| Stanford Raagapella | |
|---|---|
Raagapella, 2011 group |
|
| Background information | |
| Origin | Stanford University |
| Genres | World, A cappella |
| Years active | 2002–present |
| Website | www.raagapella.com |
Stanford Raagapella Founded in 2002, Stanford Raagapella is Stanford University's South Asian fusion a cappella group. Raagapella's music draws from a variety of genres and languages, focusing on a fusion of Western and Bollywood pop music. That the music style is South Asian fusion means that many songs ("fusion songs") are a combination of a song from each genre, Eastern and Western, mixed into one arrangement. Raagapella has released one album to date and has toured throughout the United States and India, performing with artists including A.R. Rahman.[1]
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Raagapella was founded in 2002, making it the youngest of Stanford's nine on campus a cappella groups. The group quickly grew from its founding four members to a size of about thirteen, where it has stayed. In 2005 and 2006 Raagapella won Anahat, the National South Asian A Cappella Competition, and placed third in the same in 2004 and 2007; and in 2006 also took part in the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) where it was a semi-finalist. Later the same year Raagapella went on tour the first time, a tradition which has continued every year since, bringing them to the East and West coasts, Texas, Chicago, Iowa and India,[2] during which CNN-IBN did a story about the group.[3] In 2006 Raagapella also performed with composer and singer A.R. Rahman in the Hollywood Bowl, where they collaborated again in 2007 (in the Oracle Arena, Oakland and NASA Colosseum) and again in the Hollywood Bowl in 2011.[2][4][5]
Raagapella's music consists mainly of Bollywood and Western pop. The repertoire also however contains classic rock (such as "I'll Take You Home"), Persian poetry ("Ey Karevan/Hallelujah"), a national song ("Maa tujhe Salaam"), hip hop ("Kangna"), R&B ("Burn/Jaane Kye Chahe"), folk ("All along the Watchtower") and rap ("Motel"). Most songs are in Hindi and/or English, with more minor occurrences of Punjabi, Singhalese, Tamil, Persian and Telugu.[1][6]
Founding members were Mehul Trivedi, Bobby Ghosh, Sudeep Roy, and Jay Pandit.
For the 2011-2012 school year members were as following:[7]
| Tenor I | Tenor II | Baritone | Bass |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isaac Caswell | Praveen Ramesh | Raman Nelakanti | Ian Holmes |
| Justin Cavazos | Linyi Gao | Arif Gilani | RJ Lim |
| Vivek Choksi | Junxu Lye | Mahesh Agrawal | Bryan Li |
| Amrit Saxena | John Shih |