The Voices of Brandeis
by Sarah Bayer
Staff Writer
Arts | 3/11/08
Posted online at 2:21 AM EST on 3/11/08
I'm pretty skeptical when Dan Newman '09 tells me that anyone can beat-box. I've marveled at the vocal percussion featured at many a coffeehouse performance but the talent still seems, well, superhuman. Still, sitting in Usdan on a Monday morning, Newman teaches me how to koovk'chow a convincing basic beat. "It's just part of a toolbox of sounds," he encourages, adding, somewhat improbably, "It's good for your abs."
Newman is co-music director of the a cappella group Rather Be Giraffes, which, according to the group's history, was formed when several Brandeis singers "decided they would Rather Be Giraffes than be in any of the other, then-existing a cappella groups on campus," due to the animals' notorious silence. They withdrew from their respective groups to establish the club in which Newman now sings. In RBG, he tells me, everyone really does beat -box.
The beat-boxing may seem like a minor detail, but each a cappella group has a unique structure that serves as something like its mission statement. Sarah Mulhern '08 says Up the Octave routinely "makes people sort of push themselves and try different things" vocally.
In Company B, "everyone is encouraged, but not required, to be involved in arranging music at some point," according to Jacob Lazar '09. Other groups focus more on honing individual specialties. Starving Artists assign the same type of parts to the same people for each song, while VoiceMale retains a single arranger.
It's safe to say that whatever tensions may have precipitated RBG's founding have subsided in the five years since the secession. Allie Winer '08, Proscenium's business manager, assures me, "I have so many friends in so many other a cappella groups. It really is a community." This community became official last semester with the creation of A Cappella, Etc., an umbrella group headed by Newman that promotes inter-a cappella group communication and cooperation.
A Cappella, Etc. brings together groups as diverse in pedigree as they are in structure. Too Cheap For Instruments, for example, is a fledgling group on the rise. After dorm-storming for the first time this semester, the group enjoyed "the biggest audience that we've ever had before" at A Cappella Stein Night in February, according to Becky Sniderman '10. VoiceMale, by contrast, books epic tours along alternating coasts of the United States each February break, and, according to Jonathan Shuster '08, may perform the National Anthem at Fenway Park this spring. The nine other vocal groups range across the middle of this spectrum of experience.
Newman is co-music director of the a cappella group Rather Be Giraffes, which, according to the group's history, was formed when several Brandeis singers "decided they would Rather Be Giraffes than be in any of the other, then-existing a cappella groups on campus," due to the animals' notorious silence. They withdrew from their respective groups to establish the club in which Newman now sings. In RBG, he tells me, everyone really does beat -box.
The beat-boxing may seem like a minor detail, but each a cappella group has a unique structure that serves as something like its mission statement. Sarah Mulhern '08 says Up the Octave routinely "makes people sort of push themselves and try different things" vocally.
In Company B, "everyone is encouraged, but not required, to be involved in arranging music at some point," according to Jacob Lazar '09. Other groups focus more on honing individual specialties. Starving Artists assign the same type of parts to the same people for each song, while VoiceMale retains a single arranger.
It's safe to say that whatever tensions may have precipitated RBG's founding have subsided in the five years since the secession. Allie Winer '08, Proscenium's business manager, assures me, "I have so many friends in so many other a cappella groups. It really is a community." This community became official last semester with the creation of A Cappella, Etc., an umbrella group headed by Newman that promotes inter-a cappella group communication and cooperation.
A Cappella, Etc. brings together groups as diverse in pedigree as they are in structure. Too Cheap For Instruments, for example, is a fledgling group on the rise. After dorm-storming for the first time this semester, the group enjoyed "the biggest audience that we've ever had before" at A Cappella Stein Night in February, according to Becky Sniderman '10. VoiceMale, by contrast, books epic tours along alternating coasts of the United States each February break, and, according to Jonathan Shuster '08, may perform the National Anthem at Fenway Park this spring. The nine other vocal groups range across the middle of this spectrum of experience.
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