Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

The thumping sound you may have heard following the posting of my CD review of Evidence by The Idea Of North (Vol. 3, Issue 3) was only me kicking myself for not mentioning the outstanding Bay Area a cappella group SoVoSo in the review?s ?If you like these groups? section. I also intended to mention how SoVoSo immediately came to mind when I first heard The Idea Of North?s chords and voicings in their arrangement of ?Simple Feast? on Evidence. It still does.

You also may have noticed the above-mentioned thumping sound has stopped. It ended when Listen & Be Heard provided me copies of two holiday-themed CDs by SoVoSo: Seasonings from 2002 and Crack The Nut! from 2004. Timing IS everything.

For those of you unfamiliar with SoVoSo (From the SOul to the VOice to the SOng, per their website), the roots of the group?s family tree go back to 1986 when singer Bobby McFerrin formed a choral group that evolved into his Voicestra and its subsequent tours and recordings. Further evolution resulted in a new branch on the tree, which led to Voicestra members Joey Blake and David Worm founding SoVoSo, eventually being joined by current members Sunshine Becker (watch for upcoming interview), Zoe Ellis, Bryan Dyer, and Sam Rogers. Their music is an imaginative and innovative a cappella mix of doo-wop, world music, swing, bop, and spiritual music. They have the unique ability to display master-level chops and be Big Fun at the same time.

Their CD Seasonings is appropriately named. It is both holiday-specific and a nod to the above-mentioned mix of styles. Its ?Little Drummer Boy,? for example, contains a swinging bass line, some nice beatbox techniques, a vocalized ?brass solo? that a lot of horn players would want on their discography, a chorus of voices harmonizing the ?pah-rum-pum-pum-pums? like an Ellingtonian horn section, and a lead vocalist who takes the basic melody down some roads not taken during the usual rendition of this holiday classic.

?Oh Holy Night? takes on the shapes and sounds associated with Bulgarian and Russian choral music and adds a Pentecostal lead vocal to it. The song?s lyric, ?O hear the angel voices,? might be the best way to recommend the songs on this CD.

Seasonings enhance a meal. No one ever sits down to eat and exclaims, ?Oh boy! A plate of cumin!? So, too, do the secular- and sacred-themed songs on Seasonings enhance the CD?s contents, resulting in an well-rounded sonic meal for the soul, cumin not included. Incidentally, the keen eye will notice the misspelling of this particular spice on the back cover?s photograph, which might be the only flaw on this CD.

Crack The Nut! is an almost completely vocalized reworking of Tchaikovsky?s perennial holiday favorite The Nutcracker Suite. Not only do the group?s five voices do the work of a symphony orchestra, the selections have been given the full SoVoSo treatment through new arrangements by Becker, Blake, Dyer, and Worm. ?Reed Pipes? takes on an African sound. ?Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy? gets a tango coda. ?Spanish Dance? utilizes mouth percussion techniques, that must have saved a lot of production time for the group by not having to lug around and set up congas and other Latin music-related instruments. ?Arabian Dance? features a synthesizer drone and drums that give the song an almost heavy metal feel. Close your eyes and picture Ozzy Osbourne wandering in the desert. Go ahead. It?s alright.

SoVoSo will be performing holiday-related music at Yoshi?s in Oakland on December 11. Be there when they perform some of the songs on these CDs. Maybe even a surprise or two. Maybe even some thumping.

To order SoVoSo?s CD and for additional information, visit www.sovoso.com. For information regarding SoVoSo?s December 11 gig at Yoshi?s, visit www.yoshis.com.

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