Another arrangement written for Vox One's album Pure Imagination, this Shaker song is transformed into an ode to the open skies of Africa. Combining a Swahili phrase for "dance and sing" and vowels not commonly used in choral singing, a bed of background lines are laid to carry the melody in 9/8. Its uplifting message comes through strongly as joyous rhythm and harmony is weaved together by each part. SATBB a cappella.
View all charts by Yumiko Matsuoka
YUMIKO MATSUOKA, originally from Tokyo, Japan, is a professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, teaching ear training. She is the founder of Boston-based a cappella quintet Vox One whose albums Vox One (1993), Out There (1995),Chameleon (1997) and Pure Imagination (2005) have won multiple awards from the
Contemporary A Cappella Society of America (CASA). Yumiko’s arrangements and compositions can also be heard on her anthology
To Every Thing There Is A Season (2008), Vox One’s Say You Love Me (2005), and on recordings by other a cappella groups around the globe, as well as TV commercials in Japan.
Yumiko is an active clinician, adjudicator and choral director, working locally, nationally and worldwide.
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