Sing together

A few weeks ago, I heard the Yale Whiffenpoofs, the 102-year old acappella group, perform in New Delhi. If you’ve heard collegiate male acappella groups before, you’ll agree that there’s something very endearing about fresh-faced, earnest-looking young men in black tuxedos and white gloves singing melodiously and in complete harmony in those wonderful baritone, bass and tenors. It can engender a warm, fuzzy feeling in the most indifferent heart.

Perhaps it’s to do with college nostalgia, a yearning for youth and idealism and a time when the world seemed yours to conquer. Or perhaps it’s just a function of the repertoire of collegiate acappellas, from rearranged hymns to Bollywood melodies or jazz-influenced pop, blues, Yiddish and rock. (The Whiffenpoofs began their performance with a Czech marching song!) Whatever the reason, listening to the ’Poofs, was enchanting. Their polished performance reminded me of Stanford University’s all-male South Asian focus acappella group, Raagappella, with its repertoire of Bollywood pop and traditional Hindustani or Carnatic raag-based music and original fusion pieces.

I remember listening, spellbound, as Indians, Taiwanese Hispanic, Japanese and blond Caucasians dressed in long, cream kurtas sang “Yeh Lamhe”, “Vande Mataram” and other Hindi (and Tamil) songs, instantly transporting me to the homeland’s rain-drenched monsoons, mangoes, sambhar-vada, chai and samosas. Raagappella, one of Stanford’s nine acappella groups, has since gone on to perform with A R Rahman at the Hollywood Bowl.

Acappella has no accompanying instruments, (though contemporary groups imitate the sound of percussion through voice, hands and feet, made most popular by Rockappella). It’s just one among several activities that abound in colleges abroad — the US alone has over 1,200 student-run acappella groups. And for something that is viewed more as a geeky activity — the real cool dudes are still the rock stars in the college band — acappella is hugely popular and boasts Cole Porter and Art Garfunkel as alum.

College campuses begin thrumming with hundreds of activities around now, from the standard drama, debating and sport, to the more exotic. Over the years, these activities may have changed somewhat, but what they try and encourage — student socialisation and bonding, collaboration, loyalty and pride in one’s college along with some extra-curricular learning and creativity — hasn’t.

Generally speaking, bonds formed during our college years are among our strongest non-familial bonds; the more intense our collaborative experience, the deeper the bond. In today’s Internet-dominated campuses defined by online social networking, it has become even more important for students to engage with each other face-to-face, preferably immersed in collective, meaningful and fun activities — so that they realise virtual interaction can’t replace the real thing.

With India among the fastest growing of the FaceBook community, it is imperative that we not lose our young to the Internet’s Pied Piper. Oh, I’m not saying this because of past debate stirred by Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows” which argues that computers, the Internet, Google, Twitter et al are converting us into shallow thinkers and rewiring our brain. Or even because cognitive scientists say that too much digital stimulation can be psychologically unhealthy and constant teenage cellphone use and compulsive texting can inhibit deep thought and cause anxiety. I say this because I intuitively believe that long-term Internet use can devalue and trivialise the human experience, diminishing our desire to socialize, and probably our ability to do so, whereas complex human interaction can vastly improve our cognitive skills — reasoning, contextual thinking, problem-solving, decision-making — so critical to the functioning of society.

Group activities provide a social and creative outlet for students (especially those pursuing more technical fields) but more importantly, also teach tolerance, acceptance, the art of building real relationships, people and life skills, more useful in the long-run than academic degrees.

Jyoti Pande Lavakare is a Delhi-based writer