Guests of the Wav Village soft opening event listen to music on the booming sound system of the engineering room on Oct. 16, 2021. (KT Kanazawich | Flint Beat)
Flint, MI- Anthony Arline has long been a fan of the Flint music scene.
Without being a music creator himself, he wanted to find a way to be involved. Enter Wav Village, the 32-year-old Flint, Mich. native’s new downtown recording studio.
On Oct. 16, Arline hosted a soft opening for the brand new studio, which bustled with Flint creatives throughout the evening admiring the atmosphere and listening to music by local talent.
Though the space is new, Wav Village was conceived in 2019 and was formerly in a smaller, much less accommodating space across the hall. Less than a year into the endeavor, the new space was offered to Arline, though the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the official move until now.
The new space is outfitted with a podcast room, an engineering studio, a sizeable recording booth, a pantry full of classic snacks, colored lights that sync to music, and a gaming room for downtime during recording sessions.
CEO of Wav Village Anthony Arline poses for a photo in downtown Flint, Mich. recording studio during the soft opening event, held on Oct. 16, 2021. (KT Kanazawich | Flint Beat)
“It’s very important for me not to exclude anyone, you know, and make this not like the hip hop studio or the Flint studio, but like our culture studio,” Arline noted, adding that he wants his studio to feel safe and inclusive to all.
“I feel like the music scene getting to a point where it’s going to be hard to ignore.”
Wav Village is located in the Paterson Building at 653 Saginaw Street in downtown Flint.
Balloons that read WAV, for Wav Village, float in the new recording studio space for the soft opening on Oct. 16, 2021. (KT Kanazawich | Flint Beat)Flint poet Frankie Mcintosh sits at the podcast table inside Wav Village, a recording studio in downtown Flint during the soft opening on Oct. 16, 2021. The studio is outfitted for up to four-person podcasts. (KT Kanazawich | Flint Beat)The recording booth at the new Wav Village recording studio space in downtown Flint, Mich. on Oct. 16, 2021. The room has a live video stream of the engineering room for communication between artist and engineer. (KT Kanazawich | Flint Beat)Polaroids of artists who have visited the Wav Village recording studio in downtown Flint, Mich. hang on the wall of the entryway. (KT Kanazawich | Flint Beat) Flint, Mich. rapper Jackman Raps plays his music videos for guests of the Wav Village recording studio soft opening on Oct. 16, 2021. The downtown studio accommodates music and podcast recording. (KT Kanazawich | Flint Beat) Custom art hangs in the Wav Village recording studio in downtown Flint. The studio, which moved from a small space in the building across the hall, had a soft opening of the new space on Oct. 16, 2021. (KT Kanazawich | Flint Beat)Guests at the Wav Village soft opening celebration play Call of Duty in the gaming room at the downtown Flint, Mich. studio on Oct. 16, 2021. (KT Kanazawich | Flint Beat) Flint rapper DFFRnT pays one of his music videos in the engineering room at the Wav Village soft opening on Oct. 16, 2021. Wav Village is a recording studio in downtown Flint, Mich. (KT Kanazawich | Flint Beat)
