Collegiate A Cappella, Joshua Duchan
Collegiate A Cappella, Joshua Duchan
Collegiate A Cappella, Joshua Duchan
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JOSHUAS.DUCHAN
Collegiate A Cappella:
Emulation and Originality
Joshua S. Duchan received his Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Michi-
gan in 2007. The present article is adapted from a portion of his dissertation,
"Powerful Voices: Performance and Interaction in Contemporary Collegiate A
Cappella." He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Music Department at
Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, Mich., where he teaches courses in American
music, world music and cultures, and popular music.
AmericanMusic Winter 2007
© 2008 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
478 Duchan
Historical Background
Collegiate a cappella emerged from earliervocal genres on college and
university campuses, including colonial and early nineteenth-century
choral groups at universities such as Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale.
Survivingtunebooksand songsters,containingboth sacredand secular
songs, offerevidence of organizedcollege singing in colonialAmerica.12
In 1807,the Handel Society was founded at DartmouthCollege.13The
following year saw the startof the PierianSodality,an instrumentalclub
at Harvardwhose meetings also included singing.14The YaleMusical
Society, founded in 1812, was an ensemble of twelve chapel singers,
and in 1826,the school's Beethoven Society added secular songs to its
repertory.15 Groupslike these performedat commencementceremonies
and proms, and sometimes traveledto instructional"conventions"and
academicfestivals across New England.
Collegiateglee clubsappearedin the middle of the nineteenthcentury,
with the firstfounded in 1858at Harvardby BenjaminWilliamCrownin-
shield afterearlierattemptsin 1833,1834,and 1841failed to take root.16
Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, Yale students formed vocal ensem-
bles with other members of their class; the YaleGlee Club coalesced in
1861out of this tradition.Glee clubs were (and largely continue to be)
single-sex ensembles, which for several decades operated without the
direct leadership of university personnel. For example, the University
of MichiganMen's Glee Club,founded in 1859,firstcame under faculty
leadershipin 1908,and the HarvardGlee Club was led by ArchibaldT.
Davison, professorof choral music at Harvard,beginning in 1912.17
Smallvocal ensemblesformedwithin and alongside college glee clubs
and werepopularas earlyas the 1840s.18 Collegiatea cappellais oftensaid
to start with the Whiffenpoofs,a seven-man group that emerged from
the VarsityQuartet,an elite subset of the YaleGlee Club. The Whiffen-
poofs beganin January1909,with regularweekly performancesat Mory's
TempleBar,a popular student pub in New Haven. They are generally
regardedas the firstcollegiatea cappellagroupbecausethey arethe old-
est continuously existing group (still active today) and have remained
administrativelydistinctfromthe university'sofficialchoralensembles,
including the Glee Club.19
Collegiatea cappellahas also been influencedin the twentiethcentury
480 Duchan
Changes in high school music education in the United States had nur-
tured the growth of collegiate a cappella. The contest movement that
began in Kansas in 1914, for example, enabled school choral ensembles
to participate in organized competitions, stimulating the forming of glee
clubs and granting them respectability. The 1928 meeting of the Music
Supervisors National Conference (MSNC) was dubbed a "singing con-
ference" and featured numerous high school a cappella choir perfor-
mances and a quartet contest. Between 1928 and 1934 the MSNC hosted
the National High School Chorus. Finally, music publishers realized the
potential of the high school choir market and began advertising in music
education journals.27
By the end of the "a cappella craze" of the 1930s and '40s, unaccom-
panied choral singing was firmly established in the curriculum. This
continued into the second half of the century, when music educators
increasingly embraced popular music.28Following the Tanglewood Sym-
posium of 1967, the Music Educators National Conference endorsed
popular music in music education.29 Two years later, in the summer of
1969, the Youth Music Institute was convened at the University of Wis-
consin so that high school students could teach popular music styles to
teachers.30 Such events helped lay the foundations for the collegiate a
cappella boom in the '80s and '90s.
But that boom also depended on the integration of male and female
students in American colleges and universities. Early single-sex a cap-
pella groups, such as the Yale Whiffenpoofs and the Smith Smiffenpoofs,
482 Duchan
Emulation in A Cappella
In collegiatea cappella,emulationis necessary,though rarelysufficient.
