Stanford Raagapella Founded in 2002, Stanford Raagapella is Stanford University's

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 South Asian fusion a cappella

A cappella

A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...

 group. Raagapella's music draws from a variety of genres and languages, focusing on a fusion of Western and Bollywood

Bollywood

Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...

 pop music. That the music style is South Asian fusion means that many songs ("fusion songs") are a combination of a song from each genre, Eastern and Western, mixed into one arrangement. Raagapella has released one album to date and has toured throughout the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, performing with artists including A.R. Rahman.

History

Raagapella was founded in 2002, making it the youngest of Stanford's nine on campus a cappella groups. The group quickly grew from its founding four members to a size of about thirteen, where it has stayed. In 2005 and 2006 Raagapella won Anahat, the National South Asian A Cappella Competition, and placed third in the same in 2004 and 2007; and in 2006 also took part in the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) where it was a semi-finalist. Later the same year Raagapella went on tour the first time, a tradition which has continued every year since, bringing them to the East and West coasts, Texas, Chicago, Iowa and India, during which CNN-IBN did a story about the group. In 2006 Raagapella also performed with composer and singer A.R. Rahman in the Hollywood Bowl

Hollywood Bowl

The Hollywood Bowl is a modern amphitheater in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, United States that is used primarily for music performances...

, where they collaborated again in 2007 (in the Oracle Arena, Oakland and NASA Colosseum) and again in the Hollywood Bowl in 2011.

Music

Raagapella's music consists mainly of Bollywood and Western pop. The repertoire also however contains classic rock (such as "I'll Take You Home"), Persian poetry ("Ey Karevan/Hallelujah"), a national song ("Maa tujhe Salaam"), hip hop

Hip hop music

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

 ("Kangna"), R&B ("Burn/Jaane Kye Chahe"), folk

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 ("All along the Watchtower") and rap

Rap

Rap may refer to:*Rapping, performance in which rhyming lyrics are used, with or without musical accompaniment ; while an MC performs spoken verses in time to a beat/ melody**Hip hop subculture**Hip hop music...

 ("Motel"). Most songs are in Hindi

Hindi

Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...

 and/or English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, with more minor occurrences of Punjabi

Punjabi language

Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language...

, Singhalese, Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

, Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

 and Telugu

Telugu language

Telugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...

.

Members

Founding members were Mehul Trivedi, Bobby Ghosh, Sudeep Roy, and Jay Pandit.

For the 2011-2012 school year members were as following:

Tenor I	Tenor II	Baritone	Bass
Isaac Caswell	Praveen Ramesh	Raman Nelakanti	Ian Holmes
Justin Cavazos	Linyi Gao	Arif Gilani	RJ Lim
Vivek Choksi	Junxu Lye	Mahesh Agrawal	Bryan Li
		Amrit Saxena	John Shih