A Capella'

"A' Capella”, does it sound familiar? Acapella means, "Without musical instruments". How can any song sound melodious without some background score? I got the opportunity to witness a performance by "PennMasala", the first south Asian acapella group in USA. I was absolutely amazed by their performance. They had people for making specific sounds, like a tabla, a drum, a guitar and various other instruments. It sounded as if the instruments were actually were being played. Check out their songs on their website http://www.pennmasala.com.
But you may be wondering why I am going on about A'Capella. Well I had a chance to be a part of "Drexel Shor", the first South Asian co-ed A'Capella group at Drexel and in Philadelphia. A group of fifteen enthusiastic people who had to face stiff opposition from various quarters within the Indian Student association and almost caused a vertical split in the organization. We started off like 15 donkeys braying together and slowly but surely we started sounding like music. After lot of deliberations we chose four songs from fifteen short listed songs. We were pretty confident until the mock rehearsal. We messed up the mock rehearsal and managed to drive the audience nuts, so much so that there were talks of "Drexel Shor" being taken off the list of performances in “NASHA”, a cultural show organized by Pragathi, Graduate Indian Student Association at Drexel University (http://www.pragathi.net). We resolved to improve our performance to the level that people say “once more”. Shrugging off the one bad day at office we came back strongly to wow the audience at the show.
Three cheers for “Drexel Shor”, sor nahi baba, Shor! Shor! Finally, alls well that ends well. I am waiting for our next performance at the Spring Festival in Drexel University.