A successfularrangementmust preserveimportantharmonic,rhythmic,
and melodic aspects of a song's commercialrecording.An audience's
abilityto recognizea song, despitethe shiftfroma vocal and instrumental
pop recordto the voices-only medium, does much to determine an ar-
rangement'ssuccess and, by extension,a group's as well. Two members
of CompanyB, a mixed group at BrandeisUniversityin Waltham,Mas-
sachusetts,agreedthatarrangementsclosely mimickingthe commercial
recordingshelp determinea song's success in performance:
jb:The reasonthat we try to stay so true to the song is so that when we
sing it, it sounds like the song. Wewant our arrangementto bethesong,
just a cappella.Youknow, we don't want to change it [from]the way
the artistintended it to be. So-
ll: And then the audience really catchesonto it-
jb:Yeah.
ll: - and they really like the way it's just how they heard it on the ra-
dio.36
Theirlanguagerevealsthatthey aretalkingaboutthe soundof an artist's
commercialrecording.Tothem,it is obvious thatthe "song"is the record-
ing, and it needs to be reproducedaccuratelyto satisfy audiences.37
A starting point is transcription,simply notating for voices what is
played by instruments. Anna Callahan, author of the only arranging
manual specificallyfor collegiate a cappella, proposes a continuum on
which she locates three types of arranging:(1) "transcribing,"(2) what
she calls "transanging,"and (3) "truearranging."Her language seems
to place the greatestvalue on the latter:
[Transcribing:]the actof listeningto somethingand writingdown
exactly what you hear.
[Transanging:]to convert a song originally played with instru-
mentationinto an a cappella song without substantiallychanging
the melody,harmonicstructure,or style. Transangingoften involves
restructuring,simplification,rangeadjustments,syllableassigning,
and othermodificationsof the original,but is always replicatingthe
originalversion.
[Truearranging:]This is the type of arrangingthat I call "true"
arranging,not because transcribingand transangingaren'tuseful,
difficult,or creative,but because this type of arrangingallows you
the freedom to really express yourself. [Includesdramaticchanges
of style, mood, meter,form, and dynamic growth.]38
484 Duchan
That is, once singers are assigned to each necessary chord tone, the oth-
ers are better used to serve other functions, such as imitating instrumen-
tal riffs from the commercial recording. In VoiceMale's arrangement of
"Human Nature" (see ex. 1), which itself is based on a 2004 Boyz II Men
recording, four voices provide the basic chordal backing and rhythmic
texture (the "acoustic guitar" staves, abbreviated "Ac Gtr"),while another
sings the muted guitar's melodic interjections ("Muted Gtr").
By using more than four parts, the VoiceMale arrangement more ef-
fectively mimics the commercial recordings of "Human Nature." (Other
a cappella groups use this technique as well, even if more than one voice
sings each part.) Thus, rather than reducing or adapting a piece to the
standard choral medium as many traditional choral arrangements do, the
goal here is to create a vocal original by expanding the medium itself.
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Syllables
One of the most distinctiveaspectsof collegiatea cappellaarrangements
is their vocables (called "syllables"by the singers). Beforethe 1990s,a
cappella groups drew on the familiarpalette of syllables from the glee
club,barbershop,and doo-wop. "Doo,""bum,""bop,""wah,"and open
vowels such as "ooo,""oh,"or "ah"were common. If the song's lyrics
suggested such opportunities, one might occasionally hear a walking
bass, a mimetic "beep-beep"of automobilehorns, or a momentaryim-
personationof brass. Much of the time, however, the ensemble would
sing together as a homophonic unit, harmonizing the song's melody.
For example, most of the twenty-two tracks on the Whiffenpoofs'LP,
TheWhiffenpoofs of 1958,featurehomophonicensemble singing, even on
arrangements that include a soloist. At times when soloists do stand out
fromthe ensemble,the backgroundsingers most often sing the syllables
"doo,""bum,"or open vowels. (Brassband mimicrycan be heardin the
Whiffenpoofs'recordingof Rodgers and Hart's"JohnnyOne Note.")
Throughoutthe 1980s,a cappellarecordingsincreasinglyseparatedthe
backgroundparts from the soloist, with fewer and shorterinstancesof
backgroundvoices harmonizingthe melody.Instead,backgroundvoices
more often functioned as accompaniment.The purely homorhythmic
texture of earlier recordsalso gave way to more complex rhythms,in-
cluding brokenchords called "bellchords,""pyramids,"or "cascades"
in barbershopparlance.42"Doo" and "ba"continued, however, as the
mainstays of syllable choice. For example, with the exception of one
track(a cover of MackGordonand HarryWarren's"ChattanoogaChoo-
Choo"),every song on the University of North CarolinaClef Hangers'
album Safari(1992)featuresat least one soloist while backgroundscon-
tinually use the syllables "doo"and "ba."
An importantstylisticshiftoccurredin the mid-1990s,as groupsbegan
using syllables with a j sound, such as "jun,""jin,""sjun,"in order to
more effectively emulate the sound of a guitar strum. It is unclearwho
used such syllables first, but "jun"or one of its variants first appears
on the Bestof CollegeA Cappellacompilationalbum'ssecond installment
(1996)on tracksrecordedin 1994 (the University of MichiganAmazin'
Blue'srecordingof Mr.Mister's"Kyrie")and 1995(the Universityof Vir-
ginia Gentlemen'srecordingof BillyPilgrim's"Insomniac"). VoiceMale's
"HumanNature,"arrangedin 2004,makes extensive use of this; sound
with its syllables"jig-gajig-ga"and "jen"(see ex. 1 above).Of course,the
spreadof "jun"was not immediate- as some groupsbeganusing the new
syllables, many others continued with the older syllables- and today's
groups have not abandonedthe more traditionalsyllable options.
