OPA Songs & Chants
I was trolling through old posts and saw this and got tickled! YES!! OPA songs are pretty lame. Get busy and write some new ones!
Admittedly, I may be a little biased, but the new one we use in the chapter induction ritual is really great. It's called "Pass It On" and it's so good that several chapters are now using it in their pledge activation ritual.
I realize that "Blue Like The Color" is a hard tune to learn, but it's such a special goose-pimple moment in the pledge activation ritual that I've become a big fan of it. The secrets to making it sound good:
1. Everybody has to know the tune well, so practice, practice, practice ahead of time! Teach the tune (maybe just the first verse) to your pledge classes so they learn it when they're learning all their other OPA stuff. After they become sisters, they are out of the 'learning' mode and it will be harder.
2. When you perform it, everybody needs to sing at a moderately soft level and listen to the other voices around them. That's the secret of blending your voices to make them sounds better than the sum of their parts.
3. Pick up the pace. If you sing this slowly it sounds like a funeral dirge. Put a little pep into it and the melody sounds remarkably better.
I've worked with many colonies over the years and I always teach them 3-4 OPA songs at their retreat. At convention this summer, I discovered that one of our newly inducted chapters was actually teaching an old established chapter some of these songs! Amazing!
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