The program was tailored to a college audience: popular rock songs, a little swing and a few ballads. But there was no band on stage that night at Shriver Hall on the Johns Hopkins University campus. No drums, no guitars, no pianos. Just a few microphones reflecting the bright lights above the bare stage.
Over the next two hours, Hopkins' seven a cappella groups - 73 singers - formed tight semicircles around the microphones, not only providing the harmonies of songs such as Toni Braxton's "Un-Break My Heart," the Goo Goo Dolls' "Black Balloon" and ABBA's "Dancing Queen," but voicing the "chika-chika" of the cymbals, the "wah-wah" of the guitar, the "bum-bum" of the bass and an assortment of whoops, plings and other noises.
This type of singing can be heard on more and more college campuses throughout Maryland and across the country as hundreds of new groups have started in recent years, performing everything from pop songs and alternative rock, to folk songs and religious tunes.
The phrase a cappella is derived from the Italian, meaning "in the style of the chapel." It is used to refer to music sung without instruments. Before the 19th century, the term mainly described unaccompanied sacred choral music, although music made with only voices appears throughout history and in many cultures.
In its modern form, a cappella has often been associated with barbershop quartets of the 1930s and doo-wop groups of the 1950s, but it has enjoyed renewed popularity in recent years.
According to Deke Sharon, president of the Contemporary A Cappella Society of America, about 250 contemporary, student-run college a cappella groups existed in 1991.
"I'd say now there are about a thousand," he says.
Sharon says there has been a resurgence of a cappella in general, noting recent recordings by the Nylons, En Vogue and 'N Sync, among others. But on college campuses, it is more than just a musical style.
"It's a combination of a fraternity or sorority with a musical group, and it gives [students] a chance to be rock stars," he says.
Most of the new a cappella groups develop their arrangements of popular songs.
"We want to get people on their feet, out of their seats," says Praveen Duggal, president of Hopkins' all-male group, the AllNighters.
Says Michelle Rittmann, president of Hopkins' Performing Arts Council and a member of the all-female Sirens: "It's different than in high school, where an old guy in charge tells you what to sing and when to sing it."
