The UC Santa Barbara Naked Voices

Founded in 2000, Naked Voices were the first a cappella group at UC Santa Barbara. A mixed group, Naked Voices hosted an International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella quarterfinal on January 20, and will compete in a quarterfinal tomorrow night at the Boyard Auditorium on the University of Southern California campus.

Naked Voices business manager Alana Allekotte took the time to answer questions from A Cappella Blog co-founder Mike Chin.

A Cappella Blog (ACB): What challenges does Naked Voices face as a mixed a cappella group? What advantages do you enjoy?

Alana Allekotte (AA): One of the challenges we face as a mixed group is finding and maintaining an audience. At UCSB, our general audience demographic is composed of our friends and the mass of female musicians who really enjoy/get turned on by cute guys singing, so being an all male group has its immediate appeal. I guess that's a really roundabout way of saying that a female audience member doesn't like watching mixed groups as much as all male because the girls in the group take time away from the cute guys. A major advantage to having both male and female voices is that we can be a lot more creative with our arrangements simply because we have a bigger range of vocal qualities to utilize. Obviously men and women sound different but there are even subtle differences between soprano and alto and tenor and bass voices that can be fully explored in a mixed group because we have the resources. Another advantage is that we have twice the selection when it comes to auditions, which we hold every year during the second or third week of Fall Quarter.

ACB: Being one of the three a cappella groups at UC Santa Barbara, how do the different groups co-exist? Is there any competition between them?

AA: Naked Voices, Vocal Motion and Brothas From Otha Mothas (BFOM) work together all the time. The three groups actually share a lot of the same friends, members, audience and more recently a lot of the concerts. I guess the way the groups are set up, there could be potential conflict about venue spaces for quarterly concerts or hiring issues for on campus gigs, but we each have our niche in the student, faculty and local communities so there's no real conflict of interest or practice.

ACB: Are there any unique traditions attached to your group?

AA: Well, we never wear shoes during performances and do a good job of telling non-college audiences that we're "naked" because we stripped off the instruments to have a bare, purely vocal sound.

ACB: What can we expect to see from Naked Voices in the future? Any new songs in the works? Any upcoming gigs of note?

AA: We arrange all of our music ourselves so we're individually working on arrangements constantly. We've got a Cake song coming later this year and we're working on a ridiculous rendition of some Aladdin songs (not "A Whole New World"--pretty but overdone). We hosted one of the quarterfinal competitions for ICCA on January 20, and are competing down at USC [tonight]. This is a huge deal for us because no one in the current group has ever competed in ICCA, and this is the first time we've ever hosted a competition or tried to book the largest lecture hall at UCSB, which seats about 880. Naked Voices is maturing, and in our sixth year of existence, we're proud to be doing a lot of new things like hosting and competing.

ACB: How does your group go about deciding which songs to add to its repertoire?

AA: We all pay attention to the songs we hear on the radio or online or wherever to see if they'd translate well into voices. When someone hears a song that they think Naked Voices would sing well, he/she tells everyone else, and brings in or emails everyone a recording. A week later, we discuss the proposed song, taking into account the solo, the background (whether we can recreate the instruments or melodies), if the audience would enjoy it, and if we generally would like singing it, and vote whether we want someone to arrange it or not.

ACB: What would you say is the most important element to having a successful collegiate a cappella group?

AA: I think the most important thing for the success of any type of collegiate group is having people you trust, respect and who enjoy spending time with the group, but I'm sure any of the other members would say something different if they were answering these questions. I guess you could use some good singers, and maybe a good leader or two, but those things can be found anywhere. For me, it's the great relationships between individual members that facilitate progress.

ACB: Is there anything else you would like to share with the readers of The A Cappella Blog?

AA: Thanks for supporting the A Cappella Blog. Groups like Naked Voices are nothing without an audience, so thank you for taking time to take an interest in the people and things around you.

If you would like to learn more about Naked Voices, you can visit the group online at www.ucsbnakedvoices.com.