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A cappella (Italian for From the chapel/choir) music is vocal music or singing without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato style. In the 19th century a renewed interest in Renaissance polyphony coupled with an ignorance of the fact that vocal parts were often doubled by instrumentalists led to the term coming to mean unaccompanied vocal music. In modern usage, a cappella often refers to an all-vocal performance of any style, including barbershop, doo wop, and modern pop/rock.
One of the legendary 50's R&B groups were the Nutmegs, who were also known as the "Rajahs of a cappella". They were the first of these groups to proudly showcase an a cappella format which became their trademark. Later, many other groups recorded at least one a cappella song. The Classics, singers of "Till then", scored a very popular a cappella hit, "I Apologize". Janis Joplin recorded the a cappella song "Mercedes Benz" in October 1970, just three days before she died. Later in the 1970s, The Belmonts released a seminal a cappella album entitled Cigars, Acappella, Candy, which is representative of the genre. In the 1980s the UK a cappella group The Flying Pickets had a number 1 hit.
Contemporary a cappella includes many vocal bands who add vocal percussion or beatboxing to create a pop/rock sound, in some cases very similar to bands with instruments. One such group is Rockapella. There also remains a strong a cappella presence within Christian music, as some denominations purposefully do not use instruments during worship. Examples of such groups are Take 6 and Acappella.
Arrangements of popular music for small a cappella ensembles typically include one voice singing the lead melody, one singing a rhythmic bass line, and the remaining voices contributing chordal or polyphonic accompaniment.
A cappella can also describe the practice of using just the vocal track(s) from a multitrack, instrumental recording to be remixed or put onto vinyl records for DJs. Artists sometimes release the vocal tracks of their popular songs so that fans can remix them. One such example is the a cappella release of Jay-Z's Black Album, which Danger Mouse mixed with the Beatles' White Album to create The Grey Album.
A cappella's growth is not limited to live performance, with hundreds of recorded a cappella albums produced over the past decade. As of December 2006, the Recorded A Cappella Review Board (RARB) had reviewed over 660 a cappella albums since 1994, and its popular discussion forum had over 900 users and 19,000 articles. The first a cappella song ever to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 was Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry, Be Happy.
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