Robert Styron leverages his graduate degree in music education to serve as a resident artist at the Hymel School of Music in Gretna, Louisiana, and as a talented music specialist with Jefferson Parish Public Schools in New Orleans. A lover of music, Robert Styron also performs in several local bands and makes music education presentations, such as “Jazz Improvisation and Contemporary A Cappella.”
The “a cappella” is a musical term that refers to a piece performed solely by a vocalist or vocal group, with no instrumental accompaniment or another musical backing. Translated as “in the manner of the chapel,” this style of performance traces its origins back to the times of Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato.
In the early 20th century, a cappella began to find popularity beyond religious. Modern a cappella groups began with the founding of the Northwestern A Cappella Choir and the St. Olaf College Choir. Numerous colleges took up the tradition and a cappella soon began to evolve into distinct mainstream movements, including barbershop and doo-wop. While doo-wop music sometimes features musical accompaniments, both sub-genres typically feature a lead vocalist backed by three or four vocal harmony parts.
While a cappella persists as a popular activity at schools and universities around the world, several pieces have enjoyed considerable success as pop songs, including “Mbube” by Solomon Linda, better known in the United States as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, “Homeless” by Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and most successfully, Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy.” The latter, released in 1988, became the first a cappella song to reach No. 1 on the United States Billboard charts, a position the song held for two weeks.
Robert Styron 