The Colby Echo

Issue date: 2/23/07 Section: Opinions

Media Credit: Margie Gribbel

"Six a cappella groups?" echoes someone's dad on the Admissions tour I'm giving, as I recite music-at-Colby tidbits. "I don't think we've been on a single tour where they didn't mention their a cappella groups," he chuckles.

Can you blame us?

There was a time when music with words ceased to interest me, when I decided that an inability to lose (or find) myself in lyrics because I didn't share most singers' experiences meant sung music just wasn't my thing.

Well, things change. Lyrics still often don't reach me, but whether by the explosive power of Mark Phillips '09 (Colby 8), the seemingly unbounded range of Melyn Heckelman '08 (Megalomaniacs), the crystalline clarity neither sacrifices for their other talents, or arrangements of genius for at least eight singers, I've reached a fascination with the human voice on its own musical terms. I also doubt I'm alone in not infrequently preferring a song's a cappella version to its original incarnation. From last spring alone, the Blue Lights' cover of Cake's "The Distance" and the Megs' of Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten" come to mind. Even leaving aside the touchy question of the relative abilities of professionals and college students, I think an outstanding a cappella performance is, in general, more impressive than an outstanding instrumentally-accompanied (or otherwise enhanced) performance of the same song.

Now, I'm no instrumental Luddite-as it happens, I often prefer the purely instrumental end of the musical spectrum even over a cappella, and I certainly find the fusion of voices and instruments kick-ass in its own right-but I find something very philosophically appealing about music that has such variety and depth of sound without manmade aids, that depends on no level of technology, that utilizes only human potential and really pushes its limits. In other words, I see a cappella as the musical equivalent of not using steroids-minus the health issues and moral judgments, of course, so it's a step up rather than the avoidance of a step down.

Similarly, I often prefer live performances-or studio tracks that leave the voices mostly unmodified-to recordings that distort vocals to mimic instrumentation or special effects. Not that I dislike the latter-the Stanford Harmonics did a great "Running Away" with such methods-but that approach seems to me to defeat the purpose of going a cappella in the first place.

One reason I love purely instrumental music is that rather than requiring one to relate to a specific experience or listen to a specific story, it can evoke a wider range of images and feelings for a wider variety of people. But in a cappella-where replacing guitars and synthesizers it's made most clear that voices are instruments, or when the performance doesn't even have "real" lyrics and utilizes only sound itself, like the Sirens' of "Adiemus" last spring-that line is blurred. More than any song or lyrics, what I love about a cappella concerts are a dozen impressive voices just making great sounds, the hard-earned skill of performers who've learned how best they harmonize, and the arrangements that can really show this off. Above all else, the a cappella concept, the idea of what artistic heights the human mind and body can reach unaided, damn near makes me a romantic.

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