Powerful voices: Performance and interaction in contemporary collegiate a cappella.

Abstract

Contemporary collegiate a cappella is a musical genre and practice in which self-directed groups of student singers arrange, perform, and record popular songs without instrumental accompaniment. Aesthetic ideas are shared between individuals within groups, and between groups on local, regional, and national levels, while varying degrees of power and prestige affect the reception, understanding, and enactment of those ideas. This dissertation investigates the historical emergence and development of the genre, its stylistic features and their social motivations, and the processes and conventions of rehearsal, performance, and recording. Issues of gender, class, and community formation are also addressed. In contemporary collegiate a cappella, musical and social processes shape each other and are shaped by human interaction in an historically situated, technologically mediated, and politically and culturally circumscribed context. For example, a case study of one group's encounter with an unfamiliar microphone system during a concert with another ensemble enables discussion of identity and performance (modifying a group's presentation to maintain its sense of good a cappella), social bonding through common endeavor (overcoming the challenges of extraordinary circumstances), and the national politics of collegiate a cappella (interacting with groups of varying prestige). The college or university campus is an important, yet understudied, musical context. Drawing on ethnographic field research with three groups on campuses in the Boston area, in addition to archival research and analyses of scores, recordings, and spoken and written discourse, this dissertation complicates the cover/version dichotomy in popular music studies and challenges scholars to consider the rehearsal as a site of musical and social negotiation, not just preparation for public performance. It also provides further evidence of rich musical life among amateur musicians, examines the often contested use of technology in musical practice, and presents an independent and previously unrecognized choral genre.