The Scourge of the Seven Seas (And College Hill): ARRR!!!

July 1, 2025

“We are ARRR!!!” we proclaim, at the onset of every concert, almost always located under Wayland Arch at Brown University. But what is ARRR!!! exactly? ARRR!!! is one of many a cappella groups at Brown University, but is certainly one of the sillier ensembles. Our group was founded in 1999 by two individuals working in theater tech, who noticed that their work rigging ropes was quite similar to what a sailor had to do aboard tall ships. Proclaiming that there wasn’t enough silliness on campus, they founded this group, and 26 years later, here I am to tell you about it. It’s a group steeped in lore and tradition, both of the larger folk community and our own. We have many secrets, none of which are mine to reveal to the public, but I hope that this post can be a resource to those who are curious in knowing more about us and what it’s like being a part of the crew!

Where better to start than the experience of being in the crew? There are really three main aspects of life in ARRR!!!: the music, the community, and the mischief. As the music landing page suggests, it’s hard to categorize or classify the type of music we sing. We sing Irish, Scottish, and Appalachian folk. We sing labor songs, most often shanties that pertain to labor about sailing ships, but there are certainly songs about building railways and about mining coal. We sing regular maritime songs from England to Australia, New England to New Zealand. We sing more recently written folk songs, some genuine, some satire, some from movies. We collect these songs in a living document known as The Bindarrr, which gets updated with new songs every yearIn fact, we have recently been going through a bit of a Bindarrr Expansion Project. And by that, I mean that a lot of crew members have songs that they want to add, and I personally have been encouraging their introduction during rehearsals. At the end of last semester, we added over 25 songs . There is no explicit criteria or rule for which songs should be added, beyond that they should not be bigoted. Generally, it should be thematically appropriate, and the current crew should enjoy singing it. In fact, “thematically appropriate” for a pirate-themed singing group is probably the best way to describe the music which we sing.

Now, I cannot say that I originally ARRR!!! on my own accord. Back in my senior year of high school, well after I knew I was attending Brown University, I was sitting in the car with my best friend, a moment I remember like it was yesterday. She looked over at me, tilted her head, and promptly told me that I was going to join an a cappella group in college. I was bewildered at this, for I didn’t sing, I had never really sung before, how was I going to get into an a cappella group? Despite my objections, she was adamant in the fact that I would do a cappella. Fast forward to Brown’s accepted students’ day, A Day On College Hill, as I was on a tour that I decided to go on because I had nothing else to do at that moment, and our tour guide told us that Brown had a large number of both serious and funny a cappella groups. Recalling that moment before with my friend, and knowing that I was nowhere near good enough to compete for the more competitive groups, I asked the tour guide which group would be the easiest to join. She replied, “there’s a group that dresses up as pirates and sings pirate songs… I’m sure they wouldn’t be that difficult to join.” Beyond my own circumstances, that hook was hilarious and in that moment, I was committed to joining this a capirate group.

I tell this story because, despite that I really only ever joined because my friend told me I would, I really think that joining ARRR!!! was the best decision I have made at my time at Brown, period. Of course, the singing and shenanigans are great, but the real reason this is the case is beause of the community. I have made some of my best friends through this group. I suppose it takes a certain personality to join a pirate a cappella group, but I have become friends with some of the most amazing, creative, funny, and intelligent people I have ever met, both the alumni, who are very active in the community, and the crewmates I have had the pleasure of sharing the ship with. You get out of the crew what you put into it of course, but those of us who are active have made lifelong friendships. I’d wager that, at least last semester, I spent more time with the pirates than with any of my other friend groups!

And finally, the mischief. We call ourselves the Scourge of College Hill for a reason, of course, and that is because of our love of making everyone else’s lives a little bit funnier. Whether it being raiding the auditions of a comedy group that made fun of us or spilling the tea of the other a cappella groups in verse at a combined concert, we love cooking up better and better ways to be the pain in somone’s behind. Certainly there are many more legendary stories to tell, but none of them are meant for this site.

