The audience’s screams of delight rang clear up to the rafters of Whitley Auditorium Saturday night, as Elon University’s a cappella community joined forces with other local and distant groups to put on Elon’s ninth annual Acappallooza event.
This year’s Acappallooza theme, VOICESONLY, remained ever-present as each group performed arrangements of multiple genres of music, using only the power of their voices to carry the tune.
Hosted by Sweet Signatures, Elon’s only all-female ensemble, Acappallooza is an annual event on campus — one that strives to bring together Elon’s a cappella community while reaching out to other university groups to come perform as well.
Junior Connor Stirland, president of Elon’s all-male a cappella group, Rip_Chord, said he believes students find Acappallooza appealing because it offers a refreshing change of pace from the style of music they normally hear.
“I think that a cappella is particularly big at Elon right now because we sing songs that people wouldn’t necessarily hear on a day-to-day basis,” Stirland said. “People like it because they like hearing the ways in which we can take something that already exists and make it sound really new and different.”
The practice of incorporating new elements into pre-existing material was evident Saturday night, as many groups’ arrangements were met with tumultuous applause and laughter from the audience. Some arrangements, such as the University of Maryland Generics’ rendition of “Bottoms Up,” incorporated simultaneous displays of rapping, singing, choreography and the occasional instance of booty-shaking.
In addition to hearing new interpretations of original music, Stirland said students usually come out to concerts to see their friends in a “come as you are” atmosphere.
“We always want to portray the fact that we’re regular guys,” Stirland said. “We’re trying to show off the fact that we have talent and can create some really impressive sound.”
And while Elon students may already be familiar with the musical stylings of Elon’s a cappella groups, Acappallooza provided an opportunity for them to hear a cappella that hadn’t been heard on campus before.
This year, four non-Elon a cappella ensembles made the trip to perform in Acappallooza, including North Carolina State University’s Grains of Time, the UMD Generics, Swarthmore University’s Sixteen Feet and Virginia Tech’s award-winning Juxtaposition.
But senior Ashton Vincenty, president of Sweet Signatures, reinforced that competition between groups is not the primary goal of Acappallooza.
“We want to hold an event that provides a fun, non-competitive opportunity for different a cappella groups to share their talents,” Vincenty said. “There are many competitions in the area, but we wanted to simply enjoy and celebrate each other.”
Each year, Sweet Signatures actively seek to invite interested groups from both neighboring and distant universities to perform at Acappallooza, giving Elon students a chance to hear the musical stylings of other a cappella groups they may or may not have heard of before.
Vincenty said one of the primary goals of organizing each Acappallooza is to inspire a sense of community among a cappella ensembles along the East Coast.
“Collegiate a cappella is really a community,” Vincenty said. “Not just between the groups on our campus, but between groups all around. We’re all curious to hear different groups, styles, arrangements and (we) love seeing each other’s hard work come together.”