Title: Ijeoma Nwuke

General Information:

• Pre-Performance Ritual – American
• Ijeoma Nwuke
• Student, Nigerian
• English
• Nigeria
• May 14, 2019

 

Text:

This pre-performance ritual is a whispering cheer performed by all members of the Dartmouth Rockapellas acapella group before a singing show. The cheer is called “Spicy and Delicious.” All members of the group gather together in a circle, put their hands in the center of the circle, look at each other, and all at the same time whisper, “1, 2, 3…Spicy and delicious,” and they raise their hands from the circle.

 

Context:

The Dartmouth Rockapellas are a gender inclusive social justice acapella group that was created in 1989. Ijeoma tells me that she has been performing this ritual since freshman year when she was taught the ritual by the rest of the group before her first performance. She tells me that she was told it has been a part of the history of the “Rocks” since anyone in the group can remember, and for this reason, they continue the tradition. She says the ritual can be performed on stage or anywhere that a singing show is being performed.

 

Ijeoma was told that the name of the cheer is “Spicy and Delicious” in reference to the Hop fries. She states that the mentioning of Hop fries is a critical part of the cheer because the cheer is intended to be weird. The whispering aspect of the cheer contributes to this weirdness. The cheer can never be spoken or shouted, only whispered.

 

Meaning and Interpretation (Informant):

 

Ijeoma sees the “spicy and delicious” aspect of the cheer as confusing because she does not think that Hop fries are spicy; however, she notes that they are delicious so the cheer makes some sense in her eyes. She likes that the cheer mentions Hop fries because it allows her to be “connected in weirdness” to the rest of the group. She mentions that she thinks mentioning something as random as Hop fries boosts morale, lightening the atmosphere so that everyone can be in the spirit of performing. She also thinks the ritual is very unique. “No one else has a ritual about fries,” she states, calling it very much a “Rocks thing.” This uniqueness of the cheer, in her opinion, not only shows the group’s love for food – as several rehearsals include snacks shared among the group – but it also “hypes everyone up” in order to allow them to get ready for the show.

In reference to the whispering aspect of the cheer, Ijeoma does not understand the need for whispering. Directly following her hypothetical performance of the cheer, she questions aloud, “I don’t know why we whisper…Why do we whisper?” and repeats the cheer again, this time yelling. She follows the second yelling cheer with a laugh, suggesting that yelling the cheer is clearly silly and isn’t the correct way to perform it.

 

Ijeoma is from Nigeria and compares this pre-performance ritual of a cheer to the performance rituals in reference to her housing competitions in her boarding school back home. She explains that just like Dartmouth College has houses for residency, her boarding school had residential houses as well that competed against one another in house events. She mentions that lots of the chants had a reference to the house spirit or hall spirit, like “We are the best in the house,” where the entire house would gather in a circle and repeat the phrase over and over loudly. She mentions that because the school was international, this cheer was very international as well, incorporating languages from different countries. After stating, “We are the best in the house,” international students would incorporate short phrases in a different language that would be repeated in the cheer related to boosting morale.

 

Ijeoma notes that her house cheers were very aggressive, existing for both incorporation among the members of the house but also competition against other houses. It is this competitive aspect that differentiates her house cheers from the cheer she has learned in the Rockapellas. She states that her house cheers were much more aggressive than her whispering cheer for the Rockapellas and she attributes this to the fact that in competition, the point was to “bash the other houses,” to make them feel lesser than her house. In contrast, the Rockapellas do not engage in competitive performance, at least not yet. She wonders whether the cheer performed by the Rockapellas will be more aggressive if the group intends to engage in acapella competitions in the future.

 

Ijeoma also gives an example of a cheer of solidarity performed by her “brother dorm,” the Titans, who had chants about her dorm, the Gaga dorm. During the cheer, the boys would get in a circle and say loudly, “We take Gaga. We put her here. We Pepeta.” During this cheer, the boys would point to the girls in the Gaga dorm, beckon the girls to dance with them, and do a few side step motions, swinging their hips in a short dance. The cheer was intended to promote teamwork between the brother and sister dorms in the house competitions. The cheer was intended to bring together the spirit of the house when battling for what she called an “arbitrary prize” during the house competitions. She mentions that the prize, which was usually something small like a mask, was not the point of the cheer. It was the idea of having pride in the house and promoting solidarity, the fact that everyone was “in this together.” This idea of being together was very important to her because she was able to see international students from different backgrounds unified because of the house cheer. The cheer was a means of affiliation and inclusion, but it also promoted diversity and individuality amongst a large group of people. She compares this incorporation aspect of the cheer to the pre-performance ritual of the Rockapellas, stating that the Rockapellas similarly promote incorporation and unity within the group during their cheer. As the Rockapellas are a social justice acapella group, promoting diversity and inclusion are an important aspect of the cheer so that everyone in the group knows that despite their differences, they are one unit during performance.

 

Meaning and Interpretation (Collector):

 

In hearing about the Rockapellas chant from Ijeoma, the chant seems very important to promote group unity and a lot of this unity is found from embracing weirdness. The “spicy and delicious” aspect of the cheer is intended to be weird because the idea of the group is that everyone’s differences, all of the ways in which every individual is weird, is accepted and interwoven into the identity of the group as a whole. In this way, the chant fulfills the group’s mission, namely to promote social justice through music, reflected in the promotion of inclusion and diversity in the cheer. Also, an acapella performance relies on both the diversity of its members, reflected in the singing of many different parts of the song, and the inclusion of its members, reflected in the incorporation of these many different parts of a song to produce the song as a whole. Each individual part, and therefore each individual, is critical to the successful performance of the song as a whole. The cheer, by promoting individual weirdness and unity through this weirdness, prepares the group for a successful performance. Ijeoma’s comparison of the chant to her house competition cheers shows that there is a stark difference between competitive and incorporative performance and the cheers they demand. While her house competition cheers promoted group unity through incorporation, they also demanded an aggressive tone against their competitor. Thus, they included lots of loud chanting and some dance movements to hype up the competitors. In contrast, the Rockapellas chant is solely incorporative and therefore has a much more lighthearted and encouraging tone. Thus, this chant includes whispering which helps the group stay calm in preparing for the performance.

Because this cheer is the same described by Elizabeth, the aspects of sympathetic magic incorporated into the cheer remain the same. In this cheer, the aspect of getting in a circle or huddle is a form of homeopathic magic as circles represent unity and completeness. It is this unity that the group is trying to project and maintain on the stage for a successful performance. Additionally, the touching of hands in the middle of the circle is a form of contagious magic because by contacting each other, the group recognizes a connection that they maintain on stage. Also, this contagious magic allows confidence to be spread from one individual in the huddle to the next by passing along this confidence through contact.

 

Media: IMG_4204

Collector’s Name: Tori Dozier

Tags/Keywords:

• Acappella
• Chant
• Performance
• Arts
• Pre-performance rituals