Having discussed what it’s like being part of the crew, let me turn our attention towards some of the details. ARRR!!! is primarily a singing group (at least, this is what our founding goal is), and hence, we have a single two-hour weekly rehearsal, almost always scheduled for Friday evenings. This end of week timeslot is usually free of alternate activites (because pirates are nothing if not passionate, and very, very busy), and provides all crew members a chance to relax, singing shanties and joking around with a group of close friends.

Is a single rehearsal per week enough for us to be ready for shows? Well, our group has a rather nontraditional approach to a cappella, which is simultaneously a more traditional approach to shanty and folk singing. We care very little for musicality, we enforce no vibrato (many of us, including myself, can barely do it), and we do not divide into parts. All we strive for is to pick a key and stick to it, hold a melody, stay in rhythm, and try to be in tune with each other. People who are capable of it can sing whatever harmonies they can come up with (it is a great deal of fun to mess around with different harmonies and bass lines). We often only sing a song through once during rehearsal, unless it was so egregiously bad that it warrants another run-through. This sort of belting approach that is very rough around the edges is much more suited for the music that we sing, which historically was not sung by those with classical training, nor those who could assemble a full choir with the correct parts. Our approach not only allows us to more heavily weigh the “vibes” of an individual during auditions (so as to select for people who would make good pirates), but it allows rehearsal to feel much like a bunch of friends singing songs in a circle, which combined with our singing style, allows for a very convincing emulation of folk music from centuries past.

Our rehearsals lead up to our shows, which are usually by happenstance monthly. The shows often are thematic, with examples such as Pagan Feast during early November, combining a Halloween and Thanksgiving feel, and Irish Feast, during March (obviously), in which we sing a subset of our plethora of Irish music. The songs themselves are usually either fully-written folk songs, in which everyoneNot always everyone. Sometimes each verse is sung by a different pair or group of three or more sings each verse and each chorus, or they are call-and-response shanties, in which we improvise verses during rehearsal, and stitch together a song made from these verses for our shows. In fact, during rehearsals, call-and-response songs can go on for a very long timeDuring outside-of-rehearsal sings, they can go on for hours, but we tend to cut them off in rehearsals because of the time restriction , with jokes continuing on for several minutes, and even whole conversations being had in verse. The funniest or most topical of these verses are selected for performance. This segues into the other part of our shows that is almost as important as the music: the comedy.

The crew generally does not take itself too seriously at all. We try to select for the funniest verses. While performing, there is always some background physical comedy gag going on, such as stacking as many hats as you can upon one person’s head. And of course, during the intermission between songs, we like to add comedy bits, from direct standup to more esoteric sketches. To provide an example would sap the fun of it, so I advise you to attend a show if you can!

I hope that this post has enlightened into what goes into arrrcappella. I’ll quickly mention some miscellaneous quirks: our president is obviously called captain, and vice-president first mate. Our musical directors are boatswains (bosuns), and our treasurer is our bootymaster (you’d think it would be quartermaster, but pirates do love booty). Our social media managers are called lookouts, and we call our ombudsperson a chaplain. There are a few other duties that the chaplain has, and a few other roles that would be bit messy to explain. We only host auditions annually, which is unusual in the a cappella scene at Brown, but we find it much easier to integrate new crew members only once a year, and it allows us more flexibility in the spring semester to pursue wacky and creative projects. We also end every show with the same song, a song that we never rehearse, and which we learn through verse. Its identity will be kept secret on this site, so attend a show to find out!

There are many more secrets that I cannot divulge here. If you have read this and you are considering arrrditioning, as mentioned prior, auditions only occur in the fall. While singing skills are definitely great to have, it is more important to have good vibes. Introverted, extroverted, does not matter to us as long as your personality would integrate nicely with the crew. As of writing this, I have been elected captain for the upcoming Fall 2025 semester, so definitely reach out to me with any questions about the crew you have. If it is no longer the Fall of 2025, still reach out to me, I know quite a bit about the crew and I plan on remaining active in the community for a long time. Hopefully my advice could still be of use to you, and if not, I would definitely know where to direct your emails. Now, as we pirates say, good wind to yer sails!