We didn't suck!!!

[theyellowhobbit]

Techiya went to New York this weekend, in order to participate in JCFPA, the Jewish Collegiate Festival of Performing Arts. We also had a paid performance at the JCC on Saturday. At the JCC we sang everything in our repertoire, and at JCFPA we sang 3 songs since there were a zillion groups.

The concerts went way over on time, and in between each group there were these really bad skits which should have been cut when they realized how late we were running. There were a lot of good groups, but a lot of people sang the same sorts of songs (though the U Chicago group sang a song from Dr. Horrible, which was made of awesome). We sang Melech Shelach (Israeli pop song), Rumania, Rumania (a famous Yiddish theater song) and the Carmen Sandiego theme (complete with parody lyrics). And the audience went crazy when we did Rumania. I had jokingly made a comment earlier "we should try and get the audience to clap during Rumania!" I said this because Rumania is not a song people clap to. But the audience clapped during Rumania!!! WTF?

And Carmen Sandiego wins all ties.

So we stole the show, which was completely unexpected, at least by me.

On the way to the bus, while waiting for the subway/while on the subway we sang. (We were down a few group members at this point but still had all the parts covered.) I thought we should have held out a hat or something, considering we're trying to pay for our CD...

Actually, our website now has MP3s from our concert:

http://web.mit.edu/techiya/www/music.html

But the CD will actually be mixed and stuff and should be good. I hope.

And now I'm home, about to go to bed, since I have class at 10:00 AM. Luckily all the readings are things we read last year in the Paul class, so I'm not behind.

Comments

[rachinisrael.livejournal.com]

Hey! I saw you at JCFPA but had to leave before the concert was over so I couldn't actually say hi. I hope you had fun!

[sen-ichi-rei.livejournal.com]

Wow, I didn't know you were there. We actually also left the concert early, since we had a 7:30 bus to catch. We would have stayed to the end had the concert actually run on time and not gone over by a zillion hours.

[plus-c.livejournal.com]

"On the way to the bus, while waiting for the subway/while on the subway we sang. (We were down a few group members at this point but still had all the parts covered.)"

PennYo does that ALL the time.

[timmypowg.livejournal.com]

Who doesn't clap during Rumania? ;p

We left after the group after the klezmer band -- there were three more groups in the show -- and NOBODY did ANYTHING like Rumania. There was not a single song in Yiddish. A lot of groups sang three Israeli pop songs; a few sang two and something religious-based. One did Nachamu. There was a lot of American pop music, too. There was that one group that sang a parody song. So we were way above our usual pop-y-ness level, but we were tied at the bottom of pop-y-ness out of everyone there. And that set us apart, because Rumania is the kind of upbeat crowd-pleaser song that is NOT pop music. We opened it with a distinctive sound that turned heads, and we put in the energy that makes this song so kickass. This kind of music is naturally exciting.

It turns out that the awesomeness of David's solo was not at all on purpose on my part when I was writing it. It didn't occur to me that it would command so much attention; I just thought it sounded cool. And you know what else makes people clap and get excited? Dynamics. Anyhow, I'm sure we'll sit around discussing this on Thursday or on Sunday for a long time.

Oh, we stole the show so much that some guy interviewed Martin during the intermission. I don't know who he was, but he ended up asking me a few questions, too, about Rumania. It just shows that crowd-pleasing music doesn't have to be pop. (: Hopefully this means that at JCFPA next year, groups will want to sing something other than pop, which will make me very happy.