Click here to learn about hosting packages, including a FREE plan. A cappella literally means singing without any instrumental accompaniment, naked if you will. It's taken from the latin a capella, meaning without a hat, naked in another sense. Even before our ancestors stopped dragging their knuckles, they were singing a cappella. Reflecting their primitive lifestyles, the lyrics of ancient men were of course limited to words such as buffalo, cave, and sexual interc ourse.
Today describing music as a cappella implies a little more than singing without instruments.
There are several styles of a cappella that any purist should know by heart. A few, but by no means all, of these styles are outlined below with an example of where you can hear that style. The archetypical group is the barbershop quartet, and the archetypical sound is bright with a wide spread of pitches. This allowed performers more versatility, making the seperation of solo and background vocals more practical and easier to comprehend. In recent years, a cappella groups have been performing covers of non-a cappella songs with a great deal of success.