When syllables are used to map an instrument's acoustical attack,
timbre, and decay onto a vocally produced sound, the result is some-
CollegiateA Cappella 487
Vocal Style
would of course vary the pitch and derail any effort to lock the chord).
An articleon barbershopstyle once called vibrato'poison.'"45
For a cappella singers, the most important vocal concept is blend.
Blended voices are indistinguishable from one another. Like barber-
shoppers, the singers I consulted avoid vibrato because it inhibits a
group's ability to match tone quality and pitch. I was often told of the
value of a singer's ability to blend, and the use of vibrato was heav-
ily criticized in deliberations about new members.46Historical prec-
edents for a cappella's emphasis on blend can be found in the glee club
tradition (vis-a-vis the straight-tone technique of the early St. Olaf's
LutheranChoir),barbershop,the AfricanAmerican quartet tradition,
and doo-wop.47
VoiceMaleseeks a particularvocal style that hinges on a strong,loud,
intensetimbre.In songs like "HumanNature,"the singersavoid not only
vibratobut also falsetto.In my field recordingsof VoiceMale's"Human
Nature,"the singers "belt"(in chest voice) during the briefintroduction
and the chorus but not during the verse, when the listener's attention
focuses on the soloist. This structuraluse of belting (and volume) em-
phasizes passages during which the group,not the soloist, should be the
centerof attention.
One VoiceMalememberexplainedthe group'sstylisticpreference:"As
partof the power of the sound that we try to put out, we very rarelyput
anythingin falsetto.If you can hit it, unless it's supposed to be quiet, we
want it powerful,we want it out there."48 Anothermemberof VoiceMale
explained that they want to sound as loud, or louder, with their seven
membersas othergroupsdo with seventeen.49GivenVoiceMale'sidealof
one singer per part,it becomes clearthat in orderto achieve the desired
loud and intense sound while maintaininga balancebetween the parts,
each individual must sing confidently and loudly enough by himself.
No one else is covering his note; there is no safety in numbers.An un-
trainedfalsettois typicallyquieterthan a male voice in the belt range,so
avoiding falsetto makes sense. It also fits into the ethos of VoiceMale's
identity as projectedby their manner of vocal delivery. "Power"is the
key word, applying both to the singer's physical effortand to the iden-
tity he projects.As Simon Frithwrites, "Evenwhen treatingthe voice as
an instrument... it stands for the person more directlythan any other
musicaldevice."50Throughits performances,VoiceMalewants to project
masculinity,strength,even domination.
Not all groups shareVoiceMale'svocal style or intent.The Treblemak-
ers,a mixedgroupat BostonUniversity,prefera moremuted,morechoral
sound. It is unusualfor the group'stenorsto belt.Instead,they habitually
switch out of their chest voices and into falsettowhenever they have to
sing in theirupperrange.In October20041taughtthem my arrangement
of Maroon5's 2002 pop ballad, "SheWill Be Loved."During the song's
CollegiateA Cappella 489
Texture
Originality in A Cappella
While emulation is an importantstylistic goal in collegiate a cappella,
many groups also strive to injectoriginalityinto their music, taking the
a cappella song beyond just "equal"to the commercialrecordingand
instead "surpassing"it. VoiceMale'suse of bells in the backgroundparts
of "HumanNature"is one example. That technique kept singers (and
listeners)interested,challenged, and happily engaged with the music.
But there are other techniquesthat achieve the same objective:musical
quotation,formalexpansion, texturalvariation,the sharing of melodic
materialacross voice parts, and a soloist's reinterpretationof a song's
lead, to name only the most common.The firsttwo techniquesexplicitly
change the song throughthe introductionof new musical material.The
492 Duchan
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Every girl secretly wants to be like Britney Spears. You see someone
dance - and I'm not saying risque - but you see someone be so con-
fident and dance like that and sing and really belt it out, and have
so much energy, and you're just like, "I want to be like that." And,
"if I join that group, I will be."69
The vocal techniques and bodily gestures that singers perform facilitate
identification. They enable the singer to assume a rock star's persona or
to act like the rock star playing his or her instrument. Moreover, through
direct emulation, syllables and gestures enable the singer to be the rock
star's instrument.
Collegiate a cappella is founded on the act of recontextualizing com-
mercial recordings in a vocal medium. Many of a cappella's stylistic
goals build on this foundation. Both emulation and originality (com-
bined with social needs and opportunities) shape collegiate a cappella's
distinctive sound. A cappella thus steers a narrow path between two
forms of musical mimicry that Weinstein describes: "covers" (iterations
of particular performances) and "versions" (iterations of the underlying
composition).
