fieldnotes 1

Fieldnotes: (784 words)

05/23/2009

The Jabberwocks Alumni Arch Sing

12:00am

Wayland Arch

Nearing the end of Campus Dance, a few friends and I decide to go see some of our friends and tons of old Jabberwocks in their alumni arch sing for their 60^th reunion. We rush over to Wayland arch at about fifteen until midnight and I see a friend who was a member of Harmonic Motion another Brown University a cappella group. She says she is about to have an arch sing with her group at the same time and I am a little puzzled. But I go over to see some of my friends just outside the arch and about 3 of them are Jabberwocks. Brian Cross ’12 offers to show me a warmup that they do that consists of approximately 3-4 parts with a cord found in most songs. Two other Brown’sTones are with me, fresh off of our own alumni sing so we are pretty game for it. We start to sing with them and more Jabberwocks, old and new, join in. We sing everything from the Police to Rihanna to Alicia Keys. But then we hear a lot of ruckus and singing coming from the arch. 

We go over and see Harmonic Motion trying to have an arch sing while being heckled by a few Jabberwocks. After about five minutes of trying to sing without being screamed and booed at, HarMo gives up and leaves. A few of my friends come over saying, “They may be good, but they are some assholes.” I can’t help but agree. 

The Jabberwocks applaud as HarMo exits and they begin their arch sing and the numbers are enormous. They have probably over 50 people clearly making them more of a men’s choir than a cappella group but it’s no matter. They start off with their signature song, “Me and the Boys” and plenty of alums are after the solos. It looks like the most fun ever pretty much and I’m pumped to see this. Erik Abi-Khattar ’10, the new Musical Director is shouting out and conducting keeping this sing together. Plenty of the Jabberwocks, new and old, are drunk and drinking as they sing making it even more of an event. They move on to a song I’m not familiar with but the campus celebrity Andy Suzuki ’09 is singing the solo so everyone’s happy. He’s taken the year off of Jabberwocks to pursue music full time, but he’s a staple to the group and everyone is happy to see him with the Wocks again. I must admit, it’s the first time I’ve been impressed with his voice since I first heard him sing in the beginning of the year. They then move on to their version of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”. The alums are not familiar with the new choreography and look a little thrown off but they sing along with it anyway. 

After another song that everyone knows, the alums start calling out the name of a song they want to sing. They start screaming out “LET’S SING OLD JOE!” All of the younger Jabbs are screaming “No!” and trying to find another song to sing but the alumni are pretty persistent. My friend and Jabberwock Malcolm Shanks ’11 comes up to me after its apparent they are going to sing this Old Joe song and says, “Now I want you to listen very closely to this song, it is racist as hell and I will not be singing it.” So as they start singing it, I realize it’s an old minstrel song. A lot of the newer members aren’t singing, Malcolm is pretty tight-lipped as he promised and Brian Cross just looks terrified, not sure whether to sing or not. One thing I see that surprises me is my friend, who for his sake I will not name, who is a person of color, part African-American, singing right along with the alums as if the song isn’t racist at all. Part of me wants to run up to him and slap him across the face, grab him by his collar and take him back to his dorm, but then another part wants to continue to videotape the event, so that I could show him later on. 

After they conclude the minstrelsy, they start up singing their alumni song, the Jabberwocky and a current Wock comes up to recite the poem. They then conclude the arch sing and I’m left wondering whether or not I should have enjoyed that or not. There were an equal amount of pluses and minuses. I kept thinking about that as I went back to Campus Dance. The heckling, the racism and the arrogance butted heads with the fun, the talent, and the performance.