by James Gammon
In the fall of 2003, I was a 4th-year student at the University of Virginia. The A Cappella world was a slightly different place then, at least as I knew it. For one thing, Facebook didn’t exist yet. (That’s right, SoJam is older than Facebook!). There was certainly a healthy competition scene with the ICCAs, BOCA, and CASA events, but the groups at my school and some of the others we met on the East Coast were often isolated from any sense of a larger community. Within that environment, my group, the Academical Village People, had somehow heard about this new event called SoJam, and we decided to apply to compete. As I recall, this just happened on a whim, since none of us had heard of SoJam before. When we were accepted, we were rightfully excited – but we had no concept of what we were about to experience.
SoJam 2003 was my first experience of the what I guess you could call the “A Cappella Movement” – I’d never before encountered a large group of people who were truly passionate about the art form of A Cappella, who performed it at such a high level, and who wanted to further the art form while exposing it to as many new people as possible. There was a palpable sense of excitement among the attendees of that first event – as if we knew a really cool secret and couldn’t wait to share it with everyone else and spread the ‘gospel of a cappella’ far and wide. It was here that I met Dave Sperandio, and here that I sat down and had lunch with Bill Hare to ‘talk about my future.’ The grassroots community feel was itself truly inspiring – even though not many people knew about us, and we were occasionally dismissed as ‘A Cappella Nerds,’ we believed in what we were doing and knew that it could win people over if given a chance. It would be difficult to overstate the influence and inspiration of this event on my life – in fact, it was specifically my experience over those few days with Bill, Dave, and SoJam in general that convinced me that I wanted to become a part of this movement myself.
For the first few years after that, I would tell people to come to SoJam primarily to experience the excitement of that community. Many of the people I talked to didn’t know such a community existed, and I knew that being exposed to the SoJam atmosphere would inspire them to better their group. That’s still a great reason to attend SoJam. But somehow in the years since our cute little art form has gained mainstream popularity! It’s been commented on before, but all of the sudden A Cappella can be seen everywhere – we soar in the TV ratings on NBC’s The Sing-Off, dominate the billboard charts with Glee albums and previous Sing-Off winners, are featured on our own weekly Mouth-Off podcast, perform on the intro to Monday Night Football, and generally pervade the public consciousness in a way that I don’t think has ever happened before. That success is due in no small part to the effort of the many people who also organize and participate in CASA and SoJam. So now I can say without reservation that the new reason you should come to SoJam 2011 is because that’s where all the cool people are going to be. Last year I even hung out with and learned from Sonos (check them out on NBC on Monday nights) and Claude McKnight of Take 6. This year I’m looking forward to more inspiration from Naturally 7, a whole wave of women like the Boxettes who are redefining what it means to kick ass in women’s A Cappella, the usual fantastic workshops, and a collegiate competition that becomes hugely more competitive and entertaining with each passing year.
I’ve been to every SoJam, and I’ve enjoyed them all – the sense of community from the first SoJam is still there and just as strong as ever, but now the event is also the cool place to see and be seen. There’s no reason not to go. Your group will be inspired to perform at a new level and will learn the techniques, mindsets, and business acumen to support your soon-to-be skyrocketing popularity. A Cappella is becoming a big deal – the groups who step it up right now and take advantage of that fact have a chance to really change their futures and do something special. SoJam is the best possible way to do that. I’ll see you there.
