The new national competition for South African university a cappella groups, Varsity Acapella, was launched by KuKo in the Fismer Hall of the Conservatorium on 13 October.
KuKo is the Stellenbosch University (SU) Student Representative Council Culture Committee.
The competition was launched as a replacement of the Universiteite Sêr and aims to be a more inclusive and diverse national university a cappella competition than its predecessor.
Unsure of how a cappella works? Watch the video above to make sense of it. VIDEO: Christi Nortier
Universiteite Sêr was a national a cappella competition for Afrikaans universities until 2016. The champions of the a cappella competition within each university (the Kleinsêr) would compete at this national competition.
Groups would have to compose their own song in Afrikaans and sing another song in Afrikaans.
In 2017, the partaking universities went into discussion as to how to make the competition more inclusive of other languages and universities says Blaine Josephs, the chairperson of KuKo.
However, at the beginning of 2018 no plans had been made for that year’s competition. Josephs says the committee felt they could not lose such an important event.
“The idea with this [Varsity Acapella] is to show other people that it [acapella] is no longer the stereotypical white Afrikaans thing. It is something that involves everyone and incorporates South African music. It doesn’t push some languages to a higher standard and leave others behind,” he says.
Some of the rules which changed were that own compositions could be in any of the 11 official languages of South Africa and each group had to sing a South African song, no matter the language.
Explore the map to see where the a cappella groups come from and the titles they won:
“It is amazing to be here. I didn’t believe that we have it in us to actually come this far,” says Bongani Radebe, a first-year drama student who is part of one of the University of the Free State a cappella groups, Kagiso.
Stellenbosch University was well represented with half of the ensembles coming from the host campus. However, this did not stop an array of diverse talents from being on show.
“There’s definitely a lot of talent out there and you get to hear a different variety of singers and genres,” says Tatenda Chitongo, a member of SU Kleinsêr champions, Irene, and first year social work student.
Slideshow: A cappella ensembles have loosely themed and matching costumes. Browse the photos to see the wide variety of costumes featured at the Varsity Acapella. PHOTOS: Christi Nortier
The talent and variety were also noticed by audience members. “To enjoy an evening of music with these youngsters is amazing. Earlier, a group [of students] was standing over there singing, but they were from the Free State, the North West and Cape Town and all of them were singing the same song,” says audience member Dolores Gertze.
“I would like it to reach the point where we send the winners of our national competition to an international competition to compete there. I hope it becomes this fun, massive learning environment for everyone,” says Josephs.
VR photo: Take a look around the Fismer Hall auditorium from the perspective of an a cappella singer warming up before the seats fill with audience members, the lights go down and the show begins. PHOTO: Christi Nortier