At the same time, a cappella challenges that dichotomy because it
emulates particular performances of songs (recordings) while simultane-
ously denying the very instruments used in those performances. On one
hand, it may be simple to say that a cappella consists more of versions
than of covers. Yet when an a cappella group strives to recreate aspects
of a particular recording - such as VoiceMale's arrangement of "Human
Nature," whose guitar lines appear in the Boyz II Men version of the
Michael Jackson song but not in Jackson's recording - a Weinsteinian
view would describe the group as aspiring to a cover. On the other hand,
some techniques of originality, such as interplay between background
parts or ^interpretations of the lead melody, seem to distinguish an a
cappella song from a cover. Yet because they alter basic building blocks
of the piece, other common techniques of originality, such as musical
quotation and formal expansion, undermine the case for a cappella as
version. Clearly the categories break down in this relatively recent and
so far little-discussed genre.
While popular recordings certainly underlie the a cappella repertory,
the cover/version dichotomy, or other schemes that separate the act of
musical recontextualization by reference or intention, cannot adequately
describe the a cappella approach to making music. More important, such
498 Duchan
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Earlier drafts of this article were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Ameri-
can Music in March 2005, at the Midwest chapter meeting of the American Musicological
Society in October 2005, and in my dissertation. I am grateful to Judith Becker, Richard
Crawford, Mark Clague, James Wierzbicki, and Albin Zak, along with the anonymous
reviewers, for their guidance, critique, and suggestions during the writing process. I must
also thank the musicians with whom I worked, including the members of Brandeis Uni-
versity Company B and VoiceMale, the Boston University Treblemakers, the Harvard
University Fallen Angels, the University of Michigan Amazin' Blue, and the University
of Pennsylvania Counterparts for sharing their lives, thoughts, and music with me. Of
course, I retain full responsibility for any inaccuracy of representation.
NOTES
1. For example: Kurt Eichewald, "'Doo-Wop-a-Doo' Will No Longer Do," New YorkTimes,
June 22, 1997, sec. 2, p. 32; Karen W. Arenson, "Songsters Off on a Spree: Campuses Echo
with the Sound of Enthusiastic A Cappella Groups," New YorkTimes,April 25, 2002, El, 4;
"Profile: Yale's A Cappella Groups Rush Current Crop of Freshmen," NPR RadioMorning
Edition,Sept. 9, 2002; "A Cappella Frenzy," CBS News SundayMorning, Jan. 11, 2004; Rachel
Baker, "These Are the Biggest Studs On Campus?," Boston Magazine, February 2007. The
estimate of a thousand groups comes from the CBS News story.
2. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), s.v.
"emulation."
3. On barbershop, see Lynn Abbott, "Tlay That Barber Shop Chord': A Case for the
African-American Origin of Barbershop Harmony," AmericanMusic 10, no. 3 (1992):289-325;
Gage Averill, Four Parts, No Waiting:A Social History of AmericanBarbershopHarmony(New
York:Oxford University Press, 2003); Liz Garnett, "Ethics and Aesthetics: The Social Theory
of Barbershop Harmony," PopularMusic 18, no. 1 (1999):41-61, and TheBritishBarbershopper:
A Study in Socio-MusicalValues(Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2005); Max Kaplan, ed., Barbershop-
ping: Musical and Social Harmony (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
1993); Richard Mook, "The Sounds of Liberty: Nostalgia, Masculinity, and Whiteness in
Philadelphia Barbershop, 1900-2003," Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,
2004; and Robert A. Stebbins, TheBarbershopSinger:Insidethe Social Worldof a Musical Hobby
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996). Barbershop quartet singing does have a pres-
ence on college campuses, and is supported by the Barbershop Harmony Society (formerly
SPEBSQSA) through its national competition, the MBNA America Collegiate Barbershop
Quartet Contest, founded in 1990. In my field research,however, I found barbershop quartets
largely absent from the music scenes of the colleges at which I worked.
Collegiate A Cappella 499
4. On doo-wop, see Stuart L. Goosman, "The Black Atlantic: Structure, Style, and Values
in Group Harmony/' BlackMusic ResearchJournal17, no. 1 (1997): 81-99; Anthony J. Gribin
and Matthew M. Schiff, Doo-Wop:TheForgottenThirdof Rock'n Roll (Iola, Wis.: Krause, 1992);
Philip Groia, TheyAll Sang on the Corner:New YorkCity's Rhythmand Blues VocalGroupsof
the 1950s (Setauket, N.Y.: Edmond Publishing Co., 1974); and Robert Pruter, Doowop: The
ChicagoScene (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996).
