KAIST students are like the men of the Renaissance. Like Leonardo da Vinci, they have a wide range of shining talents from arts to sciences. Baobab is a new music group focusing on a cappella, a genre of vocal music without any instrumental accompaniment. To hear more about this interesting club, The KAIST Herald met the President and the conductor of Baobab.

Can you briefly introduce yourselves?
[Lee] Hi, my name is Youngsuk Lee, a junior majoring in the Department of Mathematical Sciences. I am one of the founding members of Baobab, and currently the Presient of the club. I manage the overall execution and activities of the club. These days, I am working on registering Baobab as a formal club for next semester.
[Kim] Hi, I am the conductor of the club, Dong Eon Kim. I am currently a sophomore majoring in mechanical engineering. I am also one of the founding members of Baobab, like Youngsuk. A cappella is a very difficult genre because it is solely the human voices that create harmony and musicality. With my experiences from high school, I advise the Baobab members how to polish the music we sing.

What was the motive for founding Baobab?
We are both the alumni of the Korean Science Academy (KSA). We were involved in the school a cappella group back in high school. The 3 years of a cappella group activity became one of the most unforgettable memories of our high school lives. There were some other KAIST students from our high school who also enjoyed the a cappella group activity as much as we did. So we decided to create this group in KAIST last spring, so that we can bring the joyful experiences into our school lives again.

What are the past, current, and prospective activities?
We are currently an unofficial club that has not been approved by the school yet. But we are working hard towards registering our club as an official one. Despite the short history of our club, we had two performances so far. We performed for the students entering this fall at the end of the summer vacation. We also performed in the beginning of this fall semester at the lobby of the Creative Learning Building (E11) to promote the recruitment of new members. As a result, a few more members joined Baobab this fall. We are planning to hold a subscription concert from this year, possibly in mid-November.

What specific genre does your group focus on?
I think the beauty of a cappella is in its ability to re-interpret various existing genres with the unique timbre of a cappella. In order to show such beauty, we don’t focus on a single genre. Instead, we plan to perform diverse genres to the KAIST students.

There are many other vocal groups such as Chorus, Muse, and Six Line. How does Baobab stand out among those groups?
There are numerous vocal groups that perform a cappella. For example, Chorus holds an annual a cappella concert in the spring. In my personal opinion, a cappella is one of the most difficult genres in music. I felt that there is clearly a limitation of showing the true charm of a cappella from these vocal groups because their main strengths are not a cappella. We gathered and founded Baobab in order to show its true charm to KAIST students.

Is there anything else you’d like to to say to the KAIST students?
We do not feel bad that we might be “stealing” a good performance item from other vocal groups. But as the bands in KAIST specialize in their own field of music such as jazz, heavy metal, and etc., we believe that vocal groups should also specialize in their own fields. We hope that the people from these other groups will respect the diverse genres of vocal music.
Some people mistake our club to be exclusively for the graduates of KSA. It is true that the founding members are KSA alumni, but it doesn’t mean that all members need to be from our school. We plan to recruit more members each season, and we always welcome new talented KAIST students!