Bobby McFerrin Is An Amazingly Inhuman Music Machine

Oh man have I been negligent in my posting duties. So to make it up to you wonderful, beautiful people, today I’m posting a double-whammy – two of my favorite videos from 2012 (really, they’re both from about 2010, but I didn’t discover either until 2012 so deal with it.)

You might remember Bobby McFerrin from an earlier post called Music Is A Human Universal – or from his 80’s hit Don’t Worry – Be Happy. If you only know him from the second reference, what you might not know is that the dude is as close as we’ve come to a living, human synthesizer. He’s able to do with his mouth and body what us less evolved people are only able to do with a five piece backing band. Even more impressive, he’s also an enabler of others.

For my first piece of evidence, above is Bobby getting 50,000 people singing in nearly perfect harmony along with a purely improvisational piece he’s inventing on the spot.

Not impressed yet? Fine, lemme bring out the big guns: Here’s Bobby McFerrin getting a crowd of hundreds of complete strangers to simultaneously sing one of the most difficult arias ever written: Gounod’s Ave Maria.

I think even the most doubtful of you can admit that’s impossibly, impressively, talented.