5. Little scholarly work has been done on the history of college glee clubs or their con-
temporary manifestations, although the topic receives some attention in Christopher Bruhn,
"Taking the Private Public: Amateur Music-Making and the Musical Audience in 1860s
New York/' AmericanMusic 21, no. 3 (2003): 260-90; Ellistine Perkins Holly, "Black Concert
Music in Chicago, 1890 to the 1930s," BlackMusic ResearchJournal10, no. 1 (1990): 141^19;
and Walter Raymond Spalding, Music at Harvard:A HistoricalReviewof Men and Events(New
York:Coward-McCann, 1935). For a recent first-person account of the college glee club, see
Bruce Montgomery, Brothers,Sing On!: My Half-CenturyAround the Worldwith the Venn Glee
Club (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
6. David Horn, "Some Thoughts on the Work in Popular Music," in The Musical Work:
Realityor Invention?,ed. Michael Talbot (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), 30.
7. Deena Weinstein, "The History of Rock's Pasts through Rock Covers," in Mapping the
Beat:PopularMusic and ContemporaryTheory,ed. Thomas Swiss, John Sloop, and Andrew
Herman (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1988), 138.
8. Serge Lacasse, "Intertextuality and Hypertextuality in Recorded Popular Music," in
TheMusical Work,ed. Talbot, 46. Some forms of covering would fall into Lacasse's category
of "hypertextuality," which is defined as "practices which aim at producing a new text
out of a previous one" (37).
9. This article deals with arranging and performance practice from the perspective of
collegiate a cappella practitioners. It does not address recording, a process in which both
emulation and originality play a key role. For more on a cappella recording practice,
see Joshua S. Duchan, "Powerful Voices: Performance and Interaction in Contemporary
Collegiate A Cappella," (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2007), 119-22,
243-301. The subject of arranging has borne a sizable library of instructional texts, par-
ticularly from the perspectives of orchestration, choral arranging, and jazz, many of which
draw heavily on the Western classical tradition for their principles and examples. See, for
example, Glenn Miller, Glenn Miller's Methodfor OrchestralArranging (New York:Mutual
Music Society, 1943); Hawley Ades, ChoralArranging (Delaware Gap, Pa.: Shawnee Press,
Inc., 1966); and David Baker, Arranging and Composingfor the Small Ensemble:Jazz, R&B,
Jazz-Rock(Chicago: Maher, 1970). Scholarly perspectives on arranging can be found, for
example, in Evelyn Howard-Jones, "Arrangements and Transcriptions," Music & Letters
16 (1935): 305-11; Norman Carrell, Bach the Borrower(London: Allen and Unwin, 1967);
Hans Keller, "Arrangement For or Against?," Musical Times110, no. 1511 (1969): 22-25; and
Millan Sachania, "'Improving the Classics': Some Thoughts on the 'Ethics' and Aesthetics
of Musical Arrangement," The Music Review 55, no. 1 (1994): 58-75.
10. Those capacities include arranger, performer, director, producer, and competition
adjudicator. My introduction to collegiate a cappella came in high school, when a group
visiting from Northwestern University conducted a clinic with the school choir and gave
a brief after-school concert. I joined a mixed group as a sophomore in college and another
during my graduate studies. I then conducted ethnographic fieldwork during the 2004-5
academic year with groups in the Boston area (primarily with Brandeis University Voice-
Male, the Boston University Treblemakers, and the Harvard University Fallen Angels),
consisting of observations and interviews, as well as some participation and coaching.
11. Although the topic of collegiate a cappella remains off the musicological map, it
has been well covered by undergraduate and graduate students in term papers and
theses. Those that I have been able to locate include: Judah Cohen, "'Beautiful Stories,
500 Duchan
History of the Whiffenpoofs of Yale University and a Roster of Membership: Prepared for
the 85th Anniversary Celebration, April 29-May 1, 1994, New Haven, Connecticut," in RU
156, Ascension 2000-A-044, Box 1, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University.
20. For example, in Four Parts, No Waiting, Averill discusses barbershop's practice of
"collective audition/' in which bodily and social relationships intersect (p. 178). In "Ethics
and Aesthetics: The Social Theory of Barbershop Harmony," Garnett examines barbershop-
pers' concept of harmony as a metaphor for social cohesion, an egalitarian ideal, and the
performance of "maximum inclusiveness," and in The British Barbershoppershe explores
the social effects of barbershop competitions and behavioral codes (pages 43, 50, 59-62,
75-78). Both scholars also consider the social implications of the concept of blend.
21. Gould calls the Whiffenpoofs' style from 1909-49 the "barbershop style." It was
marked by four-part arrangements, relatively few solos, and musical sources such as vaude-
ville, burlesque, college songs, and spirituals. As with barbershop practice, the melody
line was most often in the second tenor part, and harmonies and rhythms were of rather
simple and straightforward construction. Gould, The Whiffenpoofs:TwentiethCentury, 65.
