A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

DO IT, ROCKAPELLA: Following her review of Anoop Desai: The A Cappella Years, I asked Marsha to sum up the state of modern a cappella. Here goes:

“A cappella” merely means music sung without instrumental accompaniment. It can be solo or group, of any genre at all. A good deal of classical choral music is a cappella (the link is my absolute favorite choral piece), as is the music sung in many religious traditions. Most people will tell you that they like vocal harmony – they enjoy it when the person in the pew behind them harmonizes at church on Sunday, or they like the opening to “Carry On My Wayward Son” or “Seven Bridges Road.” They may even have a Tracy Chapman or Suzanne Vega song to sing you.

But if someone tells you they’re an a cappella fan, they usually mean something very specific. They mean “modern a cappella” music – taking a modern song that nearly always originally used instruments and reframing it for voices only. There are “professional” a cappella groups, but not very many of them. (Ted’s Band on Scrubs only sort of counts.) A few groups, such as Shai or Boyz II Men, managed to become known for a cappella numbers, and a few others recorded a song or two that was partially or completely a cappella (Queen was fabulous in this regard). Lots of “professional groups” tour and make albums, but very few make a living at it. The only one most people have heard of is Rockapella, and that’s because of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and the Folgers ads (although they’re very big in Japan). Modern a cappella music is really big in only one place – college.

College a cappella is a world unlike any other. Some college groups (like the Yale Whiffenpoofs) go back nearly 100 years, although most are much newer. For a long time, virtually all college groups did the same songs from the same few available a cappella albums by The Nylons, The Bobs, Rockapella, and a lot of old doo wop groups. After all, there was no YouTube, there were no jamborees, and there really was little opportunity to hear other college groups perform unless they were the guest group at your concert or you were at theirs. We could all be performing Zombie Jamboree and The Lion Sleeps Tonight and so long as no other group on your campus was doing the same song, the audience had no idea that the stuff was hackneyed and overdone.

Then came the early 1990s, when two things happened. First, in 1990, Spike Lee did a PBS Great Performances special called “Spike Lee & Co. – Do It A Cappella” (and related clips). The related album made a big splash in the college a cappella community, and the arrangements were copied by pretty much everyone. Then, in 1991, Deke Sharon graduated from the Tufts Beelzebubs. Deke was the guy who took a bunch of college groups and brought them together into a network, creating CASA (The Contemporary A Cappella Society), the A Cappella Summits, the Ultimate A Cappella Arranging Service, and the biggie – a cappella competitions. That’s right, college a cappella groups compete against each other, mostly for bragging rights.

They sing, they dance, they make complete fools of themselves and the audiences love it. And then came YouTube – and now the whole world can watch them. Now, every group is looking to put their own unique stamp on a song with a new arrangement, or to find a song to do that no one else out there is doing. It is routine now, when a group is deciding whether to do a song, to scour YouTube and the internet to see if other groups are doing it. Here’s the song that won Best Arrangement at the ICCA Midwest Semi-Finals this past weekend – I’d never heard of the song before, and a guy in the group arranged it. ) (Incidentally, this is the Missouri State BearTones, who won the night and advanced to the Finals in NYC April 19 – should be a great show.) That’s what it takes these days. You can still do Trickle Trickle if you like, but it’s not going to excite anyone any more.

So that brings us to what it takes to be a good college a cappella singer. First, you gotta have a good voice, and you have to have excellent musicality. You must be able to stay on key, hold a rhythm, and stay on your part, and you have to be able to blend. An a cappella group has a collective sound (and every group’s is a little different), and you have to fit into it or it all goes to hell. You don’t have to have a solo quality voice to do well in a cappella (I never did) – plenty of people have long careers in college a cappella without ever having a solo. But if all you can do is sing a solo and you can’t handle the harmony, don’t bother to audition. It also helps to have some musical training – in the better groups, you really need to be able to read music. And groups are always looking for people who can write original arrangements.

Second, you have to be completely willing to make an idiot of yourself. College a cappella isn’t just about the singing any more. You’ve got skits, joke songs, and even lots of choreography. You’ve got to be able to put over a song, and be visually interesting as well. If your group enters college a cappella competitions, you’re going to need to be able to dance, or at least to move well. 40% of the judging in college competition is for “visuals,” which is about costumes, stage presence, and choreography. If you watch a 12 minute competition set, it is carefully constructed to be as exciting visually as it is aurally, showing off range of all kinds. This past weekend at the ICCA Midwest semi-finals, I saw 8 groups compete, and another two (the host group and the special guest) did at least 4 songs each, and I was never, ever bored. These people know how to entertain. Check out this number (really, 2/3 of their set) from the University of Illinois Xtension Chords at that competition to see what I mean.

Third, it helps a lot to be funny, and attractive to your audience. Ninety percent of the audience at an a cappella show is comprised of (a) the friends and family of the performers, (b) fangirls, (c) a cappella junkies (often overlapping with (a) and (b)), and (d) gay men. If you’re cute in that clean cut sort of way, and you’re willing to get down on one knee and solo to a girl in the front row, you’re ahead of the game. Even if you’re not cute, if you’re willing to put on a grass skirt and a coconut bra and do a skit while singing (and sell it like you love doing it) then you’re home Finally, it really helps to enjoy the camaraderie of your fellow singers. If you hate to rehearse, if you don’t like road trips, and if you’re an introvert, this ain’t for you. Good college groups practice up to 15 hours a week and often spend school vacations and weekends on road trips to other colleges or high schools in the middle of nowhere. For many college a cappella singers, their fellow singers are like family – for the rest of their lives.

One final note: a lot is made over gender differences in a cappella. The sound, obviously, differs a great deal if you’re in an all-male, all-female, or mixed group. Some people prefer to sing with only one gender for a purer, tighter sound and a certain kind of camaraderie; while others prefer the range and diversity that a mixed group brings. Some people will tell you that they don’t like all-female groups, but I say that’s because they haven’t heard a good one. The problem is that the human ear is wired to want to hear a range of tones, and to particularly enjoy base tones. A men’s group can sing falsetto and give you a range even with only men, but a women’s group can only go so low. A really stellar women’s group like Sweet Honey in the Rock finds ways to make those bass tones or not care that you’re missing them. What it comes down to is that great women’s a cappella is as wonderful as men’s or mixed, if not more so (an all-female group, BYU’s Noteworthy, won the ICCA Nationals last year). But mediocre women’s a cappella is really unpleasant – tinny, weak, and thin - while even a mediocre men’s group can still sound pretty decent to most people.

There’s a lot I didn’t cover here, such as foreign a cappella, influential groups and singers like The Bobs and Bobby McFerrin (and yes, that is him singing solo), jazz a cappella, wordless a cappella, but it’s time for you to all go out and buy some albums now and support these wonderful professional and college groups!