Collegiate A Cappella: Emulation and Originality

By Joshua S. Duchan

A cappella groups thrive on college and university campuses throughout the nation (and beyond). The genre of amateur vocal music these groups represent has grown prodigiously in numbers and prominence over the past twenty-five years or so. There are now about a thousand collegiate a cappella groups in the united States, many of whom in recent years have seen flattering press coverage in major media outlets. Typically consisting of up to sixteen singers who come in all-male, all-female, and mixed varieties, these groups draw most of their repertory from popular music recordings of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.