22. The Mills Brothers, from Piqua, Ohio, consisted of brothers Herbert (1912-89), Harry
(1913-1982), Donald (b. 1915), and John Mills, Jr. (1911-35). Although secularized, their
style drew on a longstanding tradition of black religious vocal music stretching at least
as far back as the jubilee choruses of the mid-nineteenth century and later popular gospel
quartets (such as the Golden Gate Quartet). They began singing together about 1922 and
in 1929 became the first black ensemble to receive official commercial sponsorship by a
major network, CBS. Among their early successes was a version of the Original Dixieland
Jazz Band's "Tiger Rag," which they recorded multiple times in October 1931 and again in
1932 for the soundtrack to the film The Big Broadcast(1932); the recordings appear on The
Mills Brothers:Chronological,Vol. 1 (London: JSP Records, JSPCD 301, 1988). "Tiger Rag"
features a tuba-like bass tone and a remarkably convincing vocalized muted trumpet. As
proof of just how convincing their instrumental imitations were, the label of their early
recordings read: "no musical instruments or mechanical devices used on this recording
other than one guitar" (Geoff Milne, liner notes to The Mills Brothers:Chronological,vol.
1). For more on the Mills Brothers, see Mitch Rosalsky, Encyclopediaof Rhythm and Blues
and Doo-Wop VocalGroups (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2000), 397; and Eileen South-
ern, The Music of BlackAmericans:A History, 3rd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 51.
Another early example of vocal imitations of instrumental sounds is the German sextet
the Comedian Harmonists. Active in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the group inspired a
feature film, ComedianHarmonists(1997). For more information on the ensemble, see Peter
Czada and Giinter Grosse, ComedianHarmonists:Ein Vokalensembleerobertdie Welt (Berlin:
Edition Hentrich, 1993); for analyses of the film, see Lutz Koepnick, "Refraining the Past:
Heritage Cinema and the Holocaust in the 1990s," New GermanCritique87 (2002): 47-82,
and "'Honor Your German Masters': History, Memory, and National Identity in Joseph
Vilsmaier's ComedianHarmonists (1997)," in Light Motives: New Directions in GermanFilm
Studies, ed. Margaret McCarthy and Randall Halle (Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
2003), 349-75.
23. Also notable is Todd Rundgren's 1985 album, A Capella(WarnerBros. 9251281), which,
like McFerrin's work, was recorded entirely a cappella using extensive multitracking. The
album reached number 128 on the Billboard Top 200, far below the spots reached by Joel's,
McFerrin's, and Boyz II Men's recordings.
24. The chart in figure 1 is based on survey data I collected between January 2006 and
January 2007 in an attempt to determine the number of collegiate a cappella groups in
existence, their schools and founding dates, and whether they were male, female, or mixed
ensembles. The survey included groups mostly in the United States as well as a few in
Canada and the United Kingdom. It was decidedly unscientific and I make no claim to
its statistical validity. I began with an old directory supplied by Don Goodine (of the
502 Duchan
Mainely A Cappella company), which itself was based on contact lists compiled by Deke
Sharon and the Tufts University Beelzebubs in the early 1990s. I then consulted one of
the largest on-line directories (http://www.collegeacappella.com) and the "Acapedia"
administered by the Contemporary A Cappella Society on its website (http://www.casa.
org) to verify as much information as possible. When links were provided, I followed
them to groups' websites, which often contained relevant data. In cases where I could not
verify a group's existence, I did not add it to Gooding's and Sharon's original lists. This
process of information-gathering, and my own recollections of names and anecdotes from
my field research, comprised the primary method of data collection; it would have been
impractical to contact each group directly to verify the data.
25. As the Men's Octet (University of California at Berkeley, 1948), the Virginia Gentlemen
(University of Virginia, 1953), and the Mendicants (Stanford University, 1962) demonstrate,
a cappella groups did exist elsewhere, but not with the same geographic concentration as
in the northeast.
26. The parenthetical question mark in "Spizzwinks(?)" is in fact part of the group's
name. According to the group's history, the parenthetical mistakenly accompanied the
name the first time it appeared in print in the Yale Banner in 1914. Amused, the group
decided to retain it. (Spizzwinks(?) website, history page, http://www.yale.edu/spiz-
zwin/ history/, accessed Sept. 6, 2007.)
27. James A. Keene, A History of Music Education in the United States (Hanover, N.H.:
University Press of New England, 1982), 319-28. See also Leonard Van Camp, "The Rise
of American Choral Music and the A Cappella 'Bandwagon,'" Music EducatorsJournal67,
no. 3 (1980): 36^0.
28. Keene, History of Music Education,353-63. See also Michael L. Mark and Charles L.
Gary, A History of AmericanMusic Education(New York:Schirmer, 1992), 364-65.
