College A Cappella Hits The NEW YORK TIMES
Randi
(I'm also pasting it below, because you have to sign up for a free
user id on the website).
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/25/arts/music/25ACAP.html?homepageinsidebox
April 21 — The Dynamics, one of the four student a cappella
groups at Skidmore College here, were scheduled to sing on Saturday
night, and students started lining up more than a hour before the 10
p.m. show. When the doors opened, they surged in, filling the seats
and the aisles and standing three or four deep in the back of the
auditorium that holds about 300. As the 17 members of the group
plunged into songs like "Come on Over," "Eleanor Rigby" and "Build Me
Up, Buttercup" — their voices blending, their bodies rocking
— the crowd screamed and cheered as if it were rooting for a
championship sports team.
Founded seven years ago, the Dynamics — or Dynos, as they are
called on campus — are the youngest of Skidmore's a cappella
groups and the only one that includes both women and men. They are
also one of six groups that have made it into the finals of the
International Championship of Collegiate a Cappella, scheduled for
Sunday afternoon at Avery Fisher Hall. (The other finalists are from
Cornell, Boston University and the Universities of Michigan, Maryland
and Oregon.)
Skidmore does not have a football team. It does not have sororities or
fraternities. But the tightly knit, unaccompanied singing groups that
turn out well-tuned harmony in rock-style performances fill a bit of
those niches on this 2,200-student campus. They provide some of the
same camaraderie as a fraternity house and some of the same focus for
school spirit and alumni loyalty. And many of their members find that
once they join the groups, they become campus personalities.
"I had no clue that the second I got into the Dynamics, I
automatically became a rock star," said Matt Appleton, a junior from
Vermont who plays jazz guitar and is one of the Dynos' co-musical
directors. "It definitely makes you a visible person."
Skidmore is not the only campus where a cappella is thriving. From the
Ivy League to Berkeley, groups are multiplying, even on campuses that
have football teams and fraternities. Some institutions, like Yale,
Cornell and the Universities of Pennsylvania and Michigan, now have a
dozen or more a cappella groups each, including graduate and
professional school groups like Harvard Law School's Scales of Justice
(motto: "Because justice is blind, not deaf"), Yale Law School's
Habeas Chorus and the Ambassachords from the Fletcher School of
Diplomacy at Tufts.
They also include nearly 80 Christian and Jewish collegiate a cappella
groups, and at least one Hindi one, at the University of Pennsylvania,
called Penn Masala, founded in 1996 to fuse Eastern and Western pop
music. Varsity Vocals, which conducts the a cappella college
championship, lists 873 groups in its database. That is about four
times the number of campus groups 20 years ago, said Don Gooding,
founder and president of Mainely a Cappella, based in Maine, a contest
sponsor, who sang for the Yale Whiffenpoofs in 1980.
Not everyone is an a cappella fan. Ronnie Italiano, the founder and
president of the United in Group Harmony Association, which is
dedicated to the preservation of 1950's and 60's group harmony and
doo-wop, said he respected the college a cappella groups but found
many of them too bland for his taste.
"They're very gifted," he said. "But there's no feel — no
tradition — to the music they're doing. College a cappella is
mostly contemporary music. It doesn't have the New York street-corner
sound. The music should have human flaws in it, like in the 50's and
60's. The college groups strive for perfection. I personally wouldn't
sit there and listen to it."
In this high-tech age, the notion that so many students would throw
themselves into something so decidedly un-techy is perhaps contrary.
Part of the appeal appears to be the music itself. Although a cappella
groups specialize in many different kinds of music — including
pop, gospel, doo-wop and rock — what they have in common is the
close harmony, equal-voice style popularized in recent years by groups
like 'N Sync, the Backstreet Boys and Boyz 2 Men, said Scott Tucker,
director of choral music at Cornell. The success of Bobby McFerrin
— and the sophisticated instrumental sounds he makes with his
vocal chords — has also contributed to a cappella's allure, Mr.
Tucker added.
George D. Kuh, a professor of higher education at Indiana University
in Bloomington and director of the National Survey of Student
Engagement, said the small, self-directed nature of a cappella also
appealed to college students today. "There has been a decrease in
participation in formal extracurricular activities, like student
government," he said, "and an increase in self-organized activities,
like a cappella singing groups."
At Skidmore many a cappella members say they had never seen or heard
such singing before coming to campus but were smitten almost from the
moment they arrived.
"It was my first night at Skidmore," Mr. Appleton said. "The Dynamics
blew me away with their energy and enjoyment for what they are doing.
They were dancing around. One of them was doing break dancing in the
middle of stage."
He abandoned plans to play soccer and joined the Dynamics, and like
other members, he found the group has taken over his life.
"We all spend all our time together," he said. "We not only sing
together, but we hang out together, and it shows onstage. You can tell
everybody likes each other and that we're all having a good time."
That togetherness is not accidental. When the groups hold their
auditions — picking perhaps two or three new members out of 50
or 60 singers — they look not only for musical prowess but also
for personal chemistry, much like a fraternity searching for new
brothers.
"We kind of have a feeling when people come into the room," Mr.
Appleton said.
The ideal Dynamics member is "someone who has an amazing energy, an
incredible sense of vibrancy," he said. "When you look at them
onstage, you can't take your eyes off them. When you look at them up
onstage, you're really torn, because everybody's energy is so 175
percent that you don't know who you should be looking at."
