According to Mickey Rapkin, "there are a lot of untold stories, a lot of gossip you don't know about, behind college a capella."
Rapkin, a senior editor at GQ Magazine and author of Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Capella Glory," spoke to a crowd of about a dozen people at the Penn Bookstore last night.
For Pitch Perfect, his first book, Rapkin followed three of the more than 1,200 college a capella groups during the '06-'07 academic year: the Tufts Beelzebubs, the University of Virginia Hullabahoos and the University of Oregon Divisi. In his journalistic nonfiction work, Rapkin divulges some of what he experienced and learned.
He explained the impetus for writing Pitch Perfect, which was released in May: "I just felt like there was something in the air about a capella. Shows like 30 Rock and The Office were making jokes about it, and there were so many different stories going around. The time was right to write about it."
Rapkin himself was part of an a capella group in college - Cayuga's Waiters at Cornell - and his favorite memory was "traveling to Telluride with the group. We were put up in this insanely nice hotel and all we had to do was sing twice a night. How cool is that?" He said he aimed to find similar stories and share them in his book.
He said he wanted "a capella rejects - people who didn't get into their group of choice in college and are still talking about it decades down the road - to see what they were missing."
One anecdote mentioned relates to actress Jessica Biel's rejection from the Tufts Amalgamates.
"And I wanted parents to see what goes on when they're not there," he added jokingly.
Rapkin was invited to speak on campus "as part of an effort to join music and books into one event," Risa Levitt, the events and marketing manager at the Penn Bookstore, said. "Penn has a really exciting history with a capella singing, and the Penn Bookstore has been carrying [Rapkin's] book since it came out, so we thought it would be nice to bring the two together."
It was also cosponsored by the Platt Student Performing Arts House.
The event was bookended by Penn a capella performances: the Quaker Notes started off the evening with a few songs and Penn Six-5000 sang after Rapkin's presentation.
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