http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Commodore%20Skahill/ColinMcEnroeShow10-22-2012.mp3
A capella groups are less nerdy, more cool these days.
You can attribute some of that to "Glee" and to NBC's "The Sing-Off" and most recently to the movie "Pitch Perfect," which is still in theaters. I don't know what this means, but one of the characters of "Full House" was into a capella music and so was Andy on "The Office."
But a capella music was already getting cool in the 1990s, thanks to the growth of groups like Take 6 and Rockapella, who added a lot of vocal percussion, used their bass singers like jazz men and tackled more challenging arrangements.
These days, getting into one of the good college singing groups can be like, well, getting into college. Multiple auditions and callbacks. There's still, for all its incipient hipness, a nerd factor to a capella. The most visited a capella video on You Tube is "The Singing Knights" of Carleton College coverring a Daft Punk tune. It's nerdy.
Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us @wnprcolin.
