Meet Class of 2026 graduate Zaida Rio Polanco! #Yale2026 🎓 Zaida Rio Polanco, a singer-songwriter who put out a solo album of indie folk-inflected pop-soul songs in high school, stepped away from music-making as a first year at Yale and shifted her artistic talents to an a capella group and a hip-hop dance troupe. But when Yale’s student-run record label, 1701, invited artists to audition during her sophomore year, Polanco picked up her guitar. She auditioned, the label signed her, and “it was like night and day,” Polanco said. “I went from doing no gigging to gigging around campus all the time. They assigned me a student producer, a student manager, a student graphic designer,” she said. “We were all learning together what it means to operate in this microcosm of what a real record label would be.” Over the past three years, Polanco has frequently performed at her residential college, Benjamin Franklin, as well as at other venues around campus and in downtown New Haven, includi...