” Jojo said.

Huwalt said he aims to foster a sense of community among students from various disciplines and to help them explore music through color-coded boomwhackers.

“Boomwhackers are percussion pitched instruments. To make a note, you hit the instrument off your body, ground or table. Every boomwhacker has a different length, diameter and color. The boomwhackers continue to get shorter as you go up in scale,” Huwalt said.

The BOOMCats also played “Bad Guy” by Billie Eilish.

“The performance was really good, we did not have a lot of practice time, but I am really satisfied,” Verrett said.

After the main performance, the BOOMCats members urged the audience to grab a couple boomwhackers and play along to a couple tunes. 

Tyler Ogden, a freshman at UK studying engineering, said after he learned about the organization from a friend, he joined BOOMCats for a couple of weeks, but academics got in the way. 

“I think it (BOOMCats) is all positive and uplifting because I experienced practicing and no one was negative,” Ogden said. 

He said he thought the BOOMCats performed well and that they did “awesome.”

Sania Sairajeev, a freshman at UK studying computer engineering, said she liked that the performance was interactive. 

“The play-along was fun,” Sairajeev said. “The boomwhacker is unique and anyone can play it.”