Recently a touring drummer friend of mine sent me a link to the vocal track by Paul McCartney and Wings on the song “Band on the Run”. The email was sent as a “Headphone alert!” Why an “alert”? To me, it was a warning of something great to come. McCartney’s lead vocal and the backing vocals are pure beauty, stripped bare of the music tracks of the hit song, speaking exquisitely for themselves. I’m not a Paul McCartney & Wings fan, but sometimes you can appreciate both the singer and the song better when there are no instruments to be heard. Years ago, I had another such memorable aural awakening when working on a television series that had occasional bestselling artists appear in cameo roles. Shawn Colvin, the singer songwriter with a hit in 1997, “Sunny Came Home”, was one guest. I had not been an ardent fan of her music, but when she sang her live vocal on the set, I had sound recordist’s headphones on, and when her voice came through, I was stunned. Her voice bowled me over. She had me hook, line and sinker.
The tracks above were not intended as a capella performances, but their impact on me is remindful of another stunning a capella musical experience many years ago. I was visiting one of the small Ivy League colleges in New England, Middlebury College. It was a beautiful fall weekend at the college, lush with burnt red and orange autumn leaves and crisp air. I noticed on a flyer that there would be an a capella recital at the church on campus for parents’ weekend. When I walked into the church, it was not only packed with parents and student attendees, but it was also dense with an air of great anticipation. The concert was a roster of campus a cappella groups performing a couple of songs each. Ok. The surprise, to me, was that they would be singing songs by Nirvana, U2, and Radiohead et al. The combination of the acoustics in that church, the excitement of the audience, the nerves of the performers, and the new context of these songs was just brilliant. I was nearly drawn to me knees by one performer’s lead vocals on U2’s “One” supported by the backing vocals of his group. My breath was completely taken away. Adding to the newness of the context were the arrangements of the backing vocals on the songs which at times were church-like. My mind began to race, too, wondering why I’d never seen such a capella groups performing modern radio hits in this form and context. I spent years working in film and music and had never seen or heard such a thing. I’ve seen buskers around the world and have suffered through a few episodes of the various “Idol” incarnations, but this is completely apart from the business of music and the business of idols. I approached one of the singers after the show to ask about the background of these kinds of performances at Middlebury. He said “Oh, the tradition of these a capella groups goes a long way back in history!” In essence, it’s a big thing in the Ivy League schools in New England and, later I discovered, in colleges in the southeastern United States. With my interest piqued, I came back to Toronto and called a number of music schools to find out if they had such a capella groups, because, for one, I thought it would be interesting to do a documentary featuring some of these great performances and to include local groups. My calls around Toronto came up short. There is no apparent “tradition” or even awareness of this modernized a capella music here. Jazz, barbershop, gospel groups, yes, those you will find. But modern rock or pop hits? Certainly, someone’s doing it here somewhere, but I wish more people could experience it!
I think it brings an interesting question to light, too. They say a great song is a great song no matter who sings it, but clearly there can be a song that only really “speaks” to you when a touching vocal is interpreting it. I believe these a capella performances bear the greatness of both the songwriter and the singer, and by exposing themselves in their pure form, we see and hear the greatness of both.
