The hit movie "Pitch Perfect" and the soon-to-be-released sequel "Pitch Perfect 2" are helping revive the popularity of A cappella music. The setting for the films is the International Championship of Collegiate A cappella, or ICCA. It's a real event, happening this weekend in Tempe. And this year, all 3 A cappella groups at Northern Arizona University qualified for the first round of competition. Though collegiate A cappella went out of fashion for a few decades, Arizona Public Radio's Gillian Ferris reports, it's reinvented itself to emerge as a creative mish-mash of musical styles.
Harvard University's Krokodiloes are one of the oldest collegiate A cappella groups in the country. Their style is very traditional and harkens back to the 1930's, the original heyday for this kind of music. One of the nation's newest collegiate A cappella groups is Northern Arizona University's Highlanders. And their style is a little bit different.
The 11-singer group is practicing for the quarter finals of the ICCA. Their 12 minute performance includes punk rock, pop and alternative songs by artists like Green Day and Lana Del Rey. They're not singing anything more than 20 years old. The group's president, Brant Ziemba, is also not more than 20 years old. "For one of our songs in the set we have a guitar solo," Ziemba says, "and in that portion we have 3 parts singing to make it sound like strumming the guitar. That's how we build the songs around it." Ziemba adds, "It's about being able to be creative and guild your own stuff."
Ziemba believes creativity is what's kept collegiate A cappella alive. Though it never went completely extinct, its coolness factor took a serious nosedive beginning in the 1950's with the advent of rock n' roll, soul and Top 40 music. To stay relevant, groups had to borrow a little cool from other places. They began using songs from the pop charts. And in the late 1980's, they crossed musical genres for new ideas, including beatboxing.
Beatboxing is a percussive sound that imitates rhythms and drum beats using only the mouth, lips and tongue. It exploded onto the Hip Hop music scene in the late 70's and early 80's with the innovative sounds of Biz Markie and the self-proclaimed "human beatbox", Doug E Fresh.
Frederick Gooding Jr. is an assistant professor of ethnic studies at NAU. Regarding the incorporation of beatboxing into collegiate A cappella, Gooding says, "I think it speaks to the universality of Hip Hop, how widespread it is and how it's being accepted in so many different realms. I think it's a really good sign. It's symbolic of our progress."
Gooding says humans have always been attracted to good sound and have continuously found new ways to produce it. He adds that even the original beatboxers were inspired by those who came before them, citing the skatting styles of Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong.
"Music disrupts barriers. It connects us all," Gooding says. "So, I think if this is a way that audiences are able to come together and appreciate the sound that all of us can produce from the inside, then maybe, perhaps, this will put us one step closer towards breaking the barriers that people seem to get hung up on on the outside."
For all the borrowing today's collegiate A cappella groups have done, they've also put their own stamp on the music; a sound that's unique to the electronic-digital generation.
Jonathon Mills is a sophomore at NAU and the sound effects guy for the Highlanders. His repertoire includes a number of video game noises. It's a skill set Mills says he acquired during an awkward phase of adolescence. "It's really embarrassing, actually," Mills laughs. "I moved out here right before my freshman year of high school and so I didn't exactly have any friends because I moved from Kentucky to Arizona. So, I kind of sat in my room and threw a tennis ball across the wall and just did a bunch of noises."
He also taught himself how to play the air trumpet, which Mills intends to blow tomorrow when he and the other NAU Highlanders go for collegiate A cappella glory.