Last Saturday, the a cappella group the Yale Whiffenpoofs performed at the open air stage at El Sawi Cultural Center. With whirring fans doing their best to combat the blazing temperatures, the group sang in traditional full length black wool suits and gloves. Despite the torrential sweat dripping from their faces, the group s singers held it together and delivered a strong performance.
The Whiffenpoofs, whose name comes from an imaginary creature in a musical, were introduced by Mohamed El Sawi, the director of El Sawi Cultural Center.
We are celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the Whiffenpoofs, El Sawi said. Even though they were founded in 1909, we are going to use the lunar calendar, so it will be 100 years. Whiffenpoof Nathan Rieff then introduced the group with a speech in halting Arabic.
The night was filled with blues and jazz but the Whiffenpoofs also managed to surprise with a version of Bob Marley s Waiting In Vain, which was definitely the concert s highlight. Mike Davis s soft yet ringing voice squeezed every drop of emotion from the song and the background vocal did well to stay out of his way. It may also have been the group s favorite, for they removed their gloves during this song, to their evident relief.
Unfortunately, the Yale Whiffenpoofs suffer from a rare problem, an overabundance of rare and powerful voices. All of the singers were extremely talented, and quite a few had highly unique voices on top, ranging from David Macintosh s powerful bass to Josh Min s nearly operatic tenor. How this could possibly create problems is that in many of the songs the rhythm and bass vocalists partially drowned out the soloist. Since many soloists did have such great voices, it was simply a shame that they wee unable to exploit them to their fullest.
In addition to distracting from the melody, the strong background vocals also tended to create a mélange of sound. This mish-mash, while a highly talented one, often made the songs sound identical to each other. In fairness to the Whittenpoofs, this effect may have amplified greatly by the suspect acoustics of the outdoor stage.
However, the Whiffenpoofs are composed of 14 extraordinary singers and there is only so much that one can do wrong with such a group.
The outstanding songs of the night, and definitely those to whom the crowd reacted most strongly, were Bob Marley s Waiting In Vain, and Gladys Knight s Midnight Train to Georgia. All of these featured muted background vocals and permitted the audience to catch every lilt of the soloist s voice.
In Midnight Train to Georgia three member of the group did an interpretative dance instead of singing. While the dance was composed of simple coordinated pantomiming of the song, and extremely uninteresting, the reduction in background vocals allowed the audience to enjoy the soloist s performance.
The Yale Whiffenpoofs came to El Sawi as part of their three month long summer tour. We do over 200 concerts a year and right now we re touring the entire world. said Whiffenpoof Mark Havel. It s hard work and after this concert we re taking a one week break.
After standing for two hours in full length black wool suits and gloves in Cairo s heat, they deserve it.