That energy was clearly visible Saturday night. The concert seemed
like a big, high-octane party.
The Dynamics' style onstage is relaxed. There is no fancy
choreography; the singers mostly stand in a half-circle, facing the
audience, sometimes wandering off between numbers or even during songs
to take swigs of water from bottles scattered around the stage.
Members mostly move with the music and improvise.
Their dress, too, is informal. While some a cappella groups still wear
some kind of uniform — tuxedos, perhaps, or chinos and jackets
— many, including the Dynamics, are highly eclectic.
For the jam, many of the men wore jeans or khakis, and several went
barefoot. The women were more dressed up: Jocelyn Arem wore a silky
green dress with a sparkly sequin bodice, black patterned stockings
and black ankle-high platform boots. Julia Chalfin, who is studying
opera, wore a pink tank top with sequins. Melissa Warren, a senior who
is the other co-music director, wore a black cowboy hat from the
Australian Outback.
As they led off with "Space Oddity," their voices meshed and soared,
and the Dynamics soon had the audience clapping and roaring for more.
They tried something new on Saturday night — hokey for them
— singing the song in the dark and turning flashlights on
themselves as they sang. The audience shouted its approval. After the
lights went back on, the group moved through a range of pieces —
romantic, rock, folk and R&B — that often had audience members
calling out.
Ms. Arem, a tall slender woman with crimped brown hair, gave a loose,
effortless rendition as the soloist in a Jackson Five song, "I Want
You Back," her body and long arms weaving gracefully.
"Yeah, baby," someone shouted as she sang.
When Lisa Piccirillo, a sophomore education major in high-heel black
sandals, brushed her long blond hair off her face and moved into the
solo in a Christina Aguilera song, "Come on Over," several men in the
audience shouted, "Oh yeah, oh yeah."
The male soloists stirred up as much excitement as the women.
"Way to go, Jon," a young woman up front called to Jonathan Whitton, a
waiflike theater major who is the group's president, as he sang
harmony in the Beatles song "Eleanor Rigby."
Through it all Sam Stuart, the group's lead vocal percussionist,
reverberated like a human steam engine, producing sounds like a snare
drum, bass drum and a high-pitched cymbal (called the high-hat), among
others.
The small auditorium, arranged like a Greek amphitheater, gave the
performance a kind of intimacy, with the audience seated right up
against the wide open stage. One challenge the Dynamics will face next
Sunday, in the final round of the collegiate championships, will be to
try to convey the same infectious spirit in cavernous Avery Fisher
Hall.
And they will have to do it quickly. On Saturday night the Dynos
performed 17 pieces in about 90 minutes. In the championships on
Sunday, each group is allotted only 15 minutes. The Dynos will sing
just three songs: "I Want You Back," "Come on Over" and Sting's "When
We Dance."
Ms. Warren, a senior from Nashville, said she knew how big Avery
Fisher Hall was because she played in a jazz ensemble there while she
was in high school. But she said she was confident that the group's
energy could carry it.
"We just did a gig at a prison, and it was huge," she said. "We were
on a basketball court, and there were people seated on the far edges,
on bleachers, a distance away. We couldn't see all their faces. But I
felt like we reached out to them, and they reached back."
"We're hoping that is what it will be like on Sunday," Ms. Warren
added. "We're hoping people will be cheering in the back rows."
Amy Fogerson
>president of the United in Group Harmony Association, which is
>dedicated to the preservation of 1950's and 60's group harmony and
>doo-wop, said he respected the college a cappella groups but found
>many of them too bland for his taste.
>
>tradition to the music they're doing. College a cappella is
>mostly contemporary music. It doesn't have the New York street-corner
>sound. The music should have human flaws in it, like in the 50's and
>60's. The college groups strive for perfection. I personally wouldn't
>sit there and listen to it."
Okay, this is the Ronnie I. who hosted the NYC Sweeps for years, right? Any
comments on his comments? :-)
Generally, a great article, and great exposure for collegiate a cappella in
particular and a cappella in general. Woo-hoo!
Amy Fogerson
Sixth Wave - award-winning A Cappella Jazz/Pop/Rock -- http://www.6thwave.com
Southern California CASA Ambassador -- http://welcome.to/SoCalCASA
to reply, remove "quitspam" from my address
Eric Olsen
> >Not everyone is an a cappella fan. Ronnie Italiano, the founder and
> >president of the United in Group Harmony Association, which is
> >tradition to the music they're doing. College a cappella is
> >mostly contemporary music. It doesn't have the New York street-corner
> >sound. The music should have human flaws in it, like in the 50's and
> >60's. The college groups strive for perfection. I personally wouldn't
> >sit there and listen to it."
>
> Okay, this is the Ronnie I. who hosted the NYC Sweeps for years, right? Any
> comments on his comments? :-)
Well, Ronnie I. doesn't really reflect my feelings about a cappella,
but from a journalism standpoint, it does provide a balanced view of
the subject. If the article was entitled "College A Cappella Groups
Preserve That Old-Time Sound" it would be nice to have a perspective
noting most groups are doing contemporary stuff these days. So, I
thought it was a good and responsible of them to include a comment
from an old geezer's perspective. Just kidding.
-Eric Olsen