29. "The Tanglewood Declaration," Music EducatorsJournal54, no. 3 (1967): 51.
30. For a detailed report on the Institute, see Wiley L. Housewright, Emmett R. Sarig,
Thomas MacCluskey, and Allan Hughes, "YouthMusic: A Special Report," Music Educators
Journal56, no. 3 (1969): 43-74.
31. The two remaining Ivy League schools were coeducational much earlier: Cornell
University was coed from its founding in 1865 (although female students did not enroll
until 1872), while the University of Pennsylvania, which was founded in 1740, became
coed in 1876.
32. The College Board website, http://www.collegeboard.com (accessed March 2, 2007).
The College Board administers the SAT and other college entrance exams, and provides
high school students with information regarding colleges and universities.
33. ContemporaryA CappellaNewsletter2, no. 4 (April 1992): 13. The documentary's sound-
track was inducted into the Contemporary A Cappella Society's Contemporary A Cappella
Recording Awards "hall of fame" for its demonstration of "the richness of a cappella's
past and the vitality of its future to a completely new audience If we had to pick one
album to represent contemporary a cappella to someone who's never heard a note," the
editor wrote, "this would be the one." When it was founded, CASA served mostly college
groups and adopted Sharon's CollegeA CappellaNewsletter,first published in October 1990,
as its organ. The Society quickly expanded its purview to include semiprofessional and
professional a cappella groups, and in 1990 the newsletter was renamed the Contemporary
A CappellaNewsletter.Selected issues are available on the Contemporary A Cappella Society
website: http://www.casa.org.
34. The Recorded A Cappella Review Board's website can be found at: http://www.
rarb.org. Recording engineer Bill Hare emphasized the importance of the Internet in a cap-
pella's growth: "While people like Deke [Sharon], Don [Gooding], and myself were doing
pioneering things independently of each other, I cannot stress enough the role that the
invention and use of the Internet had during this time, several years after our independent
Collegiate A Cappella 503
groundwork. If it weren't for this new form of instant information gathering, most groups
would have remained islands unto themselves - I know the Stanford groups for the most
part didn't know there were any other groups out there before this time. In a way, Deke
invented the original intergroup net by trying to put together a database of the other groups
out there, using telephone and written correspondence - I was really impressed when I got
a letter from this kid Deke Sharon in Boston who had heard my work with the Mendicants
from all the way over in California" (personal communication, Feb. 14, 2007).
35. The BOCA albums are available for purchase online through A-Cappella.com:
http://www.a-cappella.com.
36. Julia Barnathan and Lianna Levine, Brandeis University Company B,, personal in-
terview, Oct. 2, 2004 (hereafter Barnathan and Levine interview).
37. It is worth noting that, throughout my research, I never observed a cappella musi-
cians discussing their music in terms of authenticity. However, the term's prevalence in the
scholarly literature on popular music testifies to its utility when examining the ideologies
behind musical practices. See, for example, Simon Frith, /y/TheMagic That Can Set You
Free':The Ideology of Folk and the Myth of the Rock Community," PopularMusic 1 (1981):
159-68; Steve Redhead and John Street, "Have I the Right?: Legitimacy, Authenticity and
Community in Folk's Politics," PopularMusic 8, no. 2 (1989): 177-84; Motti Regev, "Israeli
Rock, or a Study in the Politics of 'Local Authenticity'," PopularMusic 11, no. 1 (1992): 1-14;
Sara Cohen, "Identity, Place, and the 'Liverpool Sound,'" in Ethnicity, Identity,and Music:
TheMusical Constructionof Place,ed. Martin Stokes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994),
117-34; David Brackett,InterpretingPopularMusic (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1995), 75-107; Allan F. Moore, Rock:The Primary Text:Developing a Musicology of Rock,2nd
ed. (Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2001); and Aaron Fox, Real Country:Music and Language in
WorkingClass Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).
38. Anna Callahan, Anna's Amazing A CappellaArrangingAdvice:TheCollegiateA Cappella
ArrangingManual (Southwest Harbor, Maine: Contemporary A Cappella Publishing, 1995),
1, 20, 39. "Transanging" is Callahan's term; only once in my field work did an a cappella
participant use it.
39. James Harrington, posted in the discussion forum of the Recorded A Cappella Review
Board (RARB) (http://www.rarb.org) (topic: "a theory about imitative arrangements"),
Sept. 27, 2004.
40. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, a standardized format in
which computers and other digital instruments can share musical information. MIDI files
contain instructions for computers to synthesize a song and can be imported into most
music notation software.
41. Drew Cohen, Brandeis University VoiceMale, personal interview, Oct. 5, 2004 (here-
after Cohen interview).
