Bobby McFerrin on Voicestra

Bobby McFerrin

Here is vocal wizard Bobby McFerrin's description of the 12-piece improvisational vocal ensemble, Voicestra, joining him for his April 14 appearance at Symphony Hall. We're publishing it in the concert program along with the bios of all the singers in the group.

Bobby McFerrin:

My favorite, most inspiring times in concert have always been the impromptu moments on stage when the audience participates. At some point, I began to realize that I wanted to work with other singers, and the idea for Voicestra seemed to develop from these spontaneous group efforts in my performances.

Voicestra is a 12-piece ensemble, and the music we sing encompasses all kinds of materials: world music, African chants, Indian ragas, storytelling, new songs based on the alphabet, and contemporary vocal compositions.  We released the album "Circlesongs" in 1997 on Sony Classical and it remains one of my favorite recordings.

Circlesongs are all improvisational. It comes from the notion that villages in Africa could get together and the Shaman would come up with something to celebrate and he would give out parts for them to sing.  This was affirmed a little bit by a woman from Africa who I met in Vienna one year, who was traveling with a group who had come directly from a village in Africa. She didn’t speak a word of English but she did speak French. Voicestra had just done this concert and backstage, when we came out, she started speaking to me in French. We had someone interpreting and she said ‘This is just like home. This is exactly what we would do in my village. The chief would give us a part to sing and this would be the song.'

My belief is that this is the most accessible way of people getting together who don’t know each other. It’s a primal singing without words that seems to be genetically transmitted to my bones and that goes directly to my spirit. One of the simplest forms of prayer and meditation is through chanting, and singing in community is extremely powerful. Gathering people in a space and making them sing instantly puts down all barriers and destroys all differences in creed, gender, and race.

So this is what Voicestra still does now. We came from doing a heavily produced show to just a community of singers, twelve of us. And me standing in the middle. And I start to sing and I find something and I give out the part to an individual singer for then to sing, to riff on, to chant, and then it changes; it can change, it can shift, it can last one minute to one hundred and one minutes. You understand why tribes in Africa, when they celebrate and dance, can go for hours and hours: the power of the drum, the beat, how it goes on and on, like your heartbeat. It’s relentless. It keeps shifting and going and it’s essential; and it’s all improvised, every last bit of it.

Bobby McFerrin Symphony Hall performance page