Boston - N/A's A Cappella's Mecca?
Jim Frewen
of my dreams was to be able to spend at least one month a year in Boston,
the place I consider to be the Mecca of a cappella music in North America.
Where else can you find well over 200 a cappella groups (college +
non-college contemporary plus barbershop and choral) within driving (or in
my case, public transportation) distance? And New York is only, what, 5
hours away? I'd be in heaven, attending as many a cappella events as I could
physically fit in. When you live in a city that has only five contemporary
groups (none of whom perform very often), four barbershop choruses and
several choral groups/choirs, you get really jealous of a city like Boston.
:-)
But the reality is, I'm on a pension now and accommodation in Boston is
incredibly expensive for out of towners wanting to rent a place for a month
(especially with the currency conversion!). So that dream is on hold for the
time being. I'll just have to be satisfied with listening to my cd
collection. But enough about my personal dreams. I'm inspired to dream for
Boston, if I may.
Reading the thread about the Boston Globe reporter saddens me so much
because in the Mecca of a cappella, you have someone in a responsible public
position with a large newspaper effectively dissing the entire concept of a
cappella. But realizing that there are probably somewhere between 2,000 to
5,000 or more ( just a quick arbitrary number on my part) people actually
singing a cappella in one genre or another in the Boston/ New England/New
York/New Jersey area, the thought came to me that if the several bright
Boston minds who have posted on rmac could find a few other bright minds
with the vision to dream big, you could create something so special and
important, beginning from the grass roots.
I want to use a couple of examples of successful grass roots entertainment
undertakings here in Ottawa as examples of what is possible, if people have
a dream and are willing to put in the legwork to make it happen. The first
one has to do with our major junior hockey team, The Ottawa 67s. Canadian
major junior hockey is where around 50% of the NHL players are recruited
from (the other 50% coming from American colleges and Europe). Since 1992,
we've had an NHL team, the Senators, and the traditional thinking has always
been that junior hockey teams in cities with an NHL team will have great
difficulty attracting fans. And this was the case until 1997 when a man
named Jeff Hunt bought the 67s. In the 10-15 years prior to Mr.Hunt taking
over this team, they averaged 2,000 to 3,000 people per game in a 10,000
seat arena (the Senators play in a newer 20,000 seat arena on the western
edge of the city). But Mr. Hunt went out to the community, to the grass
roots and sold junior hockey as an affordable alternative, family oriented
event and in each of the past 6 seasons, they averaged over 9,000 seats a
game. Now you will say, correctly, that hockey (even in Boston) would be a
much easier sell than a cappella, because there is already a much broader
initial base of support. But the point I'm trying to make is that this man
Mr. Hunt, didn't let the naysayers discourage him. He went out and did the
legwork and used his obviously immense marketing skills to draw enough
people to almost fill the arena at just about everyone of over 30 games each
year.
Another event in Ottawa, is a musical event that will relate much closer to
a cappella. It's the Ottawa Folk Festival (http://www.ottawafolk.org ). Back
in the early 90's my friend Chris White (former manager of Malaika) and
another man came up with an idea to revive The Ottawa Folk Festival which
was originally created and disbanded in the 70's. This was truly a
grassroots movement, starting from scratch with no money. The first festival
started modestly in 1994 and it has progressed to the point where it is one
of the big three summer festivals in Ottawa each year drawing thousands of
folk music fans from Ottawa and from far away as well. The key to the
success of the festival is the hard year round work of the festival
committee and the many volunteers at the festival itself, in reaching out at
the grass roots level to encourage people to support the festival. They
developed a huge following as much by word of mouth, newsletters, a huge
mailing list, as through the media. Each fall, winter and spring, the
festival stages a series of benefit concerts to raise money, so they can
afford bring in top artists and still keep the price of admission affordable
to the average person. At these benefits, the artists are paid on a sliding
scale depending on how many people turn out to the event. If the event is
sold out, as they usually are, approximately half of the proceeds go to the
artist(s), while the remainder remains in the festival coffers. The Folk
Festival has been hugely successful at building from and expanding a grass
roots base of support.
I could in fact use the great city of Boston as the supreme example of what
can be accomplished at the grass roots level.. How about the creation of the
world's longest enduring democracy! I'm not a history expert, so please bear
with me, but while, they did have newspapers back in the 1700's in Boston
and other cities in what where the British colonies at that time, it was the
common people spreading the word inspiring each other that brought about the
revolution and the Boston area played a large part in this, right? :-)
This is no doubt that Boston is the Mecca of a cappella music in North
America. There is a broad base of people who sing a cappella music, their
friends, families and audiences. There are many alumni of the over 100
college a cappella groups who, if they could be reached, would, I'm sure
want to continue to be involved in a cappella, if only as an audience
member. There is already a good a cappella web site in place there
(BACS.org) and you have, as a possible huge focal point, The East Coast A
Cappella Summit, and the Harmony Sweepstakes as well. You have community
centres, churches, malls, Faneuil Hall and other areas where large number of
people congregate. There must be a score of weekly or monthly community and
university newspapers, who would be glad to include an article on a
cappella. Eventually you could put periodic ads in the globe, informing
people about a cappella and invite you to contact them with more info. If a
committee of passionate and determined people could be assembled, you could
contact all of these people who have (or may have) a cappella in their
hearts and organize them into a solid base of support.
The East Coast A Cappella Summit has the potential to be a huge event, if
the legwork could be done well in advance each year, by a group of dedicated
Bostonians, who dream big, whose goal they would make to bring in the top a
cappella groups in the world (Take 6, Real Group, Vocal Sampling, Rockapella
et al) and make Boston a true Mecca for a cappella in the eyes of the world.
In past years, the summit has been run on a shoestring budget by a skeleton
crew of dedicated people who were for the most part, from outside of
Boston. All of these people deserve the equivalent of the medal of honor for
their dedication and extremely hard work in keeping the summit going. But
too few people have doing the work and this is a Boston event, so it should
be driven by passionate Boston people. It should also be annually at a
venue, where the summit dates can be firmly fixed a year in advance, so
that you have a target to work towards in sufficient time to properly plan
and promote the event. Boston University is a great place to stage the event
and they have been very generous in their support, but they can't set a date
until late summer or early fall (if I'm not mistaken) and that does not give
organizers enough time to properly get prepared. For any event like this to
be truly successful, you need to have a local committee working on it almost
year round. I think the best venue that has hosted a Boston summit, was the
Conservatory. It's only major drawback (in addition to cost, I assume) is
the scarcity of places to eat around it. The Ottawa Folk Festival (though it
is an outdoors event) invites local restaurants to apply for and pay a fee
for booths. Something like this could done at the summit.
But the main ingredient for any event or initiative to be successful is for
a group of passionate people to come together willing to do the legwork to
accomplish a goal. You have a large base of a cappella friendly people
already in place in Boston, Massachusetts, New England, New York and New
Jersey, all within driving distance of Mecca. :-)
Though I am passionate about a cappella and wanted to do a lot more than I
did as a CASA Ambassador in my home province, Ontario, I'm not a confident,
inspiring person in person. I think my nervousness and lack of
self-confidence ( which probably gave people the impression I'm some kind of
zealot) scared away a lot of people. I'm not a general, just a soldier with
ideas. But what I wanted to accomplish with this long post was to somehow
inspire some bright, passionate Bostonian a cappella people with the people
skills I lack, to dream big, organize, reach out to the huge already
existing base and expand the support for a cappella from the grassroots into
a truly incredible Mecca of a cappella. Boston is in such a unique position
to accomplish this!
Merry Christmas,
Jim Frewen