A cappella music is vocal music or singing without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. A cappella is Italian for like in the chapel (music); the term is due to the fact that Christian churches sang without instrumental accompaniment for the first several hundred years of its existence. It is often misspelled as acapella or a capella, which is derived from the Latin spelling (but in Latin capella means small goat).In the modern parlance, the term applies to vocal performers who refrain from performing with any instrumental accompaniment, though some emulate the sonority of instruments with their voices, microphones, and signal processing effects.
The St. Olaf College Choir of Northfield, Minnesota, a 75-voice mixed ensemble, is widely considered to be the pioneer a capella choir in the United States. Officially founded in 1911 by music faculty member F. Melius Christiansen as the St. Olaf Lutheran Choir, it began as an outgrowth of the local St. John's Lutheran Church, where Christiansen was organist and the choir was comprised at least partially of students from the nearby St. Olaf campus. Born out of Christiansen's appreciation of the style he studied while at Thomasschule in Leipzig, Germany, at whose church J. S. Bach had been Kapellmeister more than a century earlier, the St. Olaf Choir today tours throughout the world under the direction of Dr. Anton Armstrong.
The King's Singers are credited with promoting interest in small-group a cappella performance in the 1960s. In 1983 an a Cappella group known as The Flying Pickets had a Christmas number 1 in the UK with a cover of Yazoo's (known in the US as Yaz) Only You. A cappella music attained renewed prominence from the late 1980s onward, spurred by the success of Top 40 recordings by artists such as The Manhattan Transfer, Bobby McFerrin, Shai, Huey Lewis and the News, All 4 One, The Nylons and Boyz II Men.
This prominence, as well as a change in the style (voices used as modern rock instruments, including vocal percussion/"beatboxing") helped fuel an explosion in collegiate a cappella—some larger universities now have a dozen groups or more, and the total number of college groups grew from 250 circa 1990 to over 1,000 now. The oldest collegiate a cappella group is The Whiffenpoofs of Yale University, formed in 1909, whose members have included Cole Porter and relatives of George Bush. Other noted collegiate a cappella groups include the Smith College Smiffenpoofs, the University of Massachusetts Dynamics, Vassar College Night Owls, Tufts University Beelzebubs, University of California at Berkeley's Men's Octet, Straight No Chaser of Indiana University, Off the Beat of University of Pennsylvania, The Other Guys from University of Illinois, St. Olaf College's The Limestones, and The University of California at Santa Barbara's Naked Voices.
Major movements in modern a cappella over the past century include Barbershop and doo wop. Contemporary a cappella includes many vocal bands who add vocal percussion or beatboxing to create a pop/rock sound, in some cases very similar to bands with instruments. There also remains a strong a cappella presence within Christian music, as some denominations do not allow instruments to be used during services.
Arrangements of popular music for small a cappella ensembles typically include one voice singing the lead melody, one singing a rhythmic bass line, and the remaining voices contributing chordal or polyphonic accompaniment.
A Cappella can also describe the practice of using just the vocal track(s) from a multitrack, instrumental recording to be remixed or put onto vinyl records for DJs. Artists sometimes release the vocal tracks of their popular songs so that fans can remix them. One such example is the a cappella release of Jay-Z's Black Album, which Danger Mouse mixed with the Beatles' White Album to create The Grey Album.
Increased interest in modern a cappella (particularly collegiate a cappella) can be seen in the growth of awards such as the Contemporary A Cappella Recording Awards (overseen by the Contemporary A Cappella Society) and competitions such as the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella for college groups and the Harmony Sweepstakes for professional groups.
A Cappella's growth is not limited to live performance, with hundreds of recorded a cappella albums produced over the past decade. As of December 2006, the Recorded A Cappella Review Board (RARB) had reviewed over 660 a cappella albums since 1994, and its popular discussion forum had over 900 users and 19,000 articles.
A cappella in gaining popularity among South Asian youth with the emergence of Penn Masala in the University of Pennsylvania, Raagapella in Stanford and similar groups in other colleges. These groups have attained significant critical acclaim with their distinct style of mixing songs and applying a cappella to styles of different cultures. Penn Masala has songs in Hindi, English, Punjabi and Gujarati, with lyrics from different languages in the same song.
People do not just always sing the words when singing a cappella; some also emulate instrumentation by reproducing the melody with their vocal chords. For instance, "Twilight Zone" by 2 Unlimited was sung a cappella to the instrumentation on the comedy television series Tompkins Square. Another famous example of emulating instrumentation instead of singing the words is the theme song for The New Addams Family series on Fox Family Channel (now ABC Family). Groups such as Vocal Sampling and Undivided emulate Latin rhythms a cappella. Vocal artist Bobby McFerrin is famous for his instrumental emulation, and Deke Sharon has taught seminars on how to sing a variety of instrumental sounds.
Klapa is a group of autochthonous folk a cappella singers from Croatia.
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