Body Percussion
For the uninitiated, it can be difficult to understand why people love a cappella. Heck, even for those of us who do actively enjoy it, it can be difficult to put into words why we enjoy this art form so. While we’ll never have a truly comprehensive list of everything cool about a cappella, 200 Reasons to Love A Cappella is our best attempt at assembling a list of what makes it great.
Reason #8: Body Percussion
When most of us think of a cappella, we think of human voices carrying the melody, harmonizing with one another, synthesizing the sounds of instruments. Carrying that a step further, there’s vocal percussion--multi-piece drum kits, delivered through the human mouth and its interaction with a microphone. Taking things one step further, you have the clap of hands, the snap of fingers, other traditional pieces of a cappella.
There’s a way to take this all a step further, though. There’s a stomp of the feet. A slap of your chest, or your thigh. All of this, without the benefit of instruments, or synthesizing sounds, can create an organic, raw and powerful sound that rouses audiences, with a truly different technique. Carried out at just the right time, with perfect synchronization, this is the kind of performance techniques that draws goosebumps.
I love it!