When Deke Sharon (LA’91, NEC’91), a renowned a cappella arranger and instructor, joined the Beelzebubs in the late 1980s, a cappella song selection was limited.
“Everybody was singing ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy.’ Everybody was singing [‘The Longest Time’] by Billy Joel. Everybody was singing … whatever songs were already very a cappella or very close harmony, and they just converted them,” he said.
However, Sharon yearned to innovate, and inspiration struck him at the movies around 1989.
“The movie ‘Say Anything’ had just come out, and there’s that classic scene where John Cusack holds the boombox above his head and it’s playing ‘In Your Eyes,’” he said. “I saw that scene, I [thought], if we could do that song, everyone’s heart would melt.”
Sharon brought a record of “In Your Eyes” to his dorm room and sat down to arrange the song for the Beelzebubs as he often did prior to weekend performances. He got stuck though, trying to convert challenging sounds and instrumentals within the song into typical a cappella vocals.
“I couldn’t arrange it because a cappella then really was still one foot in doo-wop,” he said. “It’s an ooh and aah and bum bum and doo doo doo, but those syllables didn’t work with that Peter Gabriel song.”
But, ever determined, Sharon studied the individual sound components of the song closely.
“I just started writing down what I could hear. I heard talking drums and shakers, and I started writing them down, and then figuring out how to make the sounds work with my mouth,” he said.
When the arrangement was done, there were singing parts, per usual, but there were also background parts that used vocal percussion to mimic the instruments and synthesizers not often enunciated in a cappella.
Sharon’s fellow Beelzebubs were perplexed by the vocal percussion, unsure that the arrangement would sound pleasing, but Sharon convinced them to practice. After some more convincing, the rest of the Beelzebubs agreed to perform the new song at a show that weekend.
“As soon as the song was done … the audience was silent for way too long,” Sharon said. “But then it was like the end of a movie. The entire audience started screaming, and they jumped up on their feet, and they went nuts.”
That moment — the realization that vocal percussion would allow any song to be sung a cappella — kickstarted Sharon’s career as an arranger, coach and a cappella legend.
Ever since he was little, before he was a Beelzebub, Sharon had a fascination with music.
“I sang before I could speak. I would bounce my head on my pillow and sing myself to sleep,” he said.
Sharon grew up singing and performing in a plethora of groups and programs, joining the San Francisco Boys Chorus at age 7 and a barbershop quartet in high school.
“I missed the first month of fourth grade [touring] … I was in operas with Pavarotti in the opera house in San Francisco,” he said. “I loved singing. I was always in every single choir.”
Part of what sold Sharon on Tufts was a high school visit from the a cappella group he would one day join.
“When the Beelzebubs came to my high school, [it] was like a giant shaft of light came down out of the heavens and hit me like a lightning bolt. I was like, ‘That is awesome. I want to do that,’” he said. “In fact, I would joke with people often that I was going to Beelzebubs University.”
Continuing his love of music, Sharon attended Tufts as a student in the dual degree program with the New England Conservatory.
“I learned theory there and vocal technique. And, of course, I got an amazing liberal arts education at Tufts,” he said.
After graduating in 1991, Sharon wanted to take his love of a cappella and his use of vocal percussion and turn it into a career. His peers and mentors had their doubts.
“Anyone I told: ‘I’m gonna make a career of this new kind of a cappella,’ either they laughed in my face, or they laughed behind my back,” he said.
The a cappella scene was also small and nowhere near as recognizable as it is today.
“There were just about 200 college a cappella groups — almost no one in the high school level doing it at all,” he said.
But, a cappella’s quieter status was exactly what Sharon sought to challenge. He wanted to convince people that a capella was ‘cool.’ Creating an a cappella competition was the first step.
“I wanted there to be a March Madness of a cappella.” Sharon said. “So, instead of the NCAA tournament, I created the NCCA tournament, the National Championship of College A Cappella. And now it’s international, so it’s ICCA.”
A cappella has exploded since then and the competitions have encouraged groups to modernize and improve their craft.
“Now there are at least 3,000 college a cappella groups, if not more, and a cappella is a household name. Everybody knows what it is,” Sharon said. “When I graduated, if you said a cappella, … the word meant nothing.”
Sharon also compiled a cappella recordings from the festivals and competitions he helped organize, creating records and CDs that helped disseminate all the music.
A prolific arranger — Sharon has arranged over 2,000 songs a cappella — he was hired to help with arranging on the “The Sing Off,” an a cappella competition broadcast on NBC. Sharon found that the existing team knew very little about how to arrange a cappella.
“I ran around like the dog in ‘Wallace and Gromit,’ and I just fixed everything I possibly could,” he said. “By the end of the first season, they made me a producer.”
Perhaps most famous on Sharon’s resume is the “Pitch Perfect” franchise for which he has been an arranger, on-site music director and vocal producer. The first “Pitch Perfect” movie was inspired by a nonfiction book of the same name which has a chapter about Sharon; in fact, Ben Platt’s character Benji was inspired by Sharon.
“The movie only opened in a few theaters. It was a very small opening, and then it closed. But then when the movie went on to DVD, it just blew up like crazy,” he said. “The year after it came out, it was the best-selling soundtrack of the year.”
Outside of arranging and music producing, Sharon has continued to perform a cappella with different groups and has also coached dozens of student a cappella groups.
“I love … working with existing [a cappella] groups and helping them be the best version of themselves.”
Through it all, Sharon cites the Beelzebubs as a key and defining part of his career.
“The a cappella groups at Tufts were like rock stars,” he said. “To be in a packed chapel, … that incredible energy … is something I will always carry with me as some of the most special moments in my life.”
Sharon has dedicated his life to sharing a cappella with the world, determined to, as he likes to say, “spread harmony through harmony.”
“When you sing with other people, particularly if there aren’t instruments there, there’s this incredible, almost spiritual connection that happens, and it brings people together,” he said.
“Every note, every harmony, is still electric,” Sharon said. “And that’s what I’m trying to do when I’m going around working with all these other groups, remind them how many lives that we can save and how much better this world can be if we learn how to connect better.”
