Posted in: Featured | 1 Comment | September 19, 2011

by Lo Barreiro

In 2007 I didn’t wear glasses, my hair was down to the middle of my back, and I was like many of you, a college student getting ready to embark on her first SoJam experience. Since then I’ve developed astigmatism, chopped all my hair off (multiple times), and am getting ready to embark on my very first SoJam experience… as a performer!

A lot can happen in four years and I’m sure many of you are wondering how I finagled that. Heck, I pinch myself everyday just to make sure this isn’t all I dream. But it’s really quite simple, if you’re going to SoJam, get ready to be inspired!

Back at SoJam 2007, I found myself sitting there, (with my long hair and perfect vision) as a sophomore in Florida State University’s AcaBelles, amazed. How did all of these people do this for a living? I listened to Dave Sperandio tell me how to make gold records, Joseph Bates teach me about arranging, and watched Warren from Naturally 7 sit down at his imaginary drum kit and attempt to make vocal percussionists out of a room full of college kids with their jaws on the ground. Then there was the Saturday night concert.

Ask anyone that was there, but that was the concert of a lifetime. First, Duwende tore up the stage and then came the haunting voices of Fork. I will always remember how badly I wanted to be them. Flawless singing, incredible stage presence, and a skinny guy that sang bass and did vocal percussion at the same time! It blew my mind! And just as I was turning to the ‘Belle next to me to say “Holy crap! They’re like Finnish a cappella rockstar superheroes!”, Naturally 7 walked on stage. Vocal play? How about vocal genius! One after the other, I was blown away by what remain the two best performances I have ever seen, a cappella or otherwise, and I can confidently tell you that this was the moment my life changed and that I haven’t clapped that much since.

Before SoJam I had aspired to be the next big opera diva. I was on the fast track to one day live in Austria and just sing Mozart for the rest of my life. But after that performance and an hour long masterclass where Dave Sperandio called me “The Latin One”, I had a feeling my calling was elsewhere and Mozart began to matter less and less. I was inspired.

Soon after that I began to arrange for AcaBelles, was constantly on RARB, and became utterly obsessed with all things a cappella. I made sure I read every article, knew every name, sometimes made a fan girl fool out of myself, and was intent on one day being a force to be reckoned with in the a cappella community.

I attended SoJam 2008 with AcaBelles and found it to be equally inspiring. Inspiring enough that ‘Belles made it to ICCA Finals later that school year. (Where I continued to make a fan girl fool out of myself). Also by then I had learned the art of making sure your name and group’s name was in as many mouths as possible… for good reasons. People often ask me how I’ve done so much in such a short time, and that’s my only secret. Meet everyone and anyone. Make friends, be kind, be professional, and know what you’re talking about. Kindness and professionalism go a long way in this community and your reputation for good work will go ahead of you. Trust me, I still hear from the wonderful Professor Ben Stevens about the Sunday at SoJam 2008 when AcaBelles showed up 2 hours before our scheduled masterclass in matching outfits asking for a warm up room.

But it was SoJam 2009 that put the final nail in my decision to do a cappella professionally. Every year the performances delivered and the clinicians brought so much knowledge and insight, but it was always the masterclasses that inched me closer and closer to making the a cappella community my home.

Professor Stevens wrote in his blog a few weeks back, “SoJam is where grown men and women cry, because that’s how beautiful the music is”, and ain’t that the truth. 2009 marked the first time I realized what my music could do for/to others. I had arranged a song to reflect exactly how the lyrics made me feel and the AcaBelles delivered. We cried, we watched our masterclinicians Christopher Diaz and Benjamin Stevens cry, we even heard the tech guys that were packing up behind us drop everything they were doing to join us in crying. It was magic. That’s when I knew that I’d be coming back to SoJam once I was out of college and that I needed to make others feel what Christopher and Ben allowed me to.

Ok, mushy story over. The connections I made at SoJam 2007-2009 allowed me to become a CASA.org contributor and sought out arranger and clinician. In fact, it was SoJam where I met Mark Hines and that Summer I was asked to join the team at The Vocal Company owned by him and Nick Lyons. It was also that Summer where I had my first opportunity to apply to be an instructor at SoJam. So at SoJam 2010 I found myself on the other side of the podium.

I taught “Arranging for All-female groups” and participated in the “I Am Woman” panel with talents like Jill Clark, Erin Shults, and Kari Francis. After the panel, Kari and I talked about practicing what we preached. In the panel we discussed so much about woman empowerment and showing the world that the ladies can do it just as well as the guys, but there was no real professional example of that stateside, and so the idea of Musae was born.

Kari and I worked hard to put together the best of the best. My best friend and fellow former ‘Belle, Angela Ugolini, Johanna Vinson the amazing bass formerly of UO’s Divisi and now also of Delilah, Courtney Godwin the Southern Belle that once tore it up with UGA’s Noteworthy, and Hannah Juliano the current music director of Berklee’s Pitch Slapped who is also in Delilah. Yes, from last year’s SoJam one of this year’s performers was born.

I got the call asking if Musae would be interested in performing at SoJam 2011 after just a few youtube videos and incredible support from fans. I was amazed. Could this be happening? Could my a cappella life really be coming full circle? I was first introduced to the idea of professional a cappella at SoJam 2007 and now I will be making my professional debut at SoJam just four years later. To top it off my picture is on the SoJam website right next to one of my original inspirations, Naturally 7.

All in all, SoJam makes dreams come true. I know for a fact without SoJam helping to guide me these last four years, I would be in a very different place right now. This is truly a life changing event.

So, come to SoJam, be inspired, live your dreams.