Statement in song:
Oakland a cappella group Vocal Rush makes a black- livesmatter comment with its music.
“Say what you wanna say, and let the words fall out,” goes the Sara Bareilles song “Brave.” “Honestly I wanna see you be brave.”
At the International Championship of High School A Cappella in New York this past April, the youth version of the “Olympics of a cappella,” Oakland School for the Arts ensemble Vocal Rush turned their heartfelt rendition of the song into a much bigger statement when they turned around to reveal the phrase # BlackLivesMatter taped to their backs at the end of the number.
It was a risky move in a competition where upbeat pop covers and sophisticated numbers win the day. Vocal Rush has won the championship twice before, unexpectedly as a wild card in 2012 and again in 2013, but no one knew how they would be judged for speaking out. And to the group, it didn’t matter.
“At the competition, it was never about winning for us,” says senior McKenna Lindell- Wright, 17, a member of Vocal Rush since 10th grade. “We thought it actually might work against us, but we all really strongly believed in the message, because of where we’ve grown up and the people we’ve seen affected.”
Vocal Rush has a reputation for doing things differently from other a cappella groups, and credit that to Lisa Forkish, 29, the energetic young assistant music chair who founded the elite group, and who looks young enough to be a student herself.
Forkish is highly regarded in the a cappella world through her
“There is an emotional connection when we sing together. That’s
what I love about music — the way it makes me feel.”
McKenna Lindell- Wright, Vocal Rush member
association with the University of Oregon women’s ensemble, Divisi. Fans of the movie “Pitch Perfect” might recognize that group as the inspiration for the Barden Bellas. Though Forkish demurs, as the youthful music director who created unusual and innovative arrangements for Divisi, she is sometimes compared to Anna Kendrick’s character Beca.
It’s been four years since OSA music chair Cava Menzies recruited the bubbly and outgoing Forkish, who had been a colleague at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, to the department. Forkish, a native of Eugene, Ore., admits that first year was hard. It was shortly after OSA moved to the Fox Theater, the school was suffering from growing pains, and faculty turnover had been an issue.
“I was a passionate but really green teacher,” she says, “Cava was supportive, but I struggled to earn the kids’ respect. That was why I founded Vocal Rush, as a way to reach some of them and show them what I could do.”
Ten students formed that first group. Forkish remembers that eventually “the kids saw me as legit.”
Of the six vocal choirs at OSA, Vocal Rush, which this year includes two men and 10 women, is the most elite. The ensemble has become a public ambassador for OSA, performing four or five gigs a month. They’ve appeared at TEDx conference in Livermore; performed for Gov. Jerry Brown; just released their first full- length album, “Shatter”; and in 2013, were the first high school a cappella group to beat college and professional groups to earn a place in the finals of NBC’s “The Sing- Off.”
“You love them and hate them like a family,” says Lindell- Wright, who was the youngest competitor on “The Sing- Off” that year. “But the music you make because you have that bond is different. Not that it’s any prettier or better; it’s just that there is an emotional connection when we sing together. That’s what I love about music — the way it makes me feel.”
For Forkish, LindellWright and the other members of the ensemble, “winning” the high school competition was about feeling brave enough to use their art as a platform to speak out about an issue that was close to their hearts.
It wasn’t all Forkish’s idea, she says. The kids wanted to talk in class about Eric Garner, Michael Brown and what it meant to them. Forkish suggested that their art could be the outlet, and she notes with a hint of pride, that only once did the topic of whether they would win the competition or not come up.
“One kid asked, ‘ What if the judges don’t like this?’ and I said, ‘ Well, it has to be one of the things that we are willing to risk,’ ” she says. “Of course, they want to win, but the cool thing was that after the finals were over, we were all backstage in tears, and they said, we don’t care what happens next. I think things like this change the culture of competition, and I think that’s great.”
Building character and commitment, that’s what Forkish says she hopes the kids take away from the Vocal Rush experience, whether or not they continue to sing, or have a career in music.
“To be able to know how to put your ego to the side and work for a greater cause as a unit for multiple people, a lot of students come in with few ideas of how to do this,” she says. “And not to say that they don’t have conflicts with other students or with me sometimes. Maybe right on graduation day they are still mad at me for this or that. But sometimes, a month or a few months later, I get a text or e- mail saying, ‘ Thank you for all the things you taught me.’ ”