Vocal ‘aliens’ bring online buzz to stage
In a little more than three minutes, eight strange, white-clad creatures with ruby lips present the history of music — well, a highly selective history of music.
With no musical accompaniment, the eight voices begin chanting in Latin, then move on to Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus and a Scott Joplin rag. A detour to the harmonies of “Mr. Sandman” gives way to the big-band blast of “In the Mood.” Rock ’n’ roll hustles in with “Tutti Frutti” before blending into the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around.” Quickly into the ’70s with the Doobie Brothers’ “Long Train Runnin’,” the tour zips through the ’80s with nods to Madonna and Michael Jackson. Snippets of dance tunes lead to Britney Spears before concluding with will.i.am’s “I Like to Move It.”
That zippy little medley, when posted to YouTube about three years ago, put this odd a cappella octet, called Voca People, on the international musical map. Created in Israel by director Lior Kalfo and composer, arranger and musical director Shai Fishman, Voca People first became an Internet sensation, with their clips racking up millions of hits, then hit the road, selling out concerts around the world.
On Tuesday, Voca People made their San Francisco debut with a show at the Marines’ Memorial Theatre. Sitting in the empty auditorium, co-creator Fishman says he and Kalfo had long wanted to work together and came up with what they thought was a perfect concept.
“Lior is a great comedian and performer, and I’m from the theater and films. We both love a cappella music, so we thought we could create something out of this world — literally,” Fishman says. “We decided the Voca People are aliens who don’t communicate other than through music. They would be all in white clothes, with painted white faces, and no significance placed on race or gender. There would be no agenda, no politics, no sex. It would be all about the music.”
Onstage each night, the Voca People — six singers and two beat boxers — sing bits and pieces of 70 well-known songs ranging from Beethoven’s Fifth to Henry Mancini’s “Pink Panther” theme to Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.”
The story goes that the aliens have to collect the music of Earth to fuel their spaceship so they can return to their planet. That’s really just an excuse for some amazingly intricate a cappella arrangements and a lot of goofing around with the audience. But make no mistake: These performers, as much fun as they might be having, are vocal athletes.
“The singers I choose for this show have to have a range outside the normal alto or mezzo or whatever,” Fishman says. “You have to be able to tweak and change your voice to do some of the crazy stuff I ask them to do. You have to be a trumpet, a wah-wah guitar, sing happy, sing sad. It’s nonstop singing. You have to have no problems being ridiculous onstage, but at the same time, if you’re a seriously good singer, the show is much funnier, much better.”
Fishman says he finds potential Voca People for the various troupes (one each in New York and Paris, one touring the world) by scouring through YouTube videos and holding auditions in various cities.
“I have to audition these guys five to seven times before I’m able to tell how they deal with timing, tempos and genres, not to mention how they play with others,” Fishman says. “We also have to deal with accents in that I have to de-accent everybody. It needs to sound foreign all the time, like there’s no way of placing these voices anywhere on the globe.”
The worldwide success of the Voca People has come as a complete surprise to Fishman, whose main line of work was creating scores for films, namely 18 films for NASA. He grew up in Israel with a dad who loved sharing old LPs with his son. While the father gravitated to jazz albums by the likes of Toots Thielemans or Bill Evans, the son was more attracted to Aretha Franklin and the Blues Brothers.
By the time he was a teenager, Fishman was playing seven instruments (it’s the saxophone, he says, that gets the girls) and emulating TV theme songs from “Dallas” and “Night Court” on his keyboard. Now that he has moved to Los Angeles and begun building an entertainment empire, all that music is coming in handy as he writes arrangements for a cappella aliens.
“I think people respond to the innocence of the show,” Fishman says. “We could have done elaborate sound effects, but we wanted the focus on the music and the voice. What you hear and what you see are what you get.”