42. A "bell chord" is an arranging technique whereby four voices enter in succession to
create a chord, each voice ringing like a bell. Related terms include "cascade" (all voices
begin in unison and while the highest voice maintains its pitch, the others descend in
succession to their chord tones) and "pyramid" (a bell chord that builds from the lowest
voice/pitch). Definitions for many barbershop terms (such as "bell chord") can be found
in the glossary for Averill, Four Parts, No Waiting, 205-10.
43. A former VoiceMale member credits the group's uncommon and inventive syllables
to the ethnic and linguistic diversity of its arrangers: one was from Israel, while another
was from India. He offered the syllabic combination "kin-diddle-ray-doh, kin-doh-doh-
diddle-rai" as an example. "Nobody thinks of that kind of stuff," he said, "if you're think-
ing in English." Such syllabic combinations are valuable and creative because they do not
directly mimic any particular instrument and because they are unfamiliar to listeners'
ears. Here, syllable choice is motivated by a desire to distinguish the group's sound from
that of other vocal and choral ensembles, including other campus groups. Eli Schneider,
504 Duchan
Brandeis University VoiceMale, personal interview, Sept. 28, 2004 (hereafter Schneider
interview).
44. John Potter, VocalAuthority: Singing Style and Ideology(New York:Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1998), 169.
45. Averill, Four Parts, No Waiting, 165.
46. One instance when singers actively sought vibrato was when trying to effect a gospel
style. Moreover, soloists do not necessarily need to avoid vibrato when singing a song's
lead because it could function as a marker of emotional intensity.
47. Garnett, "Ethics and Aesthetics"; Goosman, "The Black Atlantic." The Lutheran Choir
of St. Olaf 's College, Northfield, Minn., was founded in 1907 by F. Melius Christiansen. It
was noted for its straight-tone singing, which, through its tours, inspired legions of high
school choir directors to adopt a similar practice of avoiding vibrato while also drawing
criticism (see Keene, A History of Music Education,308-14).
48. Schneider interview.
49. Jon Weinstein, Brandeis University VoiceMale, personal interview, Sept. 23, 2004.
50. Simon Frith, PerformingRites: On the Value of Popular Music (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1996), 191.
51. Jane Mclntosh credits the Tufts University Beelzebubs with bringing vocal percus-
sion to collegiate a cappella on their 1991 album, Foster Street (Mclntosh, "In Harmony").
Although the Beelzebubs, led by Deke Sharon, were pioneers in collegiate a cappella in
the early 1990s, they were not alone in recording vocal percussion: the University of North
Carolina Clef Hangers' Safari (1992), for which some tracks were recorded in 1991, also
includes vocal percussion. Recording engineer Bill Hare also recalls the Stanford University
Mendicants recording vocal percussion around 1989 (personal communication). Most col-
legiate a cappella recordings are produced in limited quantities and not widely distributed,
so a comprehensive survey of recordings is difficult. Moreover, a group's recordings may
sound quite different from their live performances. Thus, we cannot assume that recorded
vocal percussion indicates its frequent use in live performance, although anecdotal evi-
dence suggest that it was new to the University of Pennsylvania Counterparts when they
observed the Beelzebubs at a joint performance in Boston in 1991. Sangho Byun, personal
communication, Jan. 13, 2005.
52. Personal observation, vocal percussion workshop held at the Michigan A Cappella
Conference, Sept. 9, 2006. Wes Carroll was one of the founding members of Five O'Clock
Shadow and later joined the House Jacks. He has produced an instructional video that
some a cappella groups use: Mouthdrumming,vol. 1, Introductionto VocalPercussion,video
cassette and DVD (Southwest Harbor, Maine: Mainely A Cappella, 1988).
53. Deborah Wong, SpeakIt Louder:Asian AmericansMakingMusic (New York:Routledge,
2004), 250. The definition of "cipher" is drawn from Wong's correspondence with Asian
American hip-hop artist Peril-L of the Mountain Brothers. Wong's analysis stresses the
role of technology in hip-hop compositional practice: "hip-hoppers refer constantly to
the technologies employed in their compositional process, e.g., beatboxes and mics, but
in this case 'beatbox' means rhyming out loud over a human beatbox, or mouth percus-
sion accompaniment - a performative history that reabsorbs the acoustic percussion - »
electronic beatbox process back into oral performance."
54. There is little scholarship on beatboxing; most discussions of rap emphasize creative
uses of technologies such as turntables, mixers, and samplers rather than percussive or
nonsensical sounds, e.g., Tricia Rose, BlackNoise: RapMusic and BlackCulturein Contempo-
raryAmerica(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1994). A notable exception is
David Toop, The Rap Attack:African Jive to New YorkHip Hop (London: Pluto Press, 1984).
55. Michael Feldman, posted on the RARB forum (topic: "vocal percussion vs beatbox-
ing"), May 30, 2005.
Collegiate A Cappella 505
RECORDINGS CITED