If you loved watching Pitch Perfect, you’ll love Voctronica even more. And for those who didn’t catch their first performance in the city recently — man, you missed out. Touted India’s first all-voice ensemble (that’s right no instruments), the five-member group includes Avinash Tewari, Raj Verma, Warsha Easwar, Arjun Nair and Clyde Rodrigues. Oh and get this, they don’t just do A capella, their brand of music is a smooth cocktail of A capella and beat boxing. And we kid you not, entering The Park shortly after the show began, their heavy duty bass travelled as far as the lobby, as did their overflowing audience. Had we not been heading in the direction of the concert, this could well have passed off as a six piece drum kit!
With a set list that included everything from the uber popular Rolling in the Deep (Adele) to a mashup of Come Together (The Beatles) and Hamma Hamma (Bombay), the night was unpredictable and high on entertainment value all, at the same time. The group even had something they called a circle jam, where they requested the audience to pick a word at random and made up a song on the spot. In this case, the word was ‘auto’ — the second choice by popular demand following a common Tamil expletive that rhymes with ‘moth-er’ that was thrown up by the crowd.
With people packed together, having arrived as early as 8 pm to catch the performance that started at 10 pm, the vocal adrenaline in the room likely outweighed breathing space. And the show that was peppered with fun exchanges with the audience, ranged from the advantages of never having broken strings or tech trouble to one gentleman in the crowd even lending the group his Fedora hat to go with Bruno Mars’ look in Don’t Believe Me Just Watch.
As fun and effortless as the evening seemed, making music with your mouth probably takes a whole lot of stamina as well, as the show lasted exactly an hour. But we went home with enough boom and bass to power our car stereos for a week within that time frame. That’s the power of the human voice we came to learn on Wednesday night. So the next time you feel ‘unheard by your boss, or better half’, perhaps take lessons from Voctronica for the boom box effect. It could be a hoot!