Barbershop is its own entity, and it seems to be popular (for a small demographic) no matter where in the US you are. Four guys, or a chorus of guys (or gals – go, Sweet Adelines!) singing time-honored, nostalgia-inducing tunes seem to be a staple from Alabama to California to New York to Wisconsin, in little towns and big cities, and we could look into the whys and wherefores of that, but we’re going to stick to the topic of contemporary a cappella.
For the most part, a cappella is big in the Northeast. New Englanders love the stuff; can’t get enough of it. In the South, there are a few pockets where a cappella is popular (Raleigh/Durham, Atlanta), but that’s about the extent of it. Across the Great Plains and the Midwest, the situation is pretty much the same – random distribution, with Chicago thrown in as a good starting point. Then you get to California – LA, specifically – and people have heard of it again. It’s pretty interesting, really.
So what accounts for this? Regional music genre popularity weighs in pretty heavily, according to my completely unscientific study. Doo wop, back in the day, was heard on big city street corners, in subways, and on college campuses. But it wasn’t really all that popular out on the farm. Those guys on the farm were listening to Hank Williams (the original, not Jr.). The styles have changed quite a bit over the years, but the basic concept hasn’t: people still want, primarily, to hear music from people who talk like they do. Yes, with the advent of Clear Channel radio, XM radio, MP3s and high-speed connections, more and more types of music are being accessed by more and more people, but cross-pollination hasn’t yet produced, and probably never will, a single “sound” that is universally embraced.
What does that have to do with contemporary a cappella’s popularity? Well, some genres of music just make a more natural fit into the a cappella style. Rap and beatboxing go hand in hand, so contemporary a cappella is a great medium for it. Pop, R&B, and even gospel work pretty well, coming out of the old vocal jazz tradition, mixing it with a beat and a little soul. Country music, the music of the south and the mid-west, just doesn’t translate all that easily. Granted, a lot of modern country is only a half-step (pun intended) removed from pop music, but there’s still that unmistakable sound that just makes it country, and that sound is not, in most cases, one that is authentically or successfully replicable in an a cappella group setting.
Does this answer any questions? Not really, but it does provide some food for thought. Next time you’re trying to book a tour and you want to pack out the venues, it might help to take a look at a map or check out which local radio stations are popular and see if your music is going to be the hit you want it to be in a given town.
All my poking around has dug up some other reasons for a cappella’s wide ranging popularity across the country, and those will be addressed in future weeks; so look for more segments to come!
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