A cappella: Making an art form worse

Lights are dimmed as 800 fans eagerly await 14 rock stars to rush out from behind the curtains. It's finally time, after months of anticipation, for Penn's premier "new-age rock" a cappella group's spring performance.

Officially, the show beings at 8 p.m., but you have to get there early. Thirty minutes is usually ample time to get a good seat -- close enough that, if you're really lucky, you might just get a wink or smile from one of Penn's most notable rock stars.

"Rock stars" -- it's normally a label given to actual musicians. But on Penn's campus it seems to be a fitting title for "OTBers."

Ask Brian Bateman. For him, Off the Beat is the meaning of life. No, really. His iPod is laser-engraved with: "Brian's Meaning of Life: Off the Beat."

A Boston College graduate, the 31-year-old has attended every OTB show since 1999. He once tricked 11 of his closest friends into coming along, telling them he had basketball tickets

"Nobody walked out," he said.

For his 30th birthday, his friends surprised him with a private Off the Beat show. And for Valentine's Day, his girlfriend bought him a pair of "Off the Beat"-embroidered boxers.

Bateman's infatuation with Off the Beat is not entirely out of the norm, though. A quick glance over the guestbook on Offthebeat.net reveals many more diehard fans.

Troy Shaw, who lives in Brighton, England, found out about Off the Beat only a month ago. He was hooked immediately.

"Their sound sent shivers up and down my spine," he said. "It hits that one -- your hand turns the volume up, the window comes down and I just want to say, 'Listen. Listen to this!'"

I simply don't understand why so many people are infatuated with a cappella. And, in a way, I'm part of the group. One of my best friends, Mike Auerbach, is in Off the Beat, and I own two of their CDs (though I obtained them illegally).

Let's try to analyze a cappella objectively. Simply put, they sing other people's music. Their mouths replace instruments, but it's still the same song. The music is not their own.

Still, Auerbach, a senior in Off the Beat, insists a cappella is a creative art. "You need an understanding of music and music theory to arrange a song to make it true to the original rendition of the song," he said.

"The songs Off the Beat picks are kickass," Bateman said. "Their versions are sometimes better than the original."

Off the Beat has conquered the a cappella world. It recently won Best Mixed Song, Arrangement and CD by the Contemporary A Cappella Society -- for the second straight year.

But Off the Beat is the exception, not the rule.

Here is my take on mainstream college a cappella more generally: Students sing someone else's song that they did not write and sing it worse than the person who sung it originally.

In a sense, a cappella takes an art form and makes it worse.

Still, the a cappella scene at Penn is out of control. There are 13 registered groups through the Performing Arts Council -- each of which gets funding from the University -- and countless more unregistered groups.

And the a cappella craze is not unique to Penn.

"A cappella at Yale is like football at Ohio State," according to Penn law student Seth Goldberg, who graduated from Yale last year.

It makes sense why students want to join a cappella groups.

After finishing the final performance of his college career, Auerbach grew nostalgic: "Where else would I be able to perform for sell-out crowds and make a fool out of myself on the stage any other time in my life?"

It doesn't make sense, however, why so many people attend a cappella shows. Why not go to a real concert? Did you know, for example, that Penn junior Dov Kogen was recently voted one of MTVU's top-25 college musicians?

Last year, I went to several of his Sunday-night performances at MarBar. The crowds were not nearly as big as a typical a cappella show at Penn.

Students should celebrate the music scene at Penn -- not by attending an a cappella show, but by attending performances by Dov Kogen or other original campus bands.

He deserves our support because he's accomplished the unthinkable: He wrote his own songs and his own music.

What a concept.

Josh Pollick is a senior political science major from Los Angeles. On Point appears on Mondays.

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