On May 16, Hope Sings notched another milestone: the debut of the first a cappella version of one of our original songs!
The all-women group, the Dartmouth Decibelles did a special arrangement of "Hope," by Alih Jey and Ines Gaviria. See the video below.
The song was the finale of a fundraising benefit held at Dartmouth for Hope Sings and Grameen U, the initiative from Grameen America that sets up clubs at universities around the country to support them.
Kudos to Campbell Secrest and Mahala Pagan, who organized the event for Grameen U, and Bailey Hoar, the musical director for the Deci's (as they're called). Bailey did the arrangement of "Hope" and rallied the other a cappella groups who performed (the Brovertones and the Cords).
It's one of those fun, synchronicity stories how it all came about. When HS founder Beth Blatt was at Dartmouth, she sang with the Woodswind, as the Deci's used to be called. The musical director of the group back then was Eve Pratt, now Eve Hoar - and by the last name, you can perhaps tell that she is Bailey's mother. About six months prior, Beth was chatting with Bailey, and they noodled on how cool it would be to do an a cappella arrangement of a Hope Sings song. One day.
Enter HS intern Raul Silva-Behrens. One of his tasks was to connect with college campuses and microfinance clubs to let them know about Hope Sings and search for collaboration opportunities. At Bucknell, he found Nicole Meyers, who was heading up the Grameen U effort. Turns out, they'd just formed a chapter at Dartmouth. Wouldn't it be great to do an event with Grameen U and Hope Sings at Dartmouth?
And thus the evening was born.
Money was raised. Awareness of microfinance was raised. The roof was raised by some great singing. Check out the video here, or go to our youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/hopesingsmicro#p/a/u/2/S9oxz14Ci9w
MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL - we now have an a cappella arrangement of the song that ANY GROUP ANYWHERE CAN PERFORM!! What better way to get the word out about the power of microfinance than with the power of song - an original Hope Sings song? Tell all the a cappellistas you know, it's through them that HOPE SINGS!
You can download Bailey's arrangement on our "buy" page.