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| Rob Shook |
You hear them at odd times when wandering underneath the Campus Center. Their voices echo through the halls, carrying the hauntingly raw energy that comes with the expression of the purest form of music: voice.
They are a cappella, and their voices carry across the entire campus.
When you boil songs down to their roots, everything returns to the simple power of the human voice. The musical scale itself is rooted in the range of tones we use vocally, and musical structure is similarly influenced by our voices. Taking advantage of this, a cappella, a style of music involving singing without instruments, brings music back to where it started.
The a cappella scene on campus has seen a massive rise over the last decade. Prior to the late 90s, according to information from the groups’ web sites, the only group on campus was the male-only 8 Beat Measure. The first female-only group Encore, has existed from 1996, but was not purely an a cappella group until 2003. The all-male Brick City Singers (BCS) started up in the late 90s and Surround Sound brought their barbershop musical styling to RIT in 2002. Vocal Accent re-grouped in 2009, proving that the growth evident in the community from nearly a decade ago still persists today.
Proof of Purchase (PoP) is tied with Vocal Accent for RIT’s youngest a cappella group at three years old, and the only one allowing both male and female members. Lauren Comes, a second year Advertising Photography major and music director of PoP, said that this was one of her reasons for joining. “Being in an all-girls group or an all-guys group would be really hard,” she says. “It just seems like a different dynamic.” She joined PoP because of their specific dynamic, where conflicting musical taste in the members just brings more variety, which to her is “absolutely amazing.”
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| Rob Shook |
Jace Curran, a second year Game Design and Development major, has been a member of BCS for two years and holds the official title of fun director. “All fun has to come through me,” he jokes. “But unofficially, I’m taking over with poster design and that kind of stuff.”
Although Curran had good opinions of each group during auditions, he decided to go with BCS. As he put it, the groups are all similar; “but all the groups have their own quirks.” It’s the group atmospheres that set them apart. “I chose Brick City because of the way they presented themselves; they had a very kicked-back atmosphere.”
What’s really important to members of the groups is that “you get to do something that you love, surrounded by people that you love. It’s been my family for the last few years,” says Curran.
“We all love each other,” agrees Comes.
Their other draw to a cappella groups has been the freedom of choice that the groups allow. Even as music director, Comes says she keeps her hands free and just runs the practices. “If someone really likes a song, they arrange it,” she states. “It’s not like a bizarre hierarchy.” These qualities seem universal between the groups, as Curran mentions that their process is also “very individually driven, and it gets every member involved
in the group.”
According to Comes there’s been an increasing amount of applicants each year, especially since this is the first year they can be considered an official a cappella group at RIT. “More people want to be in it, and more people try out,” says Comes. With the increased competition of that recognition, “everyone cares a lot more, and there’s much more people stepping up, so more ideas get brought up.”
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| Rob Shook |
Despite the rising interest, admission isn’t as intimidating as it seems, says Lauren. “We get a lot of people,” she laughs, “who say they love to sing but have never done anything like this, and they just want to see if they could make it in a group.” Tryouts are a joint effort between the a cappella groups, and although there’s a healthy amount of competition for members, everyone ends up somewhere they’re happy with.
A major part of all the a cappella groups is the amount of work done for causes and for charity. Both PoP and BCS have done concerts for Red Cross and DoubleTree Hotel. One of PoP’s major efforts was a concert for a paraplegic boy. “Payment isn’t an issue,” Curran says. “We sing for whoever wants to hear our music … and the charity concerts are where we get the best reaction, because it’s all people that care about the music.”
On Sunday, May 20, in the Center for Student Innovation (CSI, 87), the a cappella groups will come together at Acapocalypse, the biggest a cappella concert of the year. Each group gets exactly the same amount of time on stage to avoid competition and keep emphasis off of any particular group. “Everyone gets to show off what they’ve been working on that year, what they’ve been striving towards,” says Curran. On that Sunday, all the a cappella groups will gather and sing until the end of the world, with their passion for the power of raw music